Six of the eight Republicans pretending to want to win the party’s presidential nomination in 2024 would still support a convicted Donald Trump if he were to end up being the GOP nominee.
This would seem to undercut the ongoing efforts in the U.S. House to try to gem up something criminal involving President Biden, but you’d have to stop and think for a millisecond to let yourself be dragged into that particular perimeter of wisdom.
Seriously, if Trump being a criminal wouldn’t get you to pull your support, why does whatever Hunter Biden or Hillary Clinton did or didn’t do matter in the slightest?
Yeah, sure, we all know what the answer is there.
Anyway, the two who didn’t raise their hands: Chris Christie, not surprising, given that he has made whatever his campaign is about kneecapping Trump at every opportunity, and Asa Hutchinson, who, no offense, is barely registering with the electorate, so he has nothing to lose.
Even Mike Pence, the former VP who was the target of the Trumpist mob – “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!” – that delayed the certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, meekly raised his hand.
As did Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who was supposed to be the guy who could take down Trump from within the GOP, but can’t seem to get out of his own way, much less in Trump’s.
It’s fascinating, but not surprising, to see the supposed party of law and order back itself into this particular corner.
It would seem to stand to reason that candidates who would be actually trying to win the party nomination would want to differentiate themselves from the two-time popular-vote loser, who is now facing multiple state and federal indictments for his role in leading the failed Jan. 6 coup, trying to coerce Georgia leaders to criminally change that state’s election results, for illegally keeping top-secret documents related to military war plans, and for scheming to cover up a bribe to a porn star to keep quiet about a one-night stand.
Nothing about Trump aligns with the party’s supposed core values – limited government, respect for the original intent of the framers of the Constitution, socially conservative stances on respect for marriage.
Which exposes those core values as being a fraud.
What these Republicans are about is power, which, hey, no problem with that being the case.
Just, why don’t they admit it and get it over with?
And while they’re at it, the JV debaters on the stage last night could admit they’re not doing what they’re doing because they actually think they can be the party’s nominee.
They’re all auditioning for something: either to be Trump’s VP, or a big contract with Fox or CNN.
In that respect, then, the big winner last night was, surprisingly, Vivek Ramaswamy.
Christie is a shoo-in to get the TV gig once he drops out of the race early next year, but aside from not raising his hand on the support the criminal nominee question, he seemed to be going out of his way last night to pull his punches, oddly.
Ramaswamy, for his part, positioned himself rather adroitly to either be the VP nominee, a breakout commentator and eventual prime-time host, or, who knows, maybe even the presidential nominee, in the unlikely event that Trump ends up not being able to go through with a 2024 run because he’s either in jail or, I dunno, puts himself on a one-way private flight to Moscow.
Which makes it so that we can breathe easy – not.
Even without a Trump on the ticket next fall, we’re going to have a Republican nominee who thinks a convicted felon should be president.
God save us all.
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Chris Graham
