Looking back on a piece he wrote in November 2022, Bret Stephens, columnist for The New York Times, wrote recently, “I was sure that Donald Trump was, as I wrote, ‘finally finished.’”
“How could any but his most slavish followers continue to support him after he had once again cost Republicans the Senate? Wouldn’t this latest proof of losing be the last straw for devotees who had been promised ‘so much winning’”?
“Silly me,” Stephens wrote six months later.
It has become axiomatic among both Democrats and concerned Republicans that Trump is likely to win the nomination, but he can’t win in the general election.
Morning Joe Scarborough shrieks, “Donald Trump is a loser.”
But in his voice there is a hint of bewilderment: So why is his approval rating so high?
People are also reading…
Republican governor of New Hampshire Chris Sununu said recently, “Donald Trump is a loser. He has not just lost once. He lost us our House seats in 2018. He lost everything in ’20. We should have 54 US Senators right now, and we don’t
because of his message (in 2022). So, Donald Trump is positioning himself to be a four-time loser in 2024.”
In a conversation with other right-leaning opinion columnists of The Washington Post Marc Thiessen recalled that in the 2016 campaign Donald Trump said that “Americans were tired of losing and that if we elected him, we’d win so much we’d be sick of winning. Well,” Thiessen said, “most Republicans are sick of losing.”
Really? Most Republicans? Maybe some moderate, establishment, not-MAGA Republicans are tired of losing, so tired that they are ready to rally behind a candidate that most Americans would actually want to be their president.
But what about the rest? What about his base, “his slavish followers,” the hard-MAGAs? Are they ready to bail on him because he is such a loser?
Bret Stephens offers a seemingly counter-intuitive reason for thinking they are not ready: “The Trump movement isn’t built on the prospect of winning.”
It isn’t that Trump’s base doesn’t want to win. Of course, they do. It is that the Trump movement is more akin to a cult than anything we have seen in national
politics in my recollection.
The Trump movement is “built on a sense of belonging,” Stephens claims, “of being heard and seen; of being a thorn in the side to those you sense despise you and
whom you despise in turn; of submission for the sake of representation. All the rest — victory or defeat, prosperity or misery — is detail.”
In the context of a cult-like movement, losing reinforces the true believer’s obsession with victimhood, amplifies the sinister nature of the opponent, and clarifies the nature of the struggle.
Losing an election that was “rigged” re-enforces the belief that the current contest has cosmic implications, an apocalyptic way of thinking that Trump has fostered. “This is the final battle,” he told the CPAC crowd in early March. “If we don’t do this, our country will be lost forever.”
“In 2016, I declared, ‘I am your voice,’” Trump said. “Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.” He said it again for emphasis: “I am your retribution.”
That sent chills down the spines of Americans across the country, but in Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., it was an applause line.
In the weeks after the 2020 election, Mark Meadows, then chief of staff under Donald Trump, sent a text message to Ginni Thomas, the election-denying wife of
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in which he asserted with the confidence of a biblical prophet, “This is a fight of good versus evil. Evil always looks like the victor
until the King of Kings triumphs.”
In a struggle of good versus evil, you can lose the battle yet win the war, if you are patient. Indeed, confidence in the ultimate victory of your cause can sustain you when it appears the battle has been lost. Meadows encouraged Ginny Thomas not to lose heart. “Do not grow weary in well doing,” he said, quoting the New Testament.
If Trump loses in his attempt to become the Republican candidate in 2024 or if he is the candidate and loses in the general election, will it matter to his base?
Of course, it will matter.
But will they bail on him?
Richard Groves