The drive-through at the asylum only serves Number Two

How to get back to normie life when you've already pled insanity

Sane people who find out what the asylum is really like, like Jack Nicholson’s character in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” find that the bargain—avoiding prison, or not electing Hillary Clinton—may not be worth the journey out of that place. Such as it is with Erick Erickson, who spent about a thousand words arguing with himself about crying wolf and lupine chickens coming home to roost.

I like Erick—we’re friendly—but I need to remind him here that during the 2016 campaign, I wrote for him, and I was one of the first writers to warn that Trump’s assets and message should not be ignored despite all the Hillary 99% polls. I titled one piece in the early days “Donald Trump - The Great White Hope of the Uninformed Voter.” (It’s not linkable anymore, since The Resurgent took down all the archives, and my personal website is now defunct because I didn’t want to pay for it.) But I happen to have a handy copy here on my computer.

There were four main points: 1) Most Americans can’t name both of their own state’s U.S. Senators, never mind drill down into policy. 2) Trump has money (other people’s money but there’s no material difference). 3) Trump has the world’s largest cojones to speak lies with a little truth thrown in. 4) Trump’s name recognition is beyond fame.

So, though Erick was a—possibly the original—”Never Trumper” who disinvited Trump from the Resurgent Gathering (actually the after party, because Trump refused to appear on the main stage where the other candidates spoke, but that’s a pendantic distinction), he turned back toward Trump after the election, shocked that the man actually beat Clinton.

Now, the justification. “Donald Trump tapped into the emotions of many Americans free trade left behind.  The brainiacs and elite prospered.  The coastal communities and Ivy League graduates benefited.” Erick wrote. “It seemed like everyone else was subsidizing the good times of the elite.  Trump gave voice to that and to the betrayals a lot of Republicans had in their own leaders who made promises that they then repeated broke.”

Well, no. It turns out Trump had it right. The voters who stuck by him were the “smart people” who would support him: “I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” Translate that into “I could try to subvert the entire electorial system of the United States,” or “I could literally steal dozens of boxes of top-secret, sensitive compartmentalized information—intelligence—from the government and keep it in my bathroom/storeroom/bedroom.”

Sure enough, Trump’s voters support him more since the indictments. It’s not because of some policy of the Democrats or war on their culture. It’s because they are uninformed and don’t care to be informed. The 25-odd percent of voters who are his core supporters cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be reached. They cannot have their minds changed. Erick asks all the right questions of our current crop of candidates, how they can talk to voters—including Trump voters—without sounding like they are in the asylum. He concludes “Surely there is a way, but they must be careful.”

I say there’s no way. Not with the 25 percent. Nope.

It’s the swing voters, the ones in the middle, the sandwich between the “never Trump” and the asylum, that have a voice to sway the election.

I wish I had recorded the conversation my brother Jay and I had the other morning. He’s one of the “never Trump” people. I agree that Trump has disqualified himself and must not ever get a single vote, but we know that the asylum will cast their vote for him, period. How do we walk out of the asylum when there’s so many hallways leading to exits, and the residents are all going the same way, deeper inside?

If the swing voters split up, then the Trumpists will propel their man to the nomination, trials be damned, and he will likely get destroyed in November, 2022. I asked Jay an edge case: what if Joe Biden (not really suggesting this, so keep your undies from bunching) died a month before election day but was still on the ballot? The answer: if Trump was on the ballot, the dead man would get Jay’s vote. That about covers it.

Given that, what to do? You go with Number Two. Whoever has the most support behind Trump should get the vote. That means DeSantis, or Pence, or whoever can break into double-digits. I have my doubts about DeSantis. He’s clearly doesn’t belong in the asylum, but he has pled insanity to place himself there, like R.P. McMurphy in “Cuckoo’s Nest.” DeSantis can’t lead Trump’s cult but shares some of Trump’s issues: thin-skinned and unable to joke about himself. Plus, he’s the definition of “elite,” a Yale man and a former Navy officer.

If I had my druthers, I think Mike Pence, the Wonder Bread candidate, would make a decent president. He is a decent guy, who found his way out of the asylum, having lived day-to-day in it for four years. But Pence is considered a literal traitor by Trumpists, and that could bleed into the swingies, and he’s stained by his support for his boss in office, and that could bleed into the never-Trumpers. Yet, he’s a decent guy and would be my choice for the Number Two sandwich.

I think there’s a case for many of the gaggle of Republicans to be the central ingredient in the Number Two sandwich, but the problem will be finding one person to fit the role between the two slices of bread. Offering a pardon for Trump is not one of the moves that makes it likely (sorry Nikki Haley).

Who is your Number Two, and do you think it’s worth trying? I’m interested to see The Racket News readers comments on this.