Donald Trump is asking if Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota is "crazy, or just stupid?"
The senator's mental state could be either, or it could be seminally strategic. The answer to Trump's question, however, can't really be known until later this year and the electoral wrap-up of 2024. Until then, Rounds will languish in crimson-lathered South Dakota's purgatorial limbo, at best. (According to Ballotpedia, the state has no recall provision for U.S. senators.)
As you undoubtedly know by now, Sen. Rounds said on Sunday's "This Week" that the 2020 election was "fair, as fair as we've seen," notwithstanding the thundering malarkey — known as the Hitlerian Big Lie — coming from Team Trump. "We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency," said Rounds to host George Stephanopoulos.
“As a part of our due diligence, we looked at over 60 different accusations made in multiple states…The election was fair, as fair as we've seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency,” GOP Sen. Mike Rounds says. https://t.co/RWOXLxux1e pic.twitter.com/nk7mE8xVsc
— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) January 10, 2022
He added that Trump Inc.'s staged crucifixion of our election system's integrity will only discourage Republicans from voting in future elections, which may be true. Then again, it may not. There appears to have been some element of GOP discouragement-cum-apathy in Georgia's 2020 senatorial elections, but by this November and two years hence, who's to say.
As for Rounds' presidential-vote intentions in 2024, he told Stephanopoulos that he will "take a hard look" — will have to take a hard look? — at supporting the Big Liar, although he has also said he will "support the Republican nominee." So there, Rounds is gymnastically balancing himself on politics' single bar. Definitely strategic. (My guess is that he's praying for a preemptive, D.O.J. criminal prosecution of Trump, which could resolve the senator's decision-making torment, what with the Donald being tied up, presumably, in depositions and courtroom dramatics.)
But back to Trump's rage-filled statement of yesterday, the one in which he presupposed two Roundian possibilities: either an unhinged leave of situational awareness or unquestionable political stupidity. In straining to amplify his psychological analysis of Rounds, Trump, being Trump, also chose more comprehensive clichés.
The South Dakota senator is a "RINO," charged the former Republican president who embraced virtually no traditional Republican principles; that, and he's gone wackily "woke" on the whole fair 2020 election thing. (Naturally, Trump threw in that "the only reason he did this is because he got my endorsement and easily won his state in 2020," allowing him, perhaps, years to recover politically. Then, just to confirm that he himself is the superior human being and a model of political rectitude, Trump elegantly added that "I will never endorse this jerk again.")
Although it's not impossible that Sen. Rounds has lost his mind, and accepting that his "This Week" appearance revealed a man still of some reasonable intelligence, what we're left with is a political gambler, of nearly the highest stakes.
His senatorial strategy is based on an assumption, really no more than a hunch — which always makes for stratospheric odds of being wrong — that Trump and Trumpism will somehow collapse by 2024, and will remain demolished into his own reelection year of 2026. Rounds's strategy dismisses, or overlooks, all the Trumpian labors in place to rig future elections and leave American voters with no out. Which is to say, his strategy assumes a sizable deflation of Trumpian enthusiasm nationwide, even though such widespread exuberance would be unnecessary within the anaconda-like confines of election subversion.
But most of all, Rounds is counting on congressional Democrats. They could make a hash of electoral Trumpism this year by coalescing around filibuster reform and then passing substantial anti-subversion legislation. In short, the strategy of Republican Sen. Mike Rounds and any of his likeminded colleagues relies on Democratic unity and partywide competence.
And that's one helluva gamble.
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Rounds told CNN today that "what we are looking for is to be ... seen as being responsible and being honest." Fine. Then support both election-reform bills.