The End of the Beginning of 2024
Finally.
The best part about being an anthropologist of Trump and Trumpism is the utter, almost boring predictability of the actions of Republicans, the media, and Trump himself under any circumstance.
As readers here know, this was always how it would end.
DeSantis out, Nikki as the last (sorta) Establishment Republican Standing, and Donald Trump, roaring and eating the scenery like an angry kaiju. The beginning of 2024 has dragged on longer than it should have, but the sweet mercy of political death awaits Nikki Haley tomorrow night.
After Trump, will Iowa and New Hampshire ever be the same? I doubt it, but the drawn-out ritual of this primary is now ending, and I’m glad.
Here’s what we’ve learned about the race to date:
Nikki Was The Establishment’s Last Hope
After tonight, I have a hard time seeing how she justifies heading to South Carolina to get crushed in her home state. My bet is that tomorrow tonight she’ll leave the race, bend the knee, endorse Trump, and break the last vestiges of the old GOP.
She’ll leave with several million dollars still in the bank from her SuperPAC and live to fight another day. (Unlike DeSantis, who burned donors so badly he’s done in national politics unless someone invents a charisma transplant and he wins the Powerball lottery.)
“Trump in heels” becomes one last disappointment for the donors and the gentry GOP. The overwhelming instinct even of many Never Trump GOPers is always to run back to the nest, to return to the party’s warm embrace; this made even some diehard Never Trump types Nikki-curious. She was right on a cluster of issues where Trump is deeply, profoundly wrong, to wit, Ukraine and foreign policy. None of that was sufficient.
Nikki’s capitulation after a brief moment of defiance and resistance will be sweet wine for the MAGA faction. Trump, who has taken to calling her “Nimbra” and rolling out his greatest-hits birther racism against her, doesn’t need South Carolina and I suspect he will show less grace than he’s shown with DeSantis.
I’m strangely unemotional about Nikki Haley. In some other universe, she’d be a mainstream Republican. In our dark and gloomy timeline, she’s another piece of political roadkill on the Trump highway, an imitator who could never master what it took to win. Watching her in the last few days as she struggles with the joy of actually bringing the attack against him and the knowledge that she’ll pay for every one of those hits when she loses has been fascinating.
She’s every part of the dying old GOP’s struggle, writ large. The illusion that Trump would disappear, the irreconcilable nature of the donor class and the MAGA base, and the deeply wired submission and cowardice of the elected and political elite of the GOP all came together in her. The idea that with a MAGA-ish candidate and the right focus group magic that the Trump deathgrip on the party could be broken got its best test in Nikki Haley and failed.
That’s not as much about her as it is about what the MAGA GOP has become, and why the stakes of the fight are so high.
Ron DeSantis Was Always An Over-priced Political Stock
The departure from the race of the least graceful, warm, human, and relatable candidate ended like a wet fart in a hot car. His faux-Churchill quote made his exit, stage right-wing, as clunky and embarrassing as the rest of the thing he called a campaign.
The gleeful obituaries of the crapulous, terrible, truly awful snakebit DeSantis campaign are a joy to read, an illustration of the Emerson Rule that every institution is the lengthened shadow of one man. It was a campaign of epic grifters shoveling tens of millions into their pockets, backed by a horde of online trolls — RIP, Frau Pushaw and Max Nordau — and a coterie of late-model social conservative Moms for Liberty culture warriors. It was always going to fail.
Ron DeSantis the Ted Cruz of Scott Walkers. He’s the antithesis of charisma and appeal. He’s back in Florida, seething and furious in his Adams Street lair of the Governor’s Mansion, but that’s a story now for Florida to work through.
The torrent of positive DeSantis articles in gentry conservative media reached almost comical proportions in the summer of 2022, with hundreds of posts and stories in National Review and elsewhere declaring that touching the hem of Ron DeSantis’ robe would heal lepers, that his words of wisdom left all who heard them in a state of religious ecstasy, his policies were both wise good, and he was the herald of a new glorious new era of post-Trump conservatism.
It turns out nothing about DeSantis was exceptional or extraordinary beyond the power of a Florida governor to force lobbyists by the dozens to five and six figure checks in order to protect their clients interests.
