Thread by @TheRickWilson

1/ Given the new NYT/Sienna poll, I'd just like to remind you one more time that spending money to defeat Trump in the primary is burning through donor resources that will be desperately needed in the general election.

In this, there are three schools of thought, all wrong.

2/ The first school of thought is that Ron DeSantis can be magically elevated to surpass Trump. There's a LOT of Republican (and some Dem-leaning) donor money trying to make this point.

If DeSantis wasn't in the lower quartile of warmth, connection, personality, humanity...

3/ ...you might almost squint and see the case. However, we learned in 2016 that "being a conservative governor" vs Trump is worth exactly nothing. As we speak, the ocean of donor money DeSantis took in is now Jeff Roe's slush fund.

4/ This money will go to Youngkin next, and Roe is already planning it. Sorry, Ron. You knew Jeff was a snake before you took him in.

This Establishment lane strategy vs Trump died in 2016. Trust me, I was there to call TOD.

5/ The next futile track is "But X is a bold truth-teller."

OK, I can't say I'm not happy to see Asa, Christie, and Will Hurd flensing Trump. I'm delighted. any flicker of light in the chthonic gloom of the GOP's moral midnight is better than nothing.

6/ But add up all the people telling the truth about the criminal master mind who runs the GOP and you get to 1/2 of a DeSantis.

They're rounding error. Put a billion behind them, and they're still rounding error. Will future generations remember them? I hope so...

7/ ...Will Hurd particularly. Christie will never wash the stink of Trump off him.

The GOP base in our polling, and literally every public and private poll I've seen does not give a damn about the truth viz Trump. At. All.

Zero. Nada.

8/ The final group of people are trying to weaken Trump by calling him a loser (he is), political poison (he is), a criminal (QED, everything), and a weak man who will lose to Joe Biden are hoping against hope that moral or political suasion will reform the GOP base.

9/ The base is irredeemable. They can only be changed by destroying the GOP as it exists today. No ad strategy, alternate candidate, impassioned op-ed, or heartfelt speech will reclaim them from the spell of Trump, Fox, and Facebook.

10/ They're not economically anxious. They're not the Forgotten Workin' Man. They're not Ordinary Folks Who Just Don't Like All These Progressives Ideas.

They're willing members of an authoritarian personality cult. They've bent and sworn.

11/ The approach we're taking is to keep splitting off the parts of the base (a narrow path, to be sure, but one we've walked in 2020 and 2022) is to make Trump morally, politically, aesthetically, and socially poison.

It's not a secret how we do it.

12/ It worked in 2020 and in 2022.

LP is an antibody in the traditional system. Trump hates us passionately, and so do our former friends in the GOP who still desperately want to be put back in the Matrix and have their old world back.

So do some gentry Never Trumpers.

13/ Hoping to either create a new movement to steal the GOP away from Trump, or praying for some improbably exogenous event to take him out are theories disproven by 2016 and beyond.

We're setting up for the general election campaign. That's the battle. That's the moment.

End.