COMMENTARY: Can Republicans Break Their Addiction to Trump? – By Bill Scher (Real Clear Politics) / May 25 2021
First-time heroin users, according to the substance abuse treatment center The Recovery Village, often “feel a rush of euphoria and a false sense of well-being,” but upon subsequent use that feeling “tends to dissipate or disappear altogether as someone develops a tolerance to heroin, and they may just use the drug as a way to avoid withdrawal, rather than feeling a true high.”
To the Republican Party, Donald Trump is heroin.
Using Trump the first time was euphoric. He picked the Electoral College lock and thwarted the presidential candidacy of the Republicans’ bête noire, Hillary Clinton. But that initial high has never been replicated. Using Trump in 2018 threw away the House. Using him in 2020 sacrificed the Senate and the White House.
In the four months since Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, his favorable rating in the NBC News poll dropped from 40% to 32%, yet Trump trounces all potential rivals in every 2024 Republican presidential primary poll. After Al Gore lost the controversial 2000 election while winning the popular vote, polls in early 2002 showed about a quarter of the his party wanted a rematch in 2004. Today, recent polls find Trump winning between 48% and 57% of the Republican primary vote, far outpacing any potential rival.
