Donald J. Trump is a study in multiple political personality disorder. One DJT is a slightly unconventional conservative Republican with a degree of charisma that far exceeds what his mostly humdrum agenda could be expected to generate. His orthodox conservative side – deregulation, tax cuts, originalist Supreme Court Justices, scorn for “wokeness” – and his deviations – skepticism about free trade, a pacifist foreign policy, strict immigration enforcement, indifference to excessive federal spending – all fall within the “Overton window” of American politics. The enthusiasm of his most ardent fans (an appropriate term for them) seems almost independent of his policy prescriptions. So far as I can see, it carries over from his pre-political career, when he was a full-time celebrity who ran some businesses on the side.
DJT-1 became visible only after he became President. Many conservatives who vehemently opposed his nomination in 2016 advocated his re-election four years later. While the inveterate core of Never Trumpers call them opportunists and sellouts, most have, I think, merely come to see a different Trump personality.
DJT-2 is a braggart and bully who has no real interest in public policy, knows little about it, doesn’t care to learn more, places his highest priority on personal victories, and quickly sours on advisors who pester him with substantive advice.
When Trump emerged as a plausible Presidential candidate in early 2016, National Review took aim at DJT-2. Its February 15, 2016, issue blared “Against Trump” on the cover. Inside was a symposium of 22 conservatives representing a wide range of right-of-center opinion. The editors added their own appraisal. The bottom line:
Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.
Most Never Trumpers still see only DJT-2. Nothing that Trump did in office altered their perception, except that some came to hold their negative opinion yet more firmly, a few – Bill Kristol, Max Boot and Jen Rubin, to take conspicuous instances – to the point of abandoning conservatism altogether.
DJT-1 and DJT-2 are Trump personalities whose existence seems to me clearly supportable by objective evidence. The other two are more subjective. In fact, I’d call them delusions, but those who see them believe them.
DJT-3 is a “fighter” against the “elites” who, whether ostensibly Republican or Democrat, are joined in a united enterprise of running the country for their own benefit. The elite hostility that he attracts is taken as proof that they fear him, which is all the more reason to give him unconditional support.
I know people for whom DJT-3 is the “real Donald Trump”. I confess to not being able to see what they see. The widespread assumption, particularly among those for whom DJT-2 is the real thing, is that this group comprises the majority of the people who voted for Donald Trump last November. It certainly includes a lot of them.
Finally, DJT-4 aims at becoming a dictator and inspired an insurrection last January 6th with that end in mind. Those who see this Trump see another Mussolini and the January riot as the equivalent of the March on Rome. That strikes me as fantastical, but we can leave that argument for another day.
Whether Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee in 2024 depends on which of the competing DJT’s looks most real to the most voters. Last Wednesday, Trump himself gave the country something new to look at. He released this brief statement:
If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ’22 and ’24. It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do.
Parsed sympathetically with one’s eyes closed, that could just be a prediction, uttered with no intent to persuade anybody to stay home on election day. Even on that view, it’s startling. A massive boycott of the polls by Republican voters would guarantee a progressive Congressional majority able to enact whatever program appeals to “woke” fanatics in 2023. Just finishing whatever parts of this year’s Biden agenda fall by the wayside would be bad enough. DJT-1 would surely have made a very different statement, one urging his supporters to leave 2020 to the historians and work to Make America Great Again in 2022.
Coming from DJT-3, the statement is only slightly less inconceivable. Declining to vote isn’t a very effective way to “fight”. It amounts to surrender to the “elites”. It certainly isn’t a threat that will terrify the people who, in DJT-3’s view, control the United States.
Maybe it’s evidence for the reality of DJT-4, a sign that Trump has given up on democratic politics and will next urge a MAGA putsch. That’s quite a leap of logic. Whether it’s accurate doesn’t matter a great deal. January 6th showed that Trump “insurrectionists” are few in number and irresolute of purpose.
That brings us to DJT-2. The not-too-covert threat to sink the GOP unless his personal desire for vindication is satisfied is exactly what that Trump would do. It’s also consistent with his conduct during the Georgia Senatorial elections, where his denunciations of the state Republican Party are universally cited as a major cause of the loss of two Senate seats, handing control, tenuous though it is, to the Democrats.
Does DJT-2 have any base anywhere? Voters who admire DJT-3 may not have drawn a sharp distinction in the past between him and DJT-2, because much of the former’s “fighting” consists of the insult-laden, juvenile rhetoric of the latter. Now he is asking them, for practical purposes, to subordinate the overthrow of “elite” dominance to his personal King Charles’s Head. Will a great many of them fall in line with doing nothing in response to Joe Biden’s record, already disastrous and on a downward trajectory? Is that how fighters behave? So far, the ground isn’t swelling with positive vibrations.
John Hinderaker, who thinks that “Donald Trump was a very good president, our best since Ronald Reagan in my opinion” (yeah, not the highest of bars), titled his post on the Trump statement “Bad Donald” and summarized thus:
So Trump’s solution is to say that “Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24.” This is a profoundly stupid threat. In fact, the Democrats’ response would be, as we used to say on the playground, Is that a threat or a promise? From the Democrats’ perspective, the answer is obvious.
Trump’s worst fault is his tendency to put his own interests – or worse, his own ego – over the interests of his party and his country. I don’t know how many Republicans he could induce to stay home next year, or in 2024, if he isn’t satisfied with progress on election integrity. But the dumbest possible response to the existence of voter fraud – something that has been with us since the beginning of our democracy – is to refrain from voting yourself. If Trump were to persuade even a small number of Republicans to abstain from voting next year, or in 2024, it could well swing close elections to the Democrats. Trump should be enough of a patriot to consider that the worst of all possible outcomes.
Sure, he should be, but don’t bet on it.
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