This week, I have gotten a pretty continuous stream of good-natured ribbing from family and friends about my oft-stated, years-long, seemingly seriously misguided doubts about Green Bay Packer Quarterback Jordan Love’s ability to be the Green and Gold’s leader of the future.  It’s obviously been easy to take the happy joshing.

I can think of no unequivocal pronouncement I have made or will ever make in these pages for which I more fervently hope to be proven wrong, and to hereafter be derided unmercifully for my lack of perspicacity, than this: 

Former President Donald Trump is going to be the Republican Party’s 2024 Presidential Nominee.

As all who care are aware, Mr. Trump trounced the field in Monday’s Iowa Republican caucuses.  More importantly, in what was an admittedly light turnout due to the extreme weather, the former President’s total (51%), taken together with the totals of Trump-lite Candidates FL Gov. Ron DeSantis (21.2%) and Vivek Ramaswamy (7.7%), meant that the MAGA movement claimed 79.9% of the vote, while former SC Gov. and U.S. UN Amb. Nikki Haley totaled 19.1%. 

In other words, Donald Trump beat Ronald Reagan in Iowa on Monday, 80% – 20%.  One could argue that the margin was actually greater, since it seems fair to assume that a good share of Ms. Haley’s vote was from Independents or Democrats, masquerading as Republicans for a night, who bitterly oppose Mr. Trump.  (Had I been an Iowan, there is no cold I would not have braved to register as a Republican for a night to vote for Ms. Haley, and against Mr. Trump.) 

An NBC poll of caucus goers indicated that 65% would still consider Mr. Trump fit for the presidency if he is convicted of crimes in the coming months; only 31% indicated that they would then consider him unfit.  Only 29% of caucus goers consider President Joe Biden the legitimate president; 66% believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump.  One has to assume that the vast majority of the 31% and 29% were Haley voters, and that a significant percentage of these were faux Republicans.

Although one might assert that my pronouncement is both premature and exaggerated based upon the votes of 100,000 Iowans, I would counter that the Iowa Republican profile doesn’t seem to be different from the profile of the Republican electorate in the vast majority of states. As a political handicapper, I really liked Ms. Haley (I certainly devoted a long enough post to her and her potential prospects 😉 ); but her inability to polish off Mr. DeSantis in Iowa seeming leaves the two squabbling over Mr. Trump’s table scraps, with no state in which either has a realistic hope of defeating the former president (save, perhaps, New Hampshire for Ms. Haley – a state whose Republican demographic deviates markedly from the norm). 

I was struck by a sign I saw wielded by an Iowan Republican at some candidate’s rally which declared, “God over Government.”  MAGAs no longer trust government.  They trust what they believe God wants.   We have heard Evangelicals supporting Donald Trump use the phrase that has become a cliché – “That I wouldn’t vote for him for Pastor, but I will for President.” 

All this is so seemingly absurd that one can’t entirely get rid of the notion that the good people in our rural and remote regions who make up the bulk of Mr. Trump’s support – perhaps frustrated with their situations, or angered at what they see as our mainstream culture’s contempt for their values, or worried about their futures, but not rioters; good neighbors — will suddenly wake up, will snap out of their alternate reality in the manner to which we’ve become accustomed in Star Trek happy endings, will see the former president for who he is.  One doesn’t have to favor progressive policies to realize that Mr. Trump is personally unfit to lead our country. 

It is what it is. Donald Trump is the MAGA Messiah.

There is one part of me that finds the early clarification regarding Mr. Trump’s impending Republican anointment a relief, to be able to dispense with any uncertainty as to what we face.  Since we started with a football reference, let’s end with one:  We know what teams will face off in November.  To preserve democracy, it’s time for both the Biden Campaign and us to strap on our helmets, and start to play. 

We can only hope that winning will be enough; but one step at a time.

