Stop the Squeal, Revisited

Republicans might finally be losing interest in election denialism.

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(Photo by Ty O'Neil/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images)

A week before the November midterms I speculated that the results could very belatedly shake the faith of Republicans convinced that the 2020 election was illegitimate.

A red wave was inbound, after all. How would MAGA diehards reconcile their conviction that the system is rigged with impending victories by Kari Lake, Blake Masters, and Herschel Walker?

Should the GOP win across the board, including MAGA candidates who were cracked up to be unelectable, the idea that Trump lost in 2020 because he was cheated rather than because voters were sick of him will become … complicated. The voting machines are capable of producing conservative wins, it turns out, which should have been evident to election truthers after House Republicans went 27-for-27 in 2020. In particular, if cranks like Lake and Masters win, the theory that a shadowy cabal is conspiring to keep populists out of office via massive fraud will be on thin ice.

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  1. Andrew W.

    In support of your original proposition, though, I present to you the re-election of Grandma Lauren Boebert. Granny won by a scant 546 votes in a revised Congressional district that was marginally more competitive than the one she won in 2020. Almost more important was the "shape" of the results. She appeared to be losing on the morning after the election. If you recall, immediately after the election, there was a strong belief that Oma had lost, and she even started squawking a bit about unfair elections. But it was the late vote that broke somewhat decisively for Grammy, a group of votes/voters that had been historically believed to be more pro-Dem. I propose that if the giant, Democratic Deep State had any interest in fixing elections, this might have been one of the easiest to fix and would have had some of the biggest messaging value--"the stranglehold by the MAGA, Q, crazies has been broken." Yet they couldn't "find" a mere 600 votes necessary to beat her? Perhaps if that election couldn't be fixed, then maybe the nefarious machine didn't actually exist?

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  2. Stephen Bloom

    I wonder why people don't get that the next favorite candidate for the dedicated MAGATS is Bernie Sanders, or the equivalent, not *any* "establishment candidate no matter how much boob bait they can create for the anti woke Bubbas. Issues don't matter, someone who they believe will burn it all down, does.

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    Mick.Staton

    DeSantis tacking towards the pro-Putin position on Ukraine is going to diminish Ron in the eyes of many Republicans who prefer to stand up to tyranny, and it will inspire more Republican presidential hopefuls that they can swoop in and take the nomination. I predict you will see more people start declaring soon.

    There will never be the one on one match-up to beat Trump that you will need, and he will be the nominee for 2024...

    And he will lose spectacularly.

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    Kommisar89

    Alas Nick, I wish that everything you pointed out above were enough to convince the Ultra-MAGA crowd that the election was not, in fact, stolen and that they need to pick a better candidate for 2024. But you weren't here in my house today to watch my wife actually dancing and singing along to the new Natasha Owens song 'Trump Won' that recently came out. I'm at a loss to explain it and there really is no argument that you can make to these people that would convince them. Facts are irrelevant. My marriage is hanging by a thread at this point due to my continued "disloyalty" - to Trump, not to my marriage. I've been quite the faithful husband but I cannot even pretend to support these wild conspiracy theories. I'd have to be insane. Initially I was willing to hold off making a decision. They said they had evidence. Let's see it. But time and again no evidence was forthcoming until finally it was clear that there simply wasn't any beyond perhaps a few legal quibbles over election rule changes made in the name of COVID and no court was going to address those anyway.

    In the end it's not that they feel Trump best represents their positions on the issues. I could say that I supported most of Trump's positions but felt that his nastiness, obnoxiousness, mean-spiritedness and occasional craziness simply made him unpopular with moderates and independents and this unelectable. I like Ron DeSantis because I get more or less the same policies without all of the baggage. But to my wife and the people like her, the nastiness, obnoxiousness, mean-spiritedness and occasional craziness is the point. They don't want a candidate who isn't like that even if his policies were identical. Even if a Ron DeSantis or someone like him were so politically savvy that they could convince enough moderates, independents, and even Democrats to go along with them to get more done than Trump could ever have dreamed off (not that I think DeSantis is THAT good but just for the sake of argument), the MAGistas would consider it traitorous to even be having discussions with those people in the first place. Reagan's concept that "[t]he person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally - not a 20 percent traitor" is anathema to them. You're either with them 100%, conspiracies and all, or you're the enemy.

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    Sir. Orc

    Another thing to also consider is the fact that not only did the Red Wave not materialize, but Trump-backed candidates specifically did poorly while non-Trump republicans (especially DeSantis) had much better success. And then there was Trump’s peddling of NFTs. The former helped reenforce the reality that Trump was the problem, not any rigging by the Democrats (otherwise why would DeSantis be governor still?) while the latter made it abundantly obvious to even diehard Trump fans that he saw them as suckers that he could swindle for a quick buck. (As one of the Jan 6 rioters put it “I’m going to jail for this?!”)

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  6. Donnybrook

    Thanks Nick. You’re writing was one of the major reading I joined The Dispatch. You lay out a lot of logical reasons for Trump’s decline. I just don’t have much faith in logic driving voters. I’m also concerned that voters will ask themselves - why support a Trump knock-off rather than the real thing? Electability enters into that, but again, that would require logic.

