Maybe this time really is different
No, really, maybe Trump really is done, seriously.
Before I start speculating on whether Republicans really are moving on from Donald Trump, let’s get this out of the way:
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve written some variation of this, only for him to re-emerge like the cat in The Cat Came Back. And yet, the vibe feels very different in late 2022 than it did even in early 2021, when Trump survived the aftermath of the Beer Belly Putsch.
Park MacDonald at UnHerd agrees, in a column with the fate-tempting title “This is the end of Trump”:
It is a dangerous business to predict the political demise of Trump, who has been making pundits look stupid since he stepped onto the national stage. Few took him seriously as a candidate when he first declared in 2015, few believed he could defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016, and few believed he could come within a few tens of thousands of votes of re-election in 2020. But this time is different. Trump really is done.
[…]
Once Trump was the nominee and, …
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