[Several preliminary notes: 

A couple of the points made here occurred to me before I saw them offered by media pundits, so I feel free to use them;

From a political handicapping standpoint, I’ve been intrigued by former SC Gov. and U.S. UN Amb. Nikki Haley for some years, and that interest has resulted in this note becoming fairly long; feel free to pass on it; and

Despite my high regard for President Joe Biden’s conduct of the presidency, in the unlikely event that Ms. Haley secures the Republican presidential nomination and runs against him, I am very likely to vote for Ms. Haley – unless she begins to evince undemocratic inclinations, which I have not seen thus far–although I am much closer to the President’s positon on domestic issues.  My rationale is buried below.  😉 ]

Although it currently seems overwhelmingly likely that in November, we will be engaging in another existential battle to preserve American democracy pitting a seemingly increasingly infirm President Joe Biden against the now indisputably fascist former President Donald Trump, I’m posting this because I consider former SC Gov. and U.S. UN Amb. Nikki Haley Haley the only other announced presidential candidate who has a chance to win the White House in 2024.  Indeed, it is a cruel irony – perhaps for the nation and certainly for what respectable vestiges remain of the Republican Party – that if Ms. Haley were to secure the Republican presidential nomination, I think she would defeat Mr. Biden this November pretty easily. 

I speculated in these pages back as 2018 that if then-President Donald Trump chose not to seek reelection (we all saw how that went 😉 ), Ms. Haley would make a formidable 2020 Republican presidential nominee.  I noted then:  “She’s bright, knowledgeable, articulate, and attractive; she projects both toughness and femininity; she’s had executive experience as a Governor; she’s Indian-American, the child of immigrants; she was born and raised in the South, but as Governor removed the Confederate flag from the South Carolina state grounds; she has established foreign policy bona fides by representing us at the U.N.; she has fiscal policy views that appeal to traditional conservatives; her husband serves in the armed forces, and she has what appears to be a beautiful family; she identifies as Christian, but has a Sikh background.”

I well recall after over 60 years that the only Democrat my father, a rock-ribbed Republican, ever voted for was John F. Kennedy – because he was an Irish Catholic.  I submit that in a race against Mr. Biden, the demographics would all be on Ms. Haley’s side.  To begin, it’s hard to see her losing any of the states Mr. Trump won in 2020.  As a South Carolinian, her candidacy would probably both clinch neighboring North Carolina (the only state Mr. Trump won in 2020 by a narrow margin) and win South Carolina’s neighboring Georgia back from Mr. Biden; her immigrant and Indian background will be effective with a significant segment of minorities, which would both enable her to duplicate Mr. Trump’s 2020 victory in Texas and provide her an excellent opportunity to claim Arizona and Nevada from Mr. Biden; I would venture that she has finessed the abortion issue well enough for a significant segment of women voters to rationalize voting for her to finally place a woman in the White House; her charm and vitality would sway a sufficient number of young voters and moderate swing state Democrats and independents who won’t vote for Mr. Trump but are concerned about Mr. Biden’s age and Vice President Kamala Harris’ competence; and although she would lose some diehard MAGAs as a result of the inevitable attacks upon her by a vengeful Mr. Trump, she would retain the vast share of the Republican tribe.  (I vividly recall two Republican gentlemen who told me separately in early 2016 that they could never support Donald Trump.  Now they are both avid Trumpers – because at bottom, their overriding emotion is antipathy for Democrats.  They may be for Mr. Trump today, but will just as enthusiastically vote for Ms. Haley in November if she is the Republican nominee.)  During gatherings with family and friends this past Holiday season, a number of sure Biden voters against Mr. Trump indicated that they would seriously consider Ms. Haley if she was the President’s opponent, and one sure Biden voter against Mr. Trump declared that he would vote for Ms. Haley if she was the President’s opponent.  Mr. Biden’s candidacy can’t withstand that much erosion.  I would submit that Ms. Haley, if she was the Republican nominee, would have the makings of a landslide victory. 

I suspect that Ms. Haley and her team (and perhaps Mr. Trump as well; an aside on that below 😉 ) realize that two major shoes have to drop in order for her to wrest the Republican nomination from the former president.