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    Normb1442

    All of this became less interesting for me after reading Nate Cohn's piece in today NY TIMES noting that every poll he's looked at -- regardless of previously shown bias or quality -- shows Trump GAINING on DeSantis since he began attacking him, by an average of four points with some by as a much a 12 points. I'm sure readers of this medium know Republican voters better than I do, but this would not seem to bode well for a candidate who, after all, hasn't even announced yet.

    I'd love to believe it was over DeSantis's words on Ukraine, but many of the polls predate those words, and it's not as if Trump's view is much different.

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    1. Bobby D

      It’s unclear to me why DeSantis is trying to get the Trumpsters to part with Trump. The Trumpsters only make up about 35% of GOP primary voters, and about 80% of them will support Trump as long as he’s in the race.

      If someone can consolidate support behind the sane 65% of GOP primary voters, that person will waltz to victory. That’s where DeSantis should be looking to build support. By focusing on appealing to the Trumpsters, he’s losing support among the rest of the GOP electorate.

      Recall that in 2016 Trump never eclipsed the 50% mark in a primary until the primary contests were almost over. If the sane wing of the party had rallied behind one candidate, Trump wouldn’t have made it beyond Super Tuesday.

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      1. Bobbell73

        Your math is spot on, but I'm sure DeSantis' reading of the tea leaves points to a large primary field again. Probably not 2016 large, but more than a handful. And he's probably right. If I'm not mistaken, 35% is greater than 65% divided by any integer other than 1. As for rallying behind one candidate early, as Don Meredith used to say, "If 'ifs' and 'buts' were candy and nuts, oh what a Christmas we'd have."

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        1. Bobby D

          I’m not sure why that’s an unreasonable expectation. Prior to 2016, the GOP almost always had selected a presumptive nominee before the primary process began.

          It seems to me like the party leadership is failing to do its job and is just trying to outsource the job of vetting and fielding a candidate to the voters.

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          1. Bobbell73

            I'm not sure how reasonable an expectation it is these days. Not saying it would be a bad thing, just that in the modern (post 1972, and like everything bad is the Democrats' fault) populist atmosphere ("Let the people decide.") I just think it's now the way of the world. So between weak party leadership and "the people" every man and his dog can join the field. Remember what Mencken said about democracy: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."
            I think we basically agree on things. It's just that you're an optimist while I'm a pessimist. No doubt you're the better person, but my way is the smart bet.

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  8. Tommaj60

    Within the two time Trump voters are those who voted “against” Clinton and Biden. I.e., Trump is a useful idiot evidenced by his idiocy.
    2022 might suggest there won’t be three time voters

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  9. Meggymish

    On a related note, it drives me crazy to see DeSantis playing footsie with the Trump base/the pop-nat right. The case in point being his comments on Tucker re his support for Ukraine, or the lack thereof. Where's the sucking up to the original GOP base? Where's the candidate who's in favor of strong national defense and power projection abroad, a very light touch at home when it comes to free markets, and a focus on not only overturning Roe but proposing legislation to help make abortion unnecessary and unthinkable? Where's the candidate who will appeal to "OG conservative" people like me, who never voted for Trump and never will? DeSantis lost any appeal he might have had to me when he decided to be Trump Lite, despite his history of supporting arming Ukraine back in 2015 or whenever that was.

    Regarding the article more directly, my friends on the right *still* believe the election was stolen. One friend, who is otherwise a very intelligent woman, believes the hot garbage that is Dinesh D'Souza and his 2000 Mules movie. She absolutely refuses to even read the fact checks about any of it because, as she put it, she believes "her lying eyes," and the movie had video of alleged mules doing ballot drops. It discourages me to no end. Another acquaintance, when I tweeted about the Tucker Carlson Jan. 6 footage and how he was minimizing it in a completely dishonest way, and what he said about Trump in texts, asked where Tucker said any of that. I see so many otherwise intelligent people convincing themselves of completely crazy BS, it scares me. I've lost faith in the GOP and the right writ large, and if it weren't for the life issue, I would never vote Republican again.

    It may be that Trump is finally losing his stranglehold on the minds of a third of the party, but to really move on from him and his disastrous...everything, we need someone who will actually stand up to him, and put forward consistent pre-Trump-conservative policies.

    We need someone with the guts to tell the truth about the 2020 election, make the case for why supporting Ukraine is vital to our national security, and so on, even if it's unpalatable to the Trump base. DeSantis has now proven he's not that guy. Pence is out, because he was Trump's Renfield for the majority of the Trump administration, until Jan. 6. Haley? She at least doesn't seem afraid to market herself as a strong national security candidate, and she can cut up her speeches at the UN where she took it to Lavrov to make ads. I don't know; I'm even more discouraged about the prospects for a Trump-free (including Trump Lite) GOP than Nick seems to be. Someone make me feel better!

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    Roger the Shrubber

    One way to make predictions about the 2024 presidential election is to imagine the worst possible outcome and go with that. Imagine a scenario where a third-party candidate runs and wins a few swing states, say AZ, GA and WI, the Dems fail to make it to 270, and Trump is elected by the House.

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    1. Donnybrook

      That’s the “No Labels” game plan in a nutshell. I wonder if it is just a vanity project, or something more nefarious.

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        Roger the Shrubber

        They say they're in it to win, but their "path to victory" map looks pretty optimistic to me.

        https://www.270towin.com/maps/4opJg

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