Ever since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, many swooned to his empty rhetorical appeal to Make America Great Again. Political pundits, analysts, sociologists, psychologists, and voters struggled to define the phenomena that allowed him to hijack the Republican Party, summarily dispatching its traditional standard-bearers and converting its leftovers into fawning lap dogs.
However, the 2022 midterms show the Trumpian fever that gripped the nation has broken. Trump-backed candidates armed with their election-denier playbooks nosedived like a flock of geese to .12 gauge buckshot. Election results showed a nation returning to its senses and rejecting his delusions. A recent poll showed Trump being less popular than President Joe Biden. However, the more Trump and his nihilist brand of politics are rejected, the more inflated and bombastic his lies become. If Trump has not shown that lies have short legs, then they are at least walking on prosthetics.
In addition, the Republican Party and its media mouthpieces that he once held in a straight jacket have suddenly taken to imitating Houdini and slipping from his grip. Having witnessed every Trump-backed election denier candidate (with the exception of a rare few) go down in flames, the party is suddenly realizing that the public would rather cozy up to poison ivy than to his hand-picked candidates. Slowly, the Republican Party will find its footing with policies that prove more anodyne than Trump’s combative narratives, the most vocal being that elections have been stolen from Republicans. And as more party members come to view him as a pariah, Trump will continue to shrink from view until he is led away in an orange jump suit, a color that has always suited him well.
Political Ironist 