Eventually, Trump chaos will be a general election drag
It's a real danger Iowa Republicans need to think about before Jan. 15
Nikki Haley rarely has the guts to blame Donald Trump directly, but two events this week — one in Iowa, the other in Colorado — demonstrate the truth of her central argument against Republicans nominating the former president in 2024.
It’s an argument Iowa Republicans ought to heed going into the Jan. 15 caucuses.
For weeks now, Haley has said that chaos follows Trump wherever he goes. Often, she’ll use weasel words like “rightly or wrongly,” to duck the question whether Trump himself is to blame. Or she’ll just refuse to answer when she’s asked whether he brings it on himself.
Nonetheless, the argument is a powerful one, even if it probably will have no impact on the Republican primary electorate, especially in Iowa. These voters, after all, believe the Trump mantra that he’s being persecuted, not for his own deeds but because of some infamous deep state.
This belief, solid among Republicans, will hardly be the case with the wider electorate next year. Polls have already shown independent voters are keenly interested in the criminal charges brought against Trump, and these voters already tend to believe he’s guilty.
Imagine their view if this case goes to trial, with all the details laid bare, in the midst of an election season.
If Trump’s pending criminal charges aren’t bad enough, the Colorado Supreme Court issued a stunning ruling Tuesday that said the ex-president is disqualified from the presidency because he engaged in the insurrection after the 2020 election, and he should be removed from the state’s 2024 primary ballot.
Already Republicans, including Trump’s rivals, are rallying around him. They claim the people should decide Trump’s fate, not judges. But they ignore that it was the American people themselves, through their elected representatives in Congress and in the states, who approved the 14th Amendment that places these restrictions on insurrectionists.
No doubt, the Colorado case will be appealed to the US Supreme Court, and the Colorado court has stayed its ruling until Jan. 4, anticipating such a move.
My instincts tell me the conservative court won’t let the ruling stand. Still, it’s not a sure thing. Talk about chaos for the Republican Party — and the country — if the GOP standard-bearer suddenly faces petitions in multiple states to kick him off the ballot after he gets the GOP nomination.
This is the kind of high wire act that Republicans are courting less than four weeks before Iowans begin to vote.
It’s the kind of chaos Nikki Haley rightly warns of.
The other event I mentioned is Trump’s claim that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He repeated this foul allegation in Waterloo on Tuesday, pointing the finger specifically at migrants from Africa, Asia and South America.
Some news reports say Trump specifies that he’s referring to undocumented immigrants but give me a break: a person’s legal status has no bearing on their DNA. It’s clear that Trump is making a racist appeal, one that some, including the White House, are likening to the ideas of Adolf Hitler.
Trump may think this is the kind of thing that appeals to a certain segment of voters across the US, but it won’t play with young people, and certainly not with minority voters. Given Joe Biden’s troubles with some of these voters in the polls, it may well be the kind of thing that turns them back his way. And don’t think Biden won’t remind them of it.
Nor will Trump’s nakedly racist appeals find much favor in the suburbs in important states like Wisconsin, Georgia and Pennsylvania.
Trump knows this. This is why he was forced to deny in Iowa that he’s channeling Hitler.
But if you have to go to the trouble to reassure people that you’re not good with Hitler’s ideas, it’s a sure sign you’ve already stepped in it.
Again, this likely won’t stop Iowa Republicans from voting for Trump in a few weeks. The polls in this state say he holds a huge lead. But down the road, these and other controversies spell trouble for Trump in the general election.
They demonstrate that Trump and chaos go hand in hand. He stokes the turmoil; he thrives on it. It is the political oxygen he requires to survive.
But Americans don’t like it. The chaos is choking them.
Trump knows this, too. It’s why he makes apocalyptic claims like America is looking at “World War III” if he’s not elected, or that the US has “gone to hell” under Joe Biden.
If Trump can claim the country is already in chaos under Biden, he knows he won’t look so bad.
It’s true this argument has found some purchase in the electorate. Biden’s approval ratings are in dangerously low territory, and not just with Republicans. Much of the country worries he’s too old for the job, and he faces challenges over immigration and the Israel-Hamas war.
However, before they vote on Jan. 15, Iowa Republicans should remember this: It’s not Joe Biden who will require a friendly Supreme Court to keep him on the ballot in Colorado and possibly other states next year; it’s not Joe Biden who will need friendly juries to rule in his favor in several states merely to stay out of jail.
Nikki Haley is right. Donald Trump bathes in this kind of chaos. The same can’t be said for Joe Biden — or any of Trump’s Republican opponents.
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Can't the Republican candidates see a gift horse in the Colorado Supremes decision to call an insurrectionist an Insurecctionist ? Instead, they want to keep Trump IN the fight ? What am I missing ? There's a perfectly reasonable opportunity to suggest Trump is ineligible and they universally reject the notion while none of them can touch him in a primary ? What's so wrong with this picture ?
I'm guessing our 45th president doesn't know we have growing Cologolese, Burmese and Latino populations in Waterloo where he spoke this week, not to mention a generations-old Bosnian population keenly aware of what ethnic and sectarian conflict is like, in addition to the highest percentage Black American population in the state with a Black-majority City Council and a Black mayor. His rhetoric here doesn't exactly engender harmony and coooperation. But I suspect at this point he's primarily interested in a stage, a microphone and an overwhelming show of support at the caucuses.
But where are the Bushes, Paul Ryan, John Boehner and other one-time Republican leaders? Sparse sound bites bubble up occasionally. President Bush said he wrote in Condoleeza Rice in the last election. The Lincoln Project recently posted a video by Paul Ryan in which he says the 45th president is not a conservative but an autocrat. In 2016 conservative icon George Will said then-candidate Trump "is as American as Huey Long," i.e., a demagogue. Former Speaker Boehner famously said, "There is no Republican Party. There's a Democrat Party and a Trump party. The Republican Party is off taking a nap somewhere."
Time to wake up, folks. Liz Cheney's blowing Reveille. And if Barry Goldwater was alive he flipping over mattresses and banging on garbage cans like a boot camp drill instructor.
And the Dems should probably think twice about the devil horns and tails they've painted in the past on receptive folks from the party opposite. This isn't a ball game. Don't play Cubs vs. Cardinals when you have a wolf at the door.