Vengeance Is Trump’s
At the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 4, Donald Trump gave a speech that my colleague Tom Nichols called “long and deranged,” adding that it was, “even by his delusional standards, dark and violent. Much of it was hallucinatory.” And revealing too—not just of Trump’s worsening state of mind but of the attitudes and temperament of MAGA world, which Trump has, for seven years, personified. He remains the GOP’s apotheosis.
That doesn’t mean that Trump is unbeatable in the Republican presidential primary. He’s viewed throughout much of the party as a loser; his presentation is noticeably more lethargic than when he ran in 2016; and his obsessive promotion of lies about the 2020 election is exhausting even some of his loyal supporters. He’s also having trouble drawing large or enthusiastic crowds, which he never had a problem with in the past.
Despite that, at this early stage, Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis are polling as the overwhelming favorites to win the Republican nomination. And although individual surveys are scattered, two recent ones, from and , show Trump leading DeSantis by 30 and 15 points, respectively. (An earlier this month showed Trump with a 41-point lead over DeSantis in that early-primary state.) But what the polls measure is just how much the party’s sensibilities have
