The “mood” of the voters in 2020 didn’t translate to the action of the votes, and it didn’t again.
You’ve been barraged with a bunch of “Trump’s done!” headlines in the wake of the election, probably by design.
These are no different from the “Trump’s done!” headlines you heard the past 7 years (my god, 2015 was 7 years ago?!)
By 2020, the RNC was perfectly fine hanging Trump out to dry.
Flashback to 2016:
He’d insulted them (rightfully) enough by winning the primary against over a dozen challengers, some of whom were high-donor-interest elected officials, like Rubio and Cruz.
He smashed their penchant for becoming Democrats-lite / American Tories by pushing endless diversity candidates by becoming the oldest, whitest motherfucker on a stage since Strom Thurmond – and getting more minority votes than Romney or McCain ever dreamed of.
Speaking of which, Trump dangled an appointment over Romney’s head to get an endorsement and then tossed him a Senate seat, which Romney has expressed nothing but the opposite of gratitude for.
And of course Trump pissed on McCain’s grave. Given the Ukraine war today, Arlington would have to dredge the Potomac for real estate if McCain were still alive.
All that being the the case – the RNC was truly insulted by Trump not because of what he said.
His action – in firing up voter rolls and holding mega rallies across the country – exposed what the RNC has done since the Reagan administration.
DICK-ALL.
Imagine letting Clinton get elected once, and then re-elected (!) after screwing everyone in a ten mile radius of the Rose Garden.
Then imagine nearly losing to Al Gore and John Kerry, who Reagan would’ve crushed worse than Mondale.
So they hated him, and by 2020 they were glad to be rid of him.
The RNC’s strategy for 2022: let Trump ride off into the sunset, but also endorse and fund our approved candidates and do the heavy lifting.
2020 Trump: “Hey, seems like the election process in quite a few swing states is third world at best. You guys wanna do something about this?”
2020 RNC: “Hello, this is an automated message. We are out of office and in a meeting with the Chamber of Commerce. If this message is urgent, please write it on the back of a check addressed to our office and we’ll notice it eventually. Thanks!”
2022 Trump: “I’d like to win and that’s all I care about. Throw some money at these candidates.”
2022 RNC: “Ok ok…hear us out – a pro-abortion Republican Senator in Colorado!!!”
That’s not to say Trump’s picks were flawless – sure he got over 200 wins across national / state / local election endorsements (rivaling any former president’s record) but some were just bad picks for the area.
You’re not going to elect a goofy cowboy Senator in New Hampshire against a woman that looks like a university provost, but you absolutely could have put a full court press on the popular Republican Governor to tilt that Senate seat towards R.
But candidates aside – surely, the messaging was clear. After all, that’s the RNC’s job – work with Congress, form an agenda to govern, drill it into ads, and get out the vote.
The best messaging the RNC could fart out was a tepid one of “inflation” – a nebulous term even economists don’t fully understand.
Voters, on the other hand, were extremely clear about what they cared about.
Crime!
Immigration!
The RNC: “you know, gas prices are pretty high”
Voters: “yeah that sucks, but can you make sure I don’t get stabbed by an illegal at the gas station?”
The RNC: “while you bleed out, notice how high those gas prices are. hope you mailed in your ballot!”
Coulter warned you about this years ago, which is why she’s the only person allowed to criticize Trump – she said before he took the oath of office that if he didn’t do anything about immigration, he’d never be taken seriously again, and then said it again to his face at high volume.
The most important passage from this prescient piece:
If Trump betrays voters on immigration, he can have as many rallies as he wants, but Americans will say, Been there, done that — you screwed us. He will never escape the stink of broken campaign promises.
So unless Trump has another 60 million voters hiding someplace, the appointments he makes today — to State, Defense, Homeland Security, Labor, even the IRS — will determine whether he is remembered as America’s greatest president, or if the Trump name becomes a cautionary tale in American politics.”
The RNC also refuses to do anything about immigration, issuing platitudes about “comprehensive immigration reform” as if it’s 2006 and George W. Bush is running out of post-9/11 steam for the Hispanic vote.
The RNC is perfectly happy getting a few elderly residents of The Villages to mark “DeSantis” on their ballots and the novelty of hardcore Cuban expats to mark the same.
Their idea of “get out the vote!” is to run ads for a Democrat in Alaska because a lady they’ve never liked is running as a Republican.
Since Trump made his famous “Mexico rapists” speech, hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants have poured into the country, causing untold mayhem on everything from the environment to voter rolls in swing states.
Instead of a full-court-press for same-day voting with Voter ID, the RNC has left it up to the states to create Byzantine voting processes that allow ballots to be submitted a month before the election or be counted up to a month after.
in: election month
It took one man, Scott Presler, to literally go door to door in Florida swing counties to get out the vote, and the RNC won’t give him an ounce of credit.
Yet again, someone showed the RNC someone else could do their job better.
Republican former-California voters have been fleeing to Arizona en masse the past two years, and yet there are razor-thin margins for Blake Masters, Kari Lake, and Abe Hamadeh, the actual Young Guns of the Republican Party.
It’s no surprise the Republican Brand(TM) is so tarnished that Rick Caruso, a lifetime Republican donor, switched party affiliations to Democratic just to run for Mayor of Los Angeles – a role held by a Republican as recently as 2001.
The policies he’s running on – cracking down on crime and homelessness, pro-economic development – would label him a Republican in anywhere but LA.
But Caruso is winning, and it’s clear he couldn’t have won as a Republican.
If the RNC has their way in 2024, no one will.