The first is by far the easier but as things apparently now stand, not easy.  She has to beat FL Gov. Ron DeSantis in Iowa.  The longer he hangs around, the slimmer Ms. Haley’s already extremely slim chances of securing the nomination become.  Mr. DeSantis a hollow, boring candidate whose presidential effort has dead-ended.  He had every early advantage to present himself as the only credible Republican presidential alternative to Mr. Trump, and he fluffed it.  Now, he can’t get it done but he won’t give it up.  If he didn’t have IA Gov. Kim Reynolds’ support in Iowa, I’m pretty confident that Ms. Haley would have already eclipsed him.  I would suggest that the gaffe about the Civil War Ms. Haley recently made in Iowa – we’ll get to that below – arose not because she was trying to overtake Mr. Trump – although she would certainly like to significantly narrow the seeming yawning polling margin between the former President and herself (a feat which is difficult to envision, given Mr. Trump’s steadfast Evangelical support; after all, the former president has, according to a video we recently saw of an Iowa Evangelical, been treated worse than Jesus) — but to carve off enough of Mr. DeSantis’ support to give her second place and effectively end Mr. DeSantis’ campaign.  A second place Iowa finish will arguably make her the only remaining credible opponent to Mr. Trump in New Hampshire and her home state of South Carolina.  If Mr. DeSantis drops out, he will – political pussyfooter that he is – undoubtedly endorse Mr. Trump.  Even so, I would suggest that if a New Hampshire Republican wanted to vote for Mr. Trump, s/he would already be with Mr. Trump.  A recent CNN/University of New Hampshire poll found Ms. Haley, with the support of NH Gov. Chris Sununu (who probably rues his decision not to run himself), to be trailing Mr. Trump by only 7 points among New Hampshire Republicans; if she claimed the majority of the 5% shown in the poll shown to be supporting Mr. DeSantis and a few of the 12% shown in the poll to be supporting former NJ Gov. Chris Christie, there is a credible path for her to beat Mr. Trump in the New Hampshire primary.

(The “birther” controversy that Mr. Trump has just hatched against Ms. Haley is, in my view, some confirmation that the former president agrees with the above analysis.  I would suggest that Mr. Trump is attacking Ms. Haley now, not because he’s worried about losing to her in Iowa, but because he fears that Mr. DeSantis will lose to her in Iowa, and the resulting boost the Haley campaign will receive if Mr. DeSantis withdraws.)  

That’s the easy part.  The hard part:  hanging around long enough in the face of what may be a string of primary victories by Mr. Trump for the occurrence of what is known in English literature as Deus ex machina – literally, in Latin, “God from a machine”; defined in my trusty American Heritage Dictionary as an “improbable … event … suddenly introduced to resolve a situation”:  in this case, an event that will disqualify Mr. Trump from the nomination.  Although the Republican National Committee is stuffed with Trump supporters, the Committee’s Rule 9 expressly provides that the RNC is “authorized and empowered to fill any and all vacancies which may occur by reason of death, declination, or otherwise of the Republican candidate for President of the United States … or … may reconvene the national convention for the purpose of filling any such vacancies. [Emphasis Added]”

I would submit that if the RNC is suddenly looking for a reason to move on from Mr. Trump – for example, if Mr. Trump suffers a obvious health reversal, a significant number of states successfully keep Mr. Trump off the ballot under the 14 Amendment, or Mr. Trump is convicted of an insurrection-related offense this spring — the RNC might deem its nomination “vacant.”  Although a very unlikely scenario, it is perhaps less so if it appears to the RNC that some such factor has made it highly unlikely that Mr. Trump can win.  If the RNC took such a step, it’s hard for me to believe a court would intervene to interpret a political party’s rules contrary to the interpretation of the party’s own ruling body.  Ms. Haley would be the obvious winner in such a scenario.

