[ad_1]
There it is, Republicans. We now have a booking photo of former president and current criminal defendant Donald Trump, and that face – scowling in the unflattering light of a county jail – is the face of your political party.
That image is your avatar. The man in that photo, arrested on charges of racketeering and election interference in Georgia, his fourth arrest this year, is the man you have let define you. The MAGA king. The almighty grievance peddler. The con man bilking your fellow voters with sleazy emails that would make a Nigerian-prince-themed scam artist blush.
He was missing at Wednesday night’s GOP presidential primary debate, too good, too high-up in the polls to grace the stage with his presence. So what Americans saw was a mirage. A make-believe look at what today’s Republican Party would have to offer if Trump wasn’t around, and dominant.
It was a collection of prattling wannabes, people like Vivek Ramaswamy and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pretending they have what it takes to out-Trump Trump alongside people like Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence pretending the party they’ve devoted their lives to still cares about anyone remotely serious or, for that matter, remotely conservative.
Who won the GOP debate?Ron DeSantis needed to be someone else at the Republican debate. Sadly, he was himself.
Donald Trump’s booking photo will surely become a marketing tool for him
Trump won that debate by not being there, avoiding tough questions and letting his absence be the center of attention. He won the day after the debate by being arrested, again sucking up all the oxygen in the news cycle.
And he’ll all-but-certainly win the GOP presidential primary by hocking T-shirts with his booking photo on them and wailing about how cruel the world is to “totally innocent,” rich white men like him and how he is the one true protector of whatever hackneyed version of “real America” his followers think must be preserved. As of Thursday, he’s favored by nearly 52% of Republican voters, according to Five Thirty Eight’s polling average. His nearest competitor, DeSantis, is favored by just under 15% of voters.
The photo released by the Fulton County jail late Thursday was striking because never, in our nation’s history, has a former president had that particular type of photo taken. Just as never, in our nation’s history, has a former president, much less a leading candidate for a party’s presidential nomination, faced more than 90 state and federal charges ranging from conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government to violating the Espionage Act.
In a normal version of America that I hope exists in an alternate universe, Trump’s political career would be in a toilet, probably the one at Mar-a-Lago he kept boxes of classified government documents next to.
But thanks to a willfully duped Republican Party, one that gladly grasped the hand of a raging narcissist and tra-la-la’d along until the country was one Vice President Mike Pence decision away from Trump executing an attempt to overturn a free and fair election, Trump is thriving politically.
Among Republican voters, he seems to gain popularity with each indictment, and I imagine this new photo will give him another boost.
Trump leads primary pack:Republican voters want Donald Trump. And his vice president? How about more Trump?
The scope of Trump’s awfulness is staggering, yet Republicans cling to him
Pause for a moment and consider all of this. Despite everything – losing the 2020 presidential election, being a drag on the 2022 midterms, constantly posting near-incoherent nonsense on his social-media platform – Trump remained untouchable among most Republican lawmakers and pundits. Now, after four grand juries in four different locales saw sufficient evidence to indict him, after he turned himself in to Georgia authorities and got his booking photo snapped the day after the party’s first big debate, he remains untouchable.
Republicans can trot alternative candidates out onto a Trump-less debate stage. They can say, in ways subtle or direct, that their party is not defined by the man in the Fulton County jail photo, the innocent-until-proven-guilty fellow in the federal-courtroom sketches.
But that is all a lie. Donald Trump is the face of the Republican Party. He, in all his loutish, conspiracy-theory-peddling glory, has infected every drop of blood in every vein in that particular political body.
Trump always says he won, always says he’s innocent. It will never stop
He said he won the election that he lost – and a majority of Republicans believe that to be true. He said he is innocent of every crime he’s charged with, and has effectively never done anything wrong, and a majority of Republicans believe that to be true. Even if he stumbles in the presidential primaries, he will declare victory or say it was rigged, as he did in 2016 when Sen. Ted Cruz won the Iowa caucuses, and a majority of Republicans will believe that to be true.
If he again loses the presidential election – whether he campaigns in person or from a prison cell – he will declare victory. And guess what will happen?
Will Trump go to prison?Four reasons Donald Trump might want to campaign from jail
If you’re a Republican, you’re part of the party of Trump. There’s no separating yourself
You can say you’re a non-Trump Republican, and I certainly hope you will, as it’s at least a step in the right direction. But now and for the foreseeable future, there is no Republican Party separate from Trump.
The Fulton County jail photo that dropped Thursday and set the internet ablaze? That’s the face of the GOP. If you call yourself a Republican, you should spend a good few minutes staring at it. Because he is you.
And for that, you have no one to blame but yourself.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
[ad_2]
Source link
