The GOP still hasn’t figured out that Donald Trump’s playbook is empty
It’s remarkable how many Republican political figures are still trying to use the Trump playbook, and they still can’t figure out why they’re getting nowhere with it. What they don’t get is that the Trump playbook never really worked for Donald Trump to begin with.
Trump proved himself a highly ineffective campaigner in 2016, pandering to the same base over and over instead of trying to expand his base, and he only “won” for reasons that had nothing to do with him. Yet Republican candidates still copycat his ineffective campaign approach.
Once in office, Trump tried fending off criminal probes by tweeting controversial things, which didn’t help him; instead he only survived due to the built in protections of the office. Yet Republicans still think they can fend off grand jury testimony and such by tweeting things.
Part of this may be that the mainstream media is still pushing the narrative that Trump is a uniquely effective campaigner who has strategically fended off all criminal probes. That’s ratings driven fiction. But some Republican politicians still seem to believe the media hype.
Now that Trump’s 2024 “campaign” has quickly turned out to be a punchline, and even the media is starting to admit Trump is about to be indicted, we’ll see if Republican politicians finally figure out that the “Trump playbook” was always a dud, and abandon it.
But if the Republicans want to keep nominating Trump-like candidates such as Dr Oz and Kari Lake, and if Republican office holders want to keep trying to thumb their noses at grand jury subpoenas and such, they’re welcome to face the consequences of such stupid behavior.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report