Trump prepares the recovery: no third party, leader of the opposition in Biden and conquest of the Gop
After just over a month away from the spotlight and social media , from which he was banned, and after being acquitted in the second impeachment trial, Donald Trump returns to the center of the political scene, in the US and beyond.
The stage was the "friend" stage of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the annual conference of the American conservative movement, which, simplifying, can be defined as the gathering of the right wing of the Republican Party.
Trump prevailed in the straw poll , the "straw poll" that is traditionally carried out among the participants at the end of the conference, and which, on balance, awarded him the "virtual" title of the party's leading candidate for the presidential elections. 2024. It is true, the significance of this survey is relative, precisely because it is conducted only among those belonging to a "current" of the party. Just to name one, in 2016 Ted Cruz won it, who was soon demolished by Trump himself during the primary.
However, it must be considered that in 2016 Trump was still a foreign body to the party, and his victory in the primary was a real surprise, second only to his victory in the actual presidential elections. But the CPAC straw poll tells us at least three things about Trump, all of which are important: he has not become an "unpresentable", as the Democrats wanted to reduce him with the second impeachment ; it is no longer a foreign body to the Republican Party, as they hoped the more "moderate" Republicans (what CPAC participants call Rinos , or "Republicans In Name Only" , Republicans in name only) would continue to be; and the Gop, from an electoral point of view, cannot ignore him.
After the straw poll , Trump delivered his first public speech since leaving the White House. The style was the same as always, but it was, on the whole, a more structured intervention than usual from a political point of view. To summarize the most important steps, he attacked across the board the first month of the Biden administration, which he obviously called disastrous, from China to women's sport threatened by trans athletes; dusted off the allegations of electoral fraud, denouncing the "indolence" of the Supreme Court, which refused to address the issue for procedural reasons; the battle for a reform of the electoral rules that limits early voting or by post to the bare essentials, and that requires in all states to every voter to present a form of official identification – an issue opposed by the Democratic Party, which he considers it discriminatory towards minorities, but by now a historic battle of the Republican Party which, therefore, can be a unifying leadership weapon for Trump; denounced the censorship suffered by social media , calling for state regulations to protect freedom of expression, in the absence of federal government intervention; he made the list of "traitors" present among the Republicans elected to Congress, promising that he will make them challenge, in the primary, by their loyalists, without fear of unleashing internal struggles in the party.
Above all, he reiterated the idea – winning in 2016 – of making the Gop the reference point of the "blue collar" and of all the working and entrepreneurial classes "betrayed" by the economic policy of the Democrats and globalization. Denying some rumors that have circulated in recent weeks, he has made it clear that he does not want to found a new party. His strategy is another: to make his movement hegemon in the Republican Party, and then aim again, in 2024, at the White House, either personally or through his own "surrogate". This strategy will face a decisive test already next year, in the mid-term elections. And – it must be said – the precedents are not in favor of a second presidential term of Trump. In fact, in history, only one president has won two non-consecutive terms, Grover Cleveland, but we are talking about what happened more than 150 years ago, and never happened again.
But beyond Trump's personal ambitions, the political and institutional repercussions of his moves matter above all. With the blatant return to the field of the former White House tenant, the United States now also has the figure of the opposition leader. For a long time not foreseen either from the point of view of political practice, nor from the institutional point of view, it was invented and impersonated in an oblique and cryptic way by Obama during the Trump mandate, and now takes on, precisely with Trump, a more explicit form. Thus a problem with the balance of the American political system emerges, even more so with a weak president (Biden) and a bulky "opposition leader" (Trump).
The reappearance of Trump also has effects on the international level: the fanatics of globalism cannot think of returning serenely to business as usual . Trump was not reduced, as they hoped, to a parenthesis archived in ignominy. He is alive and well, and can continue to be a point of reference even outside the United States for all those movements that have been indicated, with a demonizing label, as “sovereignists”. Above all, the reasons for his political survival are the same that made him win, surprisingly, in 2016. The imbalances of globalization are still there, intact. And they cannot simply be ignored.
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This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/trump-prepara-la-riscossa-niente-terzo-partito-capo-dellopposizione-a-biden-e-conquista-del-gop/ on Tue, 02 Mar 2021 05:02:00 +0000.