As to Ms. Haley’s failure to initially list slavery as the cause of the Civil War – “I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run; the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do”:  such was obviously disingenuous, a foolish attempt to thread too fine a needle so as to not offend the Trump and DeSantis supporters she is wooing.  That said – in a geeky aside that I at times can’t resist – arguably, she was not necessarily technically incorrect.  While incoming President Abraham Lincoln was viscerally offended by slavery and an implacable adversary of slave states’ attempts to extend slavery into the nation’s territories and newly-formed states, he was foremost a Constitutionalist; he viewed his primary responsibility as president to prevent the slave states from breaking their Constitutional bond by seceding.  In his first inaugural address in March, 1861, Mr. Lincoln declared, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of Slavery in the States where it exists. … One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.  This is the only substantial dispute. [Emphasis Mr. Lincoln’s].”  (Of course, the slave states sought to secede specifically because they considered the extension of slavery, unalterably opposed by Mr. Lincoln, necessary to prevent its ultimate extinction; if Mr. Lincoln privately agreed with their assessment, he was perhaps being a bit disingenuous himself by so apparently innocently proclaiming his intention to protect slave owners’ rights in the states in which they already existed.)  I think Ms. Haley’s gaffe will ultimately fade away.  I think her pledge to pardon Mr. Trump if he is convicted will, if she becomes president, likewise be easily waved away.

Two final points to this long-winded post:

Ms. Haley’s debate against Mr. DeSantis tonight is existential to her candidacy.  She needs to polish him off – which given their respective on-camera skills, is certainly achievable.  At the same time, if advising her, I’d recommend that she polish him off by mostly ignoring him – that she instead use tonight’s debate as the opportunity to take the gloves off against Mr. Trump.  His attempting to create a “birther” controversy – which she will almost certainly be asked about – will give her an opening to point out that if he is going to make such allegations – which are a slap in the face of all children of lawful immigrants, which includes all Americans except Native Americans – he should be man enough to come on stage and do it to her face; to state that those in the military, like her husband, are not suckers and losers as Mr. Trump has said, but our greatest patriots; to declare that it was time for the country to have new, younger leadership; and conclude by noting Mr. Trump’s continual complaining and declare to the Republican crowd, “Americans have never been complainers.  They’re doers.  Do you want to whine, or do you want to win?”

Finally, why would I vote for Ms. Haley (again, provided that I see no hint that she will undertake undemocratic measures if she is elected) against Mr. Biden when I think Mr. Biden has done an extraordinary job and I am closer to him on domestic issues than I am to Ms. Haley?  Two reasons, the less important first:  I am worried about the President’s age and doubt Ms. Harris’ competence.  The vital reason:  if Mr. Biden wins, the alt-right propaganda machine will immediately begin spewing falsehoods against him, perpetuating the toxic conditions under which Mr. Trump may attempt yet another resurrection.  While I am cognizant that voting for Ms. Haley on such ground is arguably placating the right, I would suggest that Ms. Haley’s presidency would give us as a people a chance to quiet down a bit, to take the breather we thought Mr. Biden’s presidency would give us (which it would have, but for Mr. Trump’s malignance).  If Ms. Haley wins, the alt-right silo – since its overriding emotion is hatred of Democrats — will naturally rally to her support.  Mr. Trump will, finally, be politically laid to rest – which is my overriding concern.  The former president would clearly be out of position to effectively challenge a sitting Republican President Haley for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination; by 2032, he’ll be 86.  He’ll be done – although we will need to watch for the next charismatic fascist coming to take his place.

If I correctly assess Ms. Haley as an American who respects our democratic processes, there will always be another election in 2028, no matter what she does after assuming the presidency.  We can chart a more progressive course as a country with a different president in a future election if we so choose – provided that our way of life has been preserved.

If you got this far, you must be exhausted  😉 .  You can’t say I didn’t warn you 🙂 .

[Today, I emailed the following letter to the Wall Street Journal.  I have no expectation it will be published; my letters to the Journal never are.  😉 ]

In your editorial, “The Supreme Court Spurns Jack Smith,” and Peggy Noonan’s column, “National Unity and the Colorado Supreme Court,” both published shortly before Christmas, the Editorial Board and Ms. Noonan set forth an approving perspective of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices which I do not share. 

