Jan
7
Pros and Cons of Trump 2024
“The fact is that Donald Trump 2024 has a reasonable chance to beat anyone the Democrats launch at him.” — Kurt Schlichter, trial lawyer/writer/commentator
Last year, Kurt Schlichter wrote a few columns about likely and potential Republican candidates for U.S. President in 2024. I wanted to do a quick review of what he said about Donald Trump. (Note: This is not for the Never-Trumper…)
1) Logistics: Trump still has lots of money. His supporters will be more experienced at campaigning. He has his own social media outlet, and the conservative media are generally friendly to him.
2) Regarding likely Democratic opposition, Biden is an empty-headed “clown” and the rest are “potentially beatable by DJT in 2024.”
3) A lot of people really dig Donald Trump. “His vision for this country is simple and correct, all about making America great again and putting America first…. Even conservatives who have doubts about Trump going for Round 3 tend to respect him and his achievements.” He drew a lot of people into the party — e.g., those repelled by the likes of Bush II and Romney, working-class who saw him as an (unlikely) ally, Latinos, et al.
4) Trump has a great record as President — cutting taxes, reversing stagnation, low gas prices, stocks were high, general economic growth. He was pro-life, pro-2A. He “built the wall” and rebuilt our military — or, at least, he made decent progress in both areas despite Dem opposition, which ultimately regained power and stopped/reversed that progress. He kept us out of any new wars and helped bring peace — for a while, anyway — to the Middle East.
5) “Trump personally deserves vindication from that unfair fiasco [i.e., the shameful 2020 election], but more importantly, the people who voted for him deserve vindication too. And the people who hate Trump deserve four more years of suffering under his reign of mean tweets.”
1) The enemy hates Trump, and this motivates otherwise demoralized Dems. They will lie, cheat, and may even use violence. “[W]hatever they have to do to stop him, legal or not, just as we saw last time…. Remember, every norm, rule, and law has a Trump Exception™ that excuses whatever the enemy does to stop him.” Otoh, they’ll do the same against any Republican. Some are already saying DeSantis is worse because “he is a focused and disciplined literal Hitler!”
2) Trump “is human chaos… his own worst enemy, and nothing seems to have changed since he left office.” (See, for example, his obsession with the ‘stolen’ 2020 election. Regardless what you think about this controversy, it’s a losing strategy.)
3) He has a terrible track record regarding personnel. (Scaramucci? Omarosa? Milley? Fauci, for goodness sake?) Did he learn any lessons on that front, or would we see “the same, or a different, collection of grifters and mediocrities”?
4) “Trump’s problem was always that at some level he remained part of the establishment – he disrupted it, gloriously, but never completely rejected it to build something that put normal Americans first. That’s what we need, and it’s not clear he’s the guy.”
5) Trump would be 78 on Election Day. Plus, if he starts showing even the slightest signs of decline, the Left-wing media will be only too happy to point it out rather than hide it like it does for Biden.
6) We have viable alternatives… DeSantis, Cotton, Cruz, Pompeo, possibly others who would do well.
Schlichter’s columns about Trump were written in June 2022, before the latest rounds of controversial comments and claims by Trump, the Mar-a-Lago raid/debacle, final “findings” and “referrals” by the Jan. 6 Committee, changing relationships, petty feuds, etc. There have been another 6+ months’ worth of evil and idiocy committed by the Biden administration, the congressional Democrats, and various Dems in other leadership positions, as well. Not to mention, additional activities (or lack thereof) and controversies amongst GOP leaders. So, we need to add that all into the mix somehow.
Over the past few months, I’ve gone back-n-forth in my mind over whether or not Trump should run again. (Of course, he officially threw his hat in the ring back on Nov. 15, 2022.) Schlichter echoes many of the pros & cons I thought of and more besides.
He finished with this:
“We need to assess Trump honestly and in full — he has a lot of factors in his favor for 2024, and he has a lot of factors against him for 2024. But this is not about Trump. This is about winning. If he does run, let’s hope there’s a tough primary to sharpen him up for the general. And in that primary, each of us is going to have to decide whether Trump is right for America again in 2024.”
Schlichter is exactly right.
