Requiem for a former light-heavyweight
Donald Trump’s endorsement of other Republican candidates has never been exactly welcome news. You may recall instances in the 2018 midterm elections where Trump’s imprimatur turned out to be the kiss of death. Ten of the 20 Senate candidates that Trump endorsed lost their general elections. Twenty of the 49 U.S. House candidates that Trump endorsed lost their general elections. Then there was Georgia in 2020, when two Democratic Senators were elected, a disaster for Trump that many Republicans want to forget. But what makes the 2022 midterms different is that prominent Republicans are now defying Trump out in the open.
People like Mike Pence, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul are discovering that openly endorsing candidates Trump has rejected and rejecting candidates Trump endorses is having little or no political blowback. Cruz and Paul openly bucked Trump by stumping for Representative Mo Brooks in his bid for Alabama’s GOP Senate this past week. The tide is turning.
One turning point seems to have come with increasing voter disenchantment with the Big Lie, Trump’s ultimate test for loyalty. Two years ago the Big Lie was new and exciting and controversial. But today more and more Americans are coming to realize that the promise of “stunning” revelations soon-to-be-revealed that would “prove” that the election was stolen have never materialised. Despite this it remains the all-consuming issue for Trump himself.
One major disappointment for many fans of the Big Lie was the so-called documentary “2000 Mules.” A hidden camera showing an army of “left-wing operatives” stuffing drop boxes with absentee ballots fell flat when people began to notice that not one of those operatives ever returned. In other words, depositing multiple ballots just once for friends and family members was nothing unusual — and hardly “mule” activity. It happens legitimately all the time, and capturing it on film with dramatic music in no way imperils that legitimacy.
In short, many Trump fans — not all, but enough to matter — are getting heartily sick of the Big Lie. It no longer carries the weight it used to, and Republican heavyweights are starting to notice and take courage. Donald Trump is not going to magically resume his place as president this August any more than he did last August. The election of 2020 really and truly is over, and Donald Trump really and truly lost.
Soon other Republicans will begin to notice that not being in continuous lockstep with Trump is not the political epitaph it once was, or what it was once thought to be. They may not openly defy him, but they will worry less about keeping or gaining his favor.
As Donald Trump’s influence slips the Republican Party will go back to doing what it does best, eroding civil rights of non-white or non-straight Americans and creating economic advantages for the super rich. They’ll concern themselves less and less about embarrassing side trips to service Donald Trump’s frail ego. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.