Foreign
…The second debate of the Republican primary saw petty infighting that seemed to favor the absent frontrunner.
By Alexander Nazaryan, Senior White House Correspondent
HE has been indicted in four separate cases, on 91 felony counts. He lost the 2020 presidential election, and the candidates he endorsed in 2022 for the most part fared poorly. He has been described as the GOP’s past, and been urged to make way for a younger generation of conservatives.
Yet as the 2024 election approaches, Donald Trump is in the best political shape since launching his third presidential campaign last November. Just days after one poll (an outlier, arguably) showed him defeating President Biden by 10 points in a potential national election, his rivals for the GOP nomination engaged in a debate widely derided across the political spectrum as a chaotic showcase of second-rate political talents.
And on Thursday, the House began an impeachment inquiry focusing on Biden’s alleged involvement with his son Hunter’s business dealings. Evidence for such involvement is essentially nonexistent, but the public proceedings will do little to help an already unpopular president.
Those dynamics could shift, but for now they are aligned in ways that benefit the 45th — and possibly the 47th — president .
Debate no-show wins debate
Trump did not show up to the first debate, held last month in Milwaukee. Some thought that was a mistake, but his decision to skip the second debate, held at the Ronald Reagan President Library in Simi Valley, Calif., was quickly validated, as the candidates on stage shouted at each other, interrupted the moderators, traded insults and generally did little to convince GOP primary voters that their versions of Trumpism were better than the original article.
Establishment Republicans have been abandoning one-time favorite Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for months, as early expectations for his candidacy turned out to have been largely unrealistic. As in the first GOP debate, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley made the most convincing case for herself as the best candidate to take on Trump.
Even so, she trails him by 50 points in national polls. Though he has seen his own standing plummet, DeSantis remains in second place. He only trails Trump by 40.
“If these people are actually running for president something’s gotta give,” Cook Political Report analyst Leah Askarinam said in a post-debate roundtable hosted by FiveThirtyEight.
On Wednesday night, nothing did.
Investigating the Bidens
Thursday morning saw the House Oversight Committee open its impeachment inquiry against President Biden. At the heart of the investigation is Biden’s son Hunter, who has struggled with substance abuse and is facing charges related to a gun he owned. Hunter Biden sought to use his family name in business dealings in China and Ukraine, and Republicans charge that Joe Biden was also involved in the influence campaign.
“At least 10 times, Joe Biden lied to the American people that he never spoke to his family about their business dealings,” Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican and the committee chair, said at the opening of the hearing on Thursday.
Yet the evidence seems to be highly circumstantial: Joe Biden appears to have been aware of some of his son’s dealings and arguably could have done more to dissuade him from getting involved with foreign corporations. Even one of the Republicans’ own top witnesses, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, said that filing articles of impeachment would not be merited by what the GOP investigation has unearthed thus far.
Still, no president wants to be impeached. And conservatives have charged that while the Justice Department has zealously prosecuted Trump, it has been far more cautious in pursuing what they call “the Biden Crime Family.”
If nothing else, the investigation will allow Trump’s supporters on the Oversight Committee to make that case over and over again. “He has done a good job persuading people that the Justice Department is a partisan organization.” says Republican political strategist Whit Ayres.
If nothing else, impeachment will serve to amplify that grievance, allowing Trump to play his favorite role: the victim.
Too soon for a coronation?
Trump may be in a highly enviable political position today, but the primary season has only begun, and voters’ preferences can shift overnight, as DeSantis and his faltering campaign have discovered.
“The coronation of Trump may be accurate but there are so many things that could happen between now and next July,” Ayres told Yahoo News, adding that he was “hesitant to make a definitive statement” about who would be accepting the Republican nomination for president next summer in Milwaukee.
Wednesday saw Trump found guilty of fraud in a civil case relating to his business. Any one of the four criminal cases against him could send him to prison. And mounting a defense has been expensive, not to mention time consuming.
And, of course, not a single vote has been cast — and won’t be cast for many months. Ayres sees a narrow path for a non-Trump candidate who can do well, if not win, the Iowa caucus and then defeat Trump in New Hampshire, with an independently-minded electorate and an open primary.
He believes the candidate best positioned to walk that tightrope is Haley.
Yahoo News/from NextShark
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-September. 29, 2023 @ 16:38 GMT |
Tags: professor Jonathan Turley
