Donald Trump’s Auto-da-fail
Remember Donald Trump? Before he got tossed out of the White House, and more importantly Twitter, he ran the free world and consumed all its oxygen. Now he has to hope reporters pick up his weird, wordy missives on clip-art virtual letterhead in order to get a back-pages mention or a few RTs.
Despite his grasp on American headspace going out like a light in January, Trump nonetheless remains the shadow president of the GOP. His diminished presence was enough to get Liz Cheney — a staunch conservative — from a high-level if not especially powerful position in the House ranks in favor of Elise Stefanik, who has a much more moderate voting record but has pledged fealty to the recently former president.
Trump’s hold on his voters is considerable, but he was also an unpopular president who mismanaged the sole major crisis of his presidency and got beaten pretty bad in both the popular vote and the electoral college. He has a following, but overall it’s like the GOP yoking itself to Jimmy Carter or George H.W. Bush. How does he do it?
Perplexed liberals should consider an obvious question: what does he do that you like?
Consider what Trump’s hold on the GOP has done to Republican politicians who, in normal times, would be Establishment stars. Mike Pompeo was first in his class at West Point and a Harvard Law graduate who went…
