GOP RIP 🪦

Trump 'playing blackmail' with GOP as indictments loom: MSNBC's Lemirehttps://t.co/iZJrEipSfH

— Raw Story (@RawStory) March 6, 2023

I hadn’t heard this before:

This is a lot of same old, same old from Trump on Saturday -- at great length, nearly two hours," Lemire said. "Some people in the back were leaving as he was talking.

It’s been pointed out that this CPAC was all Trump All the time, and still Trump won only 62% in the straw poll.There was also the weakest attendance in, probably, CPAC history. And people who came to hear him speak, got bored rather than rallied.

I don’t care what it means for Trump, it’s the damage to the GOP I’m interested in. The article argues Trump will fracture the party if he doesn’t win the nomination; but he already has. The GOP can’t win in 2024 unless the Democrats run Hillary Clinton again, and even then I think Trump would lose.

Trump may prevail, as in 2016, in a crowded field in the primaries, but Nikki and Ron and the rest are Jeb and Ted redux. And the party base is determined to self-immolate in a fit of absolute nihilism. And even at that they can barely get it up for Trump.

This isn’t Trump’s party. There is no Grand Old Party anymore. Trump has a dwindling fan base, but that’s not a substitute for a political party. The people who don’t want to vote for Trump or Biden in ‘24 will stay home, and once again the greater portion of the electorate will vote for Biden. By ‘24 the people will probably be disgusted with a Congress that’s chases shadows and shouts at clouds, and will clean House, too.

And none of this considers how many indictments or trials Trump will face by then. The DOJ won’t be dropping any bombshells by indicting Trump even in October 2024. Those claims are already baked in. This may be historically uncharted territory, but criminal charges and/or trials won’t surprise anyone, and certainly won’t boost Trump’s popularity. Sure, it will anneal his fans to him, but even more people will turn away in disgust. His fans may allow him to shoot somebody on 5th Avenue, but he doesn’t have enough fans to put him back into office.

As for the GOP, it neither controls nor organizes anything anymore. It’s just a bunch of clowns running from the burning car.