Can Trump Be Stopped In Primaries? Spoiler: No... So Our Democracy Is Depending On Unelected Judges

Judges and prosecutors are mortified by Trump's behavior in their courts and around his cases. He doesn’t care and, apparently, neither do his devoted supporters. We’ll have to wait and see if swing voters do, until after the primaries... when it will be too late for Republicans to have cleaned their own house and to have prevented a probable blue wave election year.

If you look at the newest Real Clear Politics (a distinctly right-leaning website) polling average, it’s clear that Trump is so far ahead that trying to stop him is a fool’s errand and, for those who have it, a massive waste of money— also a publicity-grabbing exercise that has more to do with planned career trajectories than with the 2024 presidential election (unless Trump dies or goes to prison, the former, being more likely than the latter).

• Señor Trumpanzee- 59.0%

• DeSantis- 14.8%

• Haley- 9.6%

• Ramaswamy- 5.2%

• Christie- 2.1%

• Burgum- 0.7%

• Hutchinson- 0.5%

There’s a reasonable case to be made that national polls at this point are utterly meaningless because what happens in Iowa and New Hampshire will reshape the race entirely. So let’s look at those two races, where the candidates have been spending most of their time and resources. First Iowa, where DeSantis was counting on the endorsement of the popular governor to turbocharge his shaky campaign:

• Señor Trumpanzee- 47.0%

• DeSantis- 17.3%

• Haley- 14.3%

• Ramaswamy- 5.0%

• Christie- 4.0%

• Burgum- 2.7%

• Hutchinson- 0.3%

In a recent poll of Iowa GOP primary voters after Governor Reynold’s endorsement, 63% of the respondents said the endorsement made no difference. 22% said it made them less likely to support DeSantis, while just a mere 13% said it made them more likely to support him.

And now New Hampshire, where Haley and Christie are hoping— partially against hope— that they can overtake DeSantis (check) and Trump (not gonna happen):

• Señor Trumpanzee- 45.7%

• Haley- 18.7%

• Christie- 11.3%

• DeSantis- 7.7%

• Ramaswamy- 7.0%

• Burgum- 2.0%

• Hutchinson- 0.3%

And, as long as we’re going down this road, the two other early states, South Carolina and Nevada, both have Trump prohibitively out front, respectively with 49.3% to Haley’s 18.8%, and in a relatively recent CNN Nevada poll, Trump with 65%. None the less, there is and always will be media-encouraged hope.

Yesterday, one of Iowa’s top evangelical leaders, Bob Vander Plaats, told Fox News that Señor T “is still beatable in the first-in-the-nation caucus and that he will endorse one of his rivals. ‘You’re seeing the field naturally coalesce. It’s getting smaller and smaller.’” That's true-- two candidates with absolutely no chance to have ever beaten Trump-- Mike Pence and Tim Scott-- faded away from near no support to completely no support and "suspended" their campaign.

Vander Plaats hosted DeSantis, Haley and Ramaswamy for a ‘family discussion’ yesterday. He invited Trump but it was too much like a debate for Trump’s comfort and he turned it down. Trump figures he has the evangelical voted sewn up and he’s basically ignoring Vander Plaats, who told Fox, delusional that “There’s definitely a shot that the former president can be beaten here,” predicting that Trump’s polling could go down as low as 35% by the January 15 caucuses. Vander Plaats has a pretty sad record when it comes to endorsing candidates, his some of his most recent being Mike Huckabee (2008), Rick Santorum (2012) and Ted Cruz (2016), all three of whom won the Iowa caucuses and lost the GOP presidential nomination. And James Zirin’s observation that Trump has gone even crazier isn’t going to matter one bit. Aside from being crazy, he’s “demonstrated vicious, paranoid and violent behavior [which] has gone from bad to weird to bizarre.”