DeSantis also illustrated the upper boundary of where the social conservative bleeding about localism liberal indoctrination in schools and gender ideology goes; it’s an ideological dead end that only feeds the voters you already have…and repels the center.
Some donor class candidates get a warm reception — e.g., Marco, Jeb, Mitt, Scott — because they spoke the language of the donors. They came across as men committed to do good or reflected the technocratic aspirations of that tribe. Rhonda Santos (his drag name, obvi) was never that guy. He was never comfortable in the room beyond inserting the word “woke” every ten words or so, and no matter how many times mumbled his mantra of “Harvard Yale Baseball Florida, Harvard Yale Baseball Florida” he never connected, and likely never will.
Same As It Ever Was: Trump In and Out of Control
As for the elephant striding toward the Republican nomination, I actually feel better about this race than I have in sometime. Yes, Donald Trump has the fanatic loyalty of the Republican base and things are playing out almost exactly as I have articulated for months now as your friendly Rickstradamus.
While the upside for Trump — the nomination itself, control of the money from the GOP, a tidal wave of major donor money to skim grift steal put to work in the campaign, and an early nomination for legal protection — is meaningful, his increasingly erratic behavior in raising more than a few red flags, even in Trump world.
We’re long past the “covfeve” era, in which the GOP could laugh off every verbal tic, slur, mumble, neurogenic word fart, and misapprehension of facts. If your parents confused Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi, you’d say it was time for “A Place for Mom” not the Oval Office. No, it isn’t some secret sauce Trumpian mind control neuro linguistic programming mojo to his base.
People age differently. Joe Biden is old, but hale. Trump is dissolving into an incoherent bag of animated, gibbering suet in front of our eyes. He’s old, slipping, and degenerating fast.
It’s hard to imagine the delusion it takes to see Trump as some kind of strong and virile leader. He’s the cranky old fart in the bar yelling incoherently about the whole damn city going down the shitter since they gave the blacks the right to vote and ordering his third boilermaker of the morning.
As all things of Trump have ever been, when he mentions Joe Biden‘s mental acuity or health, it’s pure unadulterated weapons-grade projection. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, is a better illustration of this long-running Trump technique. Projection and accusation, over and over, rinse and repeat.
There is, however, a cautionary note I feel obliged to put on your collective radar screens.
Did you notice Trump actually acting gracious towards Ron DeSantis yesterday? I did. I promise you there’s more to the story of how the deal was cut, but Trump himself could have been expected to act badly and…didn’t.
This is a sign that Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles' control over Donald Trump is increasing. They’re able to puppet Trump a bit more than Jared, Cory Lewandowski, Kellyanne Conway, and Brad Parscale ever could in 2016 or 2020.
They’re professionals, and they’re increasingly able to manipulate Trump into doing what they want. They’ve accumulated so much power in the campaign now that I hear even Jared is worried about their control over Donald.
Watch for a series of stories in the coming days and weeks showing Trump is trying to unify the Republican base, win over skeptics, and position himself more effectively.
That’s the story, Chris and Susie, as well as Jason Miller and the rest of their press operation, are pushing as we speak. The thing is that for once they’re right. When Trump displays discipline like this, it is actually newsworthy.
It’s shocking. It’s weird. It’s unexpected.
At least we’re done pretending. Fight’s on. Let’s go.
This Florida Man can write, "People age differently. Joe Biden is old, but hale. Trump is dissolving into an incoherent bag of animated, gibbering suet in front of our eyes. He’s old, slipping, and degenerating fast... He’s the cranky old fart in the bar yelling incoherently about the whole damn city going down the shitter since they gave the blacks the right to vote and ordering his third boilermaker of the morning." Where else are you gonna get prose like this? Rick, I am so glad you are on our side, now.
For sure. And here's the irony: Miller comes from a successful, well-respected Jewish family, who came to the U.S. to escape the Nazis back in the 1930s. Yes, immigrants! The only reason Miller has a life, and that life is in the U.S., is due to his relatives from his mother's side. Miller is a disgrace to his uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, etc., who abhor his xenophobic and anti-immigrant policies. He's a stain on his family. Miller's Uncle, Dr. David Glosser, has written about him. Miller's an ungrateful, hateful, spiteful bigot, and those are the kindest things anyone can say about him.