In your editorial, you applaud the Court’s recent refusal to provide an expedited ruling sought by Special Counsel Jack Smith on Mr. Trump’s claimed immunity defense, declaring, “[Mr. Smith’s] plea was purely political so he could meet his opening trial date … and get a conviction of Mr. Trump before Election Day in 2024.”  To the contrary, I find the Court’s declination to be a despicable dereliction of its duty.  The charges against Mr. Trump are credible and of the utmost import.  (In her piece, Ms. Noonan observed, “I believe that in the court cases [Mr. Trump] faces he will be found guilty of many charges.”  One can infer from the Editorial Board’s criticism of Mr. Smith that it expects that if Mr. Smith does get Mr. Trump to trial, Mr. Trump will be found guilty.  It is seemingly fair to assume that if Mr. Trump was himself confident that he would be found innocent, he would be seeking the earliest possible trial date.)  It is not “political,” in the partisan sense, for the Special Counsel to seek the earliest possible trial date to enable our citizenry to learn whether a leading candidate for the presidency is guilty of crimes against the country he wishes to lead and the Constitution he had sworn to uphold.  Does anyone doubt that the Supreme Court won’t ultimately have to rule on Mr. Trump’s immunity claim – while its unwillingness to proceed at this juncture might well delay the trial to the point that Mr. Trump’s Republican presidential nomination is a fait accompli notwithstanding any guilty verdict?

The Editorial Board’s editorial’s sub-head declared that the Supreme Court Justices “wisely” refused to grant Mr. Smith’s motion for an expedited hearing.  In her column, Mr. Noonan stated, “… I respect [the Supreme Court Justices], not only as an institution but individually, as serious human beings.”  I would submit that by denying Mr. Smith’s motion, at least six Justices have shown themselves to be neither wise nor serious, but merely political partisans, hiding behind their robes.

[Final note:  despite my disdain for the Supreme Court’s refusal to grant Mr. Smith’s motion of an expedited hearing on the presidential immunity issue, I actually agree with the main point Ms. Noonan was making in her column:  that the Colorado Supreme Court’s recent holding, barring former President Donald Trump from being on the Colorado presidential ballot under Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, should not stand.  No matter how strong the legal reasoning might be, the former president hasn’t yet been convicted of anything; removing him from the ballot by judicial fiat smacks of political persecution and invites civil unrest.]

As all who care are aware, the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Republican U.S. CA Rep. Kevin McCarthy, announced Wednesday that he is leaving his seat in the House as of the end of 2023.  Although he never seemed to me to present, through his own affirmative behavior, as much danger to democracy as former President Donald Trump and other MAGAS, his acquiescence to their actions unquestionably facilitated their cause.  I would submit that his legacy can most fairly be characterized as that of an unprincipled, gutless lickspittle.

It is Mr. McCarthy’s personal irony – not dissimilar to the irony that U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is likely to never again be Senate Majority Leader because he succeeded so well in orchestrating the elevation of U.S. Supreme Court Justices willing to strike down Roe v. Wade – that in his maneuvering and concessions to gain the necessary votes to become House Speaker at the beginning of this year, he laid the groundwork for his own truly ignominious ouster.  If I could ask Mr. McCarthy one question today, it would be this:  Given the bootlicking gyrations you had to go through to get the Speakership, and the humiliation you suffered at the hands of MAGA nihilists in being ejected from it – was it worth it?

Unfortunately, a corresponding irony has rebounded upon House Democrats and their leader, U.S. NY Rep. Hakeem Jeffries.  They so detested Mr. McCarthy for his duplicity that when he faced the challenge to his Speakership from a pivotal – yet actually quite small – faction within his caucus, they refused to prop him up, although it seemed very possible that if they did so, they could thereafter exploit his ambition and weakness to further some of their agenda.  They chose to gamble that they’d get a new Republican Speaker who, from their perspective, would either be better or no worse.

As flawed as Mr. McCarthy is, that has so far looked like a bad bet, for the country and for the world.

On we march.