Trump has comeback plans. He's doing it amid mockery from his own side
CBC
Donald Trump's own-party rivals have tossed every rebuke imaginable at him and it's never stuck: Crazy, a kook, a race-baiting bigot, a Russian plant, a narcissist, amoral, a pathological liar, a threat to the republic.
It's never made a dent.
Republican rank-and-file voters have continued to adore him, attend his rallies and punish the few apostates within the party who dare to deride him.
He'd still easily be the front-runner for the next Republican presidential nomination if he announced his candidacy next week, as he's hinting he will at an event Nov. 15.
And yet his heretofore hapless Republican critics are testing out a new attack.
It's perhaps the most dreaded word in Trump's vocabulary; a 5-letter calumny aimed at convincing fellow Republicans that now, finally, is the time to walk away: L-O-S-E-R.
It's suddenly spreading on the right, the idea that Trump's gravest sin — the reason to finally dump him — is not his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot or any of the other stuff he's done, but a more practical reason: According to them, he makes Republicans lose elections.
After winning the White House in 2016, he oversaw a loss in the House of Representatives in 2018, lost the White House in 2020, the Senate in 2021 — and candidates he supported in this week's midterms fared poorly.
The L-word attack has been prominent throughout the media properties owned by Fox News magnate Rupert Murdoch, including on the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which usually (though not always) staunchly defended Trump, including during past investigations.
Its editorial headline on Wednesday was: "Trump Is the Republican Party's Biggest Loser."
This was a day after a disappointingly close midterm election for the Republican Party where Trump's allies struggled.
Case in point: Georgia. Trump's chosen candidate, Herschel Walker, was forced into a run-off.
Meanwhile, other non-Trump Republicans — Republicans the former president detests because they committed the unforgivable sin of certifying the 2020 election — cruised easily to re-election.
It was similar in New Hampshire where a Trump-style populist lost a Senate race while the more standard-issue Republican governor was re-elected by 16 points.