The GOP Won’t Be Done with Trump Even If He Loses

Jeff Greenfield: “It is the fundamental belief — or tropism — of Trump that he is incapable of losing an election honestly. The loss itself is proof of fraud, and even a potential loss is grounds for rejecting the results. In one of the first debates of 2016, he was the only Republican candidate who would not pledge to back the party’s ultimate nominee. When he lost the Iowa caucuses to Ted Cruz, he tweeted: ‘Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified.’ He claimed he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016 because of the ‘millions’ of aliens who voted illegally.”

“Given this core character trait, what do you suppose will happen if Trump faces a serious competitor for the nomination in 2024? Is he likely to accept the vote count that shows him losing a primary or caucus? Is it likely he will forego the temptation to challenge every convention rule that poses a threat to him? (If you want to see what a genuinely contested GOP convention looks like, check out the Taft-Roosevelt fight in 1912, or the Eisenhower-Taft confrontation of 1952.)”

“Most important, a Trump who is denied the nomination — which, by his account, must have been the product of horrible, disgusting cheating the likes of which nobody has ever seen — is a Trump with the inclination and the resources to run an independent campaign for president. And he’ll have enough true believers to doom whoever the GOP nominee is.”