You Can't Beat Trump in a Primary

Mark Leibovich's latest blog for The Atlantic reveals a pundit class still grasping at straws.

Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Last week, I spent four days in Ohio covering the Republican Senate primary. In the course of that reporting, basically everyone I talked to was a highly motivated GOP voter, which you have to be to show up in a primary and particularly to show up to a political event for a primary candidate in a non-presidential year on a weekday at a Hilton Garden Inn at 8 a.m. This was the base of the base for the GOP, in other words.

The easiest and most obvious takeaway from my time there is that there is absolutely no route for the Republican Party in the next at least two to four years that does not go through Donald Trump. None. The people who vote in Republican primaries still love him, believe in him, and above all trust the platform and movement that he created. If Trump wants to run for president again in 2024 he will be the GOP candidate, and everyone who votes for the party, works in the party, or covers the party knows this on some level. However, if you’d like to read a blog written by and exclusively quoting the select few dumb motherfuckers who do not fall into that category, may I direct you to this recent piece in The Atlantic?

The piece, by longtime political journalist Mark Leibovich, has a very simple thesis: a Republican could beat Donald Trump in the primary simply by insulting him and calling him a loser. To make this argument, Leibovich relies on several interviews with GOP or former-GOP strategists like idiot convict Michael Cohen, former Jeb Bush adviser Tim Miller (great job on that one Tim), and a consultant/ former congresswoman named Barbara Comstock, who lost by 12 points to a Democratic challenger in 2018 and clearly shouldn’t be consulted on anything other than how to best stick your head in the sand. Here’s what she tells Leibovich:

“Why on earth would we hitch our wagons again to a crybaby sore loser who lost the popular vote twice, lost the House, lost the Senate, and lost the White House, and so on? For Republicans, whether they embrace the Big Lie or not, Trump is vulnerable to having the stench of disaster on him.”

You idiots. You absolute morons.