“It is my privilege to provide my complete and total endorsement for Donald J. Trump as the 47th President of the United States. President Trump was the greatest President of my lifetime, and we need him to reinstate the policies that were working so well for America,” Good wrote in an endorsement tweet on Sunday, after Ron DeSantis, the horse that he had bet on, dropped out of the race.
DeSantis, of course, also bent the knee to Trump, which is what Republicans not named Chris Christie feel compelled these days – watch, Nikki Haley will follow suit when her time comes.
What makes it easy to turn the page is, they don’t stand for anything; it’s all about political power.
There’s an old saying on this character flaw that goes, if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.
In Good’s case, his ill-fated endorsement of DeSantis earned himself a Republican primary challenger, in the form of newly-minted State Sen. John McGuire, R-Goochland County, who is staking his campaign for Congress on one main point – Good’s endorsement of DeSantis.
“Bob Good has been a Never Trumper since Day 1 and is going around telling people that Trump isn’t pro-life and can’t win. He’s wrong — Trump will save America,” McGuire said in a statement that he issued on Sunday.
“Bob Good has come groveling back to Trump in order to save his own hide — friends, don’t trust him,” McGuire said. “He’ll stab Trump in the back again the first chance he gets. Never Trumper Bob Good is only good for Joe Biden, not for the patriots of Virginia’s 5th Congressional District.”
This is the chickens coming home to roost. Good burrowed the Fifth District GOP nomination out from under one-term Republican congressman Denver Riggleman in 2020, packing a drive-through convention held at the outset of the COVID pandemic.
Good had made his case to Republican voters by running to Riggleman’s right, saying the Nelson County businessman was “out of step with the base of the party” on marriage, immigration and other issues.
Notably, Trump had given Riggleman his “total endorsement” in that nomination battle.
So, Good has won once in the Fifth without Trump being on his side, but he’s not risking being able to do it twice.
“We need President Trump to secure our border, strengthen our military, re-establish our energy dominance, and reinvigorate our economy. I am committed to doing everything I can to help ensure he is reelected President,” Good wrote in his Twitter endorsement.
The word from TrumpWorld seems to be: good luck with all that, Bob.
Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita told Cardinal News last week, before DeSantis had dropped out of the race, that Good had lost the former president’s support over his defection to DeSantis.
“Bob Good won’t be electable when we get done with him,” LaCivita said.
To that end, McGuire’s campaign rolled out a TV ad that highlighted a comment made by Good about his decision to side with DeSantis that doesn’t look, well, you know, good.
“I decided to endorse Desantis in May because I felt, you know what? I can’t sit by and watch, and then regret that we nominated Trump,” was the comment.
Good, in an interview on CNN on Monday, clapped back by claiming that the McGuire campaign had taken the comment out of context, which is what politicians do when confronted with their own words.
“That’s part of a larger sentence and a larger conversation that’s been edited out, and it takes out the part where I praise President Trump, and I said he was the greatest president of my lifetime, and that I don’t criticize President Trump,” Good said. “I’m just supporting Gov. DeSantis and explaining to someone who was asking me, ‘Well, why did you make that endorsement decision?’ And I’m explaining that to them, but I thought in the battleground states that Gov. DeSantis would give us a better chance to win. Obviously, that decision has been made by the voters, the Republican voters across the country overwhelmingly support President Trump and I support President Trump as well.”
Quite the word salad there.
Another old saying about politics seems to apply here: when you’re explainin’, you’re losin’.
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Chris Graham
