How The Primaries Will Go
Kurt Schlichter
Ron DeSantis and whoever the governor of East Dakota – or is it one of the other Dakotas? – is are now in the 2024 race and Trump has to deal with that. Not with the Dakota guy – he’s another joke of Asa-like proportions angling for a cabinet post – but with the governor of Florida, whose hardcore conservative record and $8.2 million first-day haul have the president nervous. You can tell RDS is causing Trump PTSD by the even more incoherent than usual Truth Social meltdowns and the insane ramblings of his dumber superfans. And DJT should be nervous – Ron DeSantis has a good chance of winning the nomination, but it’s no lock. Trump has name recognition and inertia and those superfans. He can win the nomination – some might say he is likely to, though I think it’s an uphill fight for him despite his current poll position. But it’s early and no one knows anything.
Well, except that the other candidates are treading water in a sea of mediocrity. This is a two-man race. Nikki, Mike, Tim, Vivek, and the rest of you are asterisks within footnotes. You are irrelevant. This is Trump v. DeSantis and only one man is coming out of the Octagon intact.
The most obvious course of events, though not necessarily most likely, is that this primary continues the way it has been going, with Trump on a glide path to victory. Distrust the polls all you want – and I want even when they tell me what I want to hear – but Trump’s lead is dominant right now in the pluralistic sense. He’s got about 50% of the GOP support and DeSantis has about 20%. That’s good for Trump’s chances in the primary, but in the macro sense, an ex-president with only half his party’s support is a disaster. Even that desiccated old pervert the Democrats are propping up is doing better with his own party, much better, though his sole competition is that ridiculous Kennedy retread who far too many alleged conservatives are fawning over because he went on Tucker. Still, Trump is in the lead today, and he might be in the lead tomorrow and the next day. The GOP base could certainly decide that it wants more Trump and it could nominate him and get him good and hard. In that case, the numbers don’t budge or Trump even moves ahead and by next fall this competition becomes a coronation.
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https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2023/05/29/how-the-primaries-will-go-n2623780
