Global Courant 2023-05-03 01:21:07
Donald Trump in Scotland on Tuesday. (Steve Welsh/PA via AP)
National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy issued a stark warning to his fellow Republicans this weekend: Nominating Donald Trump in 2024 would guarantee Joe Biden another four years as president.
“I am as confident as I write this that Donald Trump will never again be elected president of this United States,” McCarthy, a former assistant US attorney who voted for Trump twice, wrote in a much-discussed piece titled “Why Trump Can’t Win” that was published Saturday.
Referring to the series of electoral losses the party has suffered since Trump’s election in 2016, the former president’s growing legal danger, his baseless allegations of voter fraud in 2020, his alleged incitement to violence on January 6, 2021, and polls showing that he lost to Biden in 2024, McCarthy argued that nominating Trump would be a trap.
“The greatest danger to the country is four (more) years of Democrats in power. The difference this time is that Trump’s nomination would guarantee that this danger becomes a reality,” he wrote.
The column drew mixed reactions, with anti-Trump Republicans like Bill Kristol heartily agreeing, self-proclaimed “liberal Republican” Will Saletan expressing skepticism, and liberal journalist Judd Legum strongly disagreeing with the conclusion.
While Trump has a leading poll on Fla. Governor Ron DeSantis in an as-yet hypothetical race for the Republican presidential nomination, polls have shown that DeSantis generally outperforms Trump in general election contests.
But even while acknowledging Trump’s potential liabilities, many political observers believe it is premature to discount his chances of beating Biden.
“I think anyone saying ‘he’s done’ is clearly a mistake,” New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman said in March in an interview promoting Confidence Man, her book on Trump.
“There are plenty of Democrats that you and I know are calling for Trump as a candidate because they think he will be the easiest for President Biden to beat,” added Haberman, who has covered for Trump for years. “I wouldn’t make the statement I’m told all the time: ‘Trump can’t win another national election.’ I don’t know if that’s true, nobody knows.”
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The former president at Aberdeen Airport, Scotland, prior to his visit to the Trump International Golf Links. (Jane Barlow/PA via AP)
Certainly, President Biden faces his own re-election headwinds, not least the fact that 68% of American adults surveyed in a Yahoo News/YouGov poll released in February said they believe he is too old to get a second chance. term. Yet 45% say the same about Trump, and that doesn’t take into account all the other negative traits mentioned by McCarthy, the most significant of which is his attempt to undermine the last presidential election.
To what extent Trump’s 2020 election denial will affect his 2024 bid remains to be seen. On Monday, CNN announced it would hold a town hall event with Trump, a move that drew criticism from those who accused the network of elevating the former president’s false claims in pursuit of ratings.
Trump will answer questions from undecided Republican voters in New Hampshire, CNN said, but it remains unclear how moderator Kaitlan Collins will handle Trump’s false claims of voter fraud or his regular denunciations of the network as “fake news.” a CBS News/YouGov poll released Monday showed that 61% of Republicans favored a presidential candidate who declared that Trump actually won in 2020.
For McCarthy, at least, those Republicans who cling to the belief that Trump still represents the party’s best hope are clinging to a delusion at best.
They want Republicans and conservatives to believe he has a chance, to be persuaded to nominate him. Then once he gets the nomination, and it’s too late for the Republicans to reconsider, the Democrats and the media will hit him with everything they’ve got: all the January 6 ammunition, all his 2020 denial, his insane tweets and ‘truths’. ,” his attacks on popular Republicans, his praise of Democrats and dictators, and all possible charges against him that they have withheld — long narrative indictments detailing, in chapter and verse, crimes far more serious than what Alvin Bragg has brought and much harder to do away with as armed law enforcement,” he wrote in his column. “After that attack, it would be a miracle if Trump got 43 percent of the vote.”
