Peggy Noonan's latest musing in The Wall Street Journal is titled "Spare Us a Trump-Biden Rematch." Ms. Noonan then goes on to explain, unintentionally, why we should pray for a Trump-Biden rematch.
In perhaps the greatest self-contradiction of 2022, she writes that "It’s a race that would depress the whole country" and "It is certain that Donald Trump will never again be president." What could be more uplifting than the thought, prospect and almost certain reality that Trump will never again haunt the White House? Make us smile, make us happy, make our day.
Ms. Noonan says "It is possible Mr. Trump will get the presidential nomination, but it’s no longer likely.... His polls continue their downward drift. He is under intense legal pressures." There's the Jan. 6 thing, there's his age, and there's his latest coterie of crackpots: "naïfs, suck-ups, grifters and operators. That was always true but now they are fourth-rate, not second- or third-rate."
Only one of the above is pertinent, however. Rare in the Republican base is the voter who cares about naifs, suck-ups, grifters and operators, who are but the new Republican strategists. Jan. 6 has not hurt Trump, his age is seldom mentioned (even though Biden's is daily fodder) and when it comes to his "intense legal troubles," he always has Merrick Garland.
But his polls. Oh my, his polls. They're just dreadful — and singularly relevant. In the latest Cygnal poll (B+), Trump stands at 40%; DeSantis, 35. Only two months ago, Trump had a 19-point lead over DeSantis. "There has been a shift in momentum over the last several weeks," said Cygnal's pollster, Brent Buchanan — and it's all been in the Florida governor's favor.
As Noonan notes: "Trump’s slump won’t end, because it’s not a slump; it’s a losing season.... We’re watching the Trump story end before our eyes and can hardly believe it because we thought it was ending before and it wasn’t. But it is now."
Which, again, is why depression is bound to set in among the rational-voter crowd. Take Trump out of the presidential picture and we'll have a real race. This leads to Part II of Noonan's rather peculiar reasoning.
"A great many Democrats," she wrotes, "believe that if Mr. Trump isn’t the Republican nominee—and they are starting to think he won’t be—then that nominee will go forward without Mr. Trump’s deficits, and may even be a normal Republican, which will mean he or she will squish the eternally underwater Mr. Biden like a peanut."
There are two problems here, the first being: No normal Republican will seize the nomination. The radical base will see to that. The far bigger problem is the Republican alternative to Trump, which Ms. Noonan appears to oppose; that being a Trump2 — a smarter, more competent and even more ruthless authoritarian, Ron DeSantis.
And that would appear to vastly conflict with Ms. Noonan's yearning for an "America trying to return itself to its previous settings" — one that is "inherently moderate," one in which "those who seemed extreme didn’t prosper."
What better argument for a Trump nomination? — which would virtually guarantee an "inherently moderate" president's reelection.