And Tuesday’s election proved how useful this can be to the GOP.
And Tuesday’s election proved how useful this can be to the GOP.
A s president, Donald Trump was not a Nazi, or anything like it. If the most convincing evidence that he was a racist is that he accurately described some of the worst places on earth as “s***hole countries,” or the deliberately misleading spin on his remarks after the Charlottesville march in August 2017, I remain skeptical. And Trump improved his performance among black voters from 2016 to 2020. The reason the Left kept describing Trump as a “Nazi” and “racist” is that they reach for the worst words they can think of whenever they encounter someone they see as being extremely, unusually awful. Those are the two that keep coming up, regardless of whether they fit.
Trump was, however, extremely unusual. I say that as someone who largely supported his policy agenda — with some exceptions — and as someone who wrote many columns mocking the media and celebrities for their hysterical overreactions to him. He wasn’t a Nazi, he was just . . . a horse in a hospital.
As John Mulaney pointed out in a brilliant stand-up bit, a horse in a hospital isn’t always causing destruction. Sometimes the horse might just be standing there, doing nothing. Other times the horse might gallop freely down an empty corridor, and provide us all with a strangely funny and pleasing spectacle to behold.
Nevertheless, a horse should not be in a hospital. Trump came into the presidency with no experience whatsoever in either government or military leadership. More than most presidents, then, he needed to convince the nation that he was going to be serious about the job and studious about everything he had to learn. From the beginning, he did the exact opposite. Even Trump’s most ardent supporters can’t pretend that they never held their breath in anticipation that he might do something really beyond the pale. They can’t pretend that they never worried he might start a nuclear war over a Twitter jibe.
In practical terms, the actual administrative actions of his presidency turned out to be within normal parameters. But none of us knew whether he could contain his worst impulses. There was always the possibility that he would stray far beyond the bounds of the normal. On January 6, he finally did: The Capitol riot was nowhere near organized enough, nor determined enough, to qualify as an “insurrection.” It was more like a bunch of people deciding that they, too, could act like a horse in a hospital. But it was a calamitous and shameful day.
Now we’ve had an election in which the horse was kept safely back in his stable for the first time in six years. Minus Trump, the Republican Party performed spectacularly. Minus Trump, the party could talk about issues that are popular: law and order; parental oversight of school boards; a race-neutral approach to education, history, and culture; opposition to spending boondoggles; impatience with unnecessary COVID restrictions. Minus Trump, the party no longer has to spend its time and energy talking about Trump. Minus Trump, the hospital is up and running.
To succeed in 2024, the GOP need not stand for anything more than opposition to the breathtaking turn to the far left that the Democratic Party has chosen. Even in a normal year centered on winning over the median voter, the Democrats’ ideas would be unwise. Today, though, the Democratic Party’s energy is coming from a fringe whose New New Deal proposals make the Obama-era party look moderate and reasonable.
Retaining Trump in a position of power, however, would nullify everything the Republicans are trying to accomplish. It’ll only be a few weeks until the next presidential campaign starts to get in gear. Should Trump, as polls suggest he would, win the Republican nomination for president in 2024, his every utterance would again dominate the news cycle. His conspiracy theories, misspellings, and random insults would pollute and distract. He would drag us all down into the snake pit of his various grudges and obsessions.
Winning elections takes discipline, and Trump has the discipline of a toddler, not to mention the ego of an Instagram teen. A successful GOP candidate of the future might be wise to borrow some aspects of Trumpism — such as a willingness to openly mock the biases of the media and to call out the abuses of China — but should Trump himself return to center stage, his own hurt feelings about losing in 2020 will be his primary focus. Swing voters don’t want to hear about that. Nor should the Republican base. The GOP has just taken a big step forward. Handing Trump control of the party would be an even bigger step back.