The best I can do to find something resembling real strategic acumen in all of this is to speculate that Trump realizes the SAVE America Act is unlikely to pass. He might not even want it to pass. What he wants is ammunition to cry “rigged!” if and when (probably when) Democrats mop the floor with Republicans this fall. “If we had passed federal voter ID like I wanted, the left never would have been able to cheat!” the president will cry.
He’s setting the table for Stop the Steal 2.0 […]
Meanwhile, because a meaningful chunk of postliberals oppose the war and are eager to claim vindication for opposing it, they won’t be as eager this time to shift blame for Republican defeat away from the president and onto Democratic cheating. With a battle brewing over the future of the post-Trump GOP, which do you think “America First” isolationists like Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene would rather have right-wingers believe? That Americans love Trump’s war but were foiled at the polls by a massive plot to let illegal immigrants vote?
Or that Americans hated Trump’s war and turned out en masse on Election Day to punish him for it, requiring the GOP to take a bold new Lindberghian direction on foreign policy in 2028?
Translation (mine, at least): The Republican Party has probably only just begun its downward spiral. That Lindberghian isolationist direction, the noise of which is growing fast, has nothing to do with “buying local.” Whatever Trump is, Vance and Carlson, etc. are worse. If you’re tired of opposing the GOP as it is now, buckle up.