Republicans are adamant that Trump can do no wrong
According to the latest polls, up to 80 per cent of Republicans in the US would vote for Donald Trump as President in 2024 even if he is convicted of serious federal crimes. They don’t care that he hoarded highly sensitive classified documents at his lair in Mar-a-Lago and refused to give them back when ordered to do so by the courts.
No one should be surprised by this, shocking though it is. Donald Trump’s appeal is entirely built around the idea that he can get away with anything he likes while giving the middle finger to the left-liberal Establishment.
Millions of Americans, mostly white, most of them living outside the big cities, have no time for “city hall,” let alone the Federal Government. The same slice of the population supports the Second Amendment despite the fact that there are more guns than Americans and that the US has by far the highest murder rate in the developed world.
Hardliners, meaning most Republicans, support low taxes while demanding increased federal and state benefits. To a man, or woman (and there are only two genders in Trump World), they support the death penalty, are against same-sex marriage and, for reasons that I have never quite understood, oppose abortion in just about all circumstances, even if the pregnancies in question were the result of rape or incest.
Needless to say, many Trumpians are racists, some of them openly. They don’t want “blacks” living next to them. They want them confined to ghettos, which they then brand as breeding grounds for crime. In the past, right up until the 1950s, the thinking that elevated Trump to the White House as “our guy,” allowed lynch mobs to flourish, so that “negroes” suspected of just about any offence could be strung up from the nearest tree, with the community watching on approvingly and local law officers looking the other way. We saw the legacy of this when George Floyd, a black man arrested for selling loose cigarettes, was casually murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis in 2020.
In considering the mindset of those who voted for Trump in 2016 and who will almost certainly vote for him again in 2024, it is important to realise that most of them think of themselves as more “moral” than those who went for Hillary Clinton or, subsequently, Joe Biden. Overwhelmingly, they regard themselves as Christians, doing God’s work. When a violent mob, incited by Trump, invaded the Capitol in a clear attempt to overturn the 2020 election won convincingly by Biden, the view of millions of Republicans following events live on their television screens was that “the people” had risen up in righteous anger, only to be beaten back by the forces of the state.
Now, with the former president charged by the Department of Justice with stealing a trove of highly classified documents during the his final days in the White House, and then refusing to return them, three-quarters or more Republican voters apparently endorse their hero’s view that it is the “Department of Injustice” that has perpetrated a “heinous” crime against the American people by launching a “witch hunt” against him more serious and far-reaching than any in the nation’s history.
Those murdered by the puritans in Salem might disagree, as might the thousands of Americans who lost their jobs and reputations during the McCarthy hearings. But never mind that. They had it easy compared to the serially bankrupt, proven fraudster, convicted sex abuser and friend of Vladimir Putin – who claims that, as President, he would work with the Russian leader to bring the Ukraine war to an end in 48 hours.
From this point on, undaunted by the “facts,” eight out of ten Republicans are more determined than ever that their man should triumph so that, having failed totally the first time round, he can finally clear out the Augean stables that is the Washington Establishment.
The good news is that twenty per cent of Republicans – the Old School centre-right – are not taken in by Trump’s lies and are desperate to restore sensible politics to both the Oval Office and the halls of Congress. Combined with Democrats (who on their own already command at least half of the turnout at federal elections), this rump of moderates would be sufficient to bring about a handsome victory for the Democratic contender in 2024.
It would help, of course, if Biden, aged 80 and clearly past his best, would give way gracefully to a younger candidate. But he won’t, not unless he is forced to do so either by his party (unlikely) or the Almighty (who knows?). Either way, decent Republicans, holding perfectly sensible opinions on the economy, society and America’s role in the world, would be doing their nation and the rest of us an enormous favour by voting for the Democratic candidate next time round.
But will they? Or will enough of them? We will know in seventeen months’ time. With Trump definitively out of the picture, normal politics could resume, with left and right divided on the issues but united on the need to preserve the US as, if not exactly a shining city on a hill, at least as the lynchpin of the West and once more the greatest country in the world.
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