July 4, 2023
Republican Losers and Donald Trump
By J. Allen Cartwright
“Loser. Loser. Loser,” was the attack leveled by 2024 GOP hopeful Chris Christie (R-NJ) at former President and current GOP frontrunner Donald Trump, describing the electoral shortcomings for the Republican party under Trump in the 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections. Although Christie is the longest of long shots based on current polling data, he is hardly alone in questioning Trump’s electability. Ben Shapiro, one of the most popular commentators in the conservative movement, has noted that “[m]any Republicans still think of Trump as a winner, even after his losses in the 2018 midterm election, 2020 presidential election, 2021 Georgia Senate races and 2022 midterms. When they don't, he drops in the polls, as in December 2022… It will be [GOP candidate Ron] DeSantis' job to remind Republican voters that Trump has won precisely one election in the last seven years; it will be the job of Republican voters to acknowledge that reality.” Though perhaps offensive to diehard conservative voters, Shapiro’s warning is not without merit: polling data indicates that Trump is particularly unpopular among independent voters, who claim that he is too caustic and divisive. A major fly in the ointment for the anti-Trump argument, however, is that despite constant media attacks from both the Left and the Right, along with multiple lawsuits and indictments, Trump possesses a commanding lead in the current 2024 polls.
Sobering Statistics
Of course, the commentator class may be right: Donald Trump may very well lose in 2024, just as he lost in 2020. What they overlook, however, is that if that happens, he will be no different than most other Republican presidential candidates since 1988. Indeed, only two Republicans have won the presidency since 1992. Moreover, the GOP has only won the popular vote once in that time. Although GOP commentators love to demonize former President Barack Obama, they often fail to mention that he absolutely mopped the floor with moderate, supposedly more palatable GOP candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Remember when McCain (whose “bomb bomb bomb Iran” comment was far more offensive than anything Donald Trump ever said on the campaign trail), got destroyed by a one-term senator by a margin of 365-173, indicating an overwhelming rejection of neoconservative interventionist foreign policy? And then Mitt Romney, who was unwilling to fight back or even defend himself against ludicrous attacks of being sexist and homophobic, once again embarrassed the GOP through a 332-206 drubbing? (Don't forget that Christie himself helped out here, effectively campaigning for Obama in the final days of the election.) Instead of learning from these shellackings, the GOP establishment decided to further insult its base by pushing former Florida governor Jeb Bush as its nominee, before Donald Trump upended the entire conservative movement in 2016. In a few short years, the Bushes, McCains, and Romneys of the world went from being GOP kingmakers to afterthoughts who were not event present at the 2016 Republican Party national convention. And for all the conservative commentators whining about the Biden administration’s many failures, let’s not forget that his presidency was enabled in part by prominent figures in the pre-2016 Republican party.
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https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/07/republican_losers_and_donald_trump.html
