After last week, it’s time for The Donald to take a supporting role in the GOP | Mulshine

When the story of Donald Trump’s antics across the Republican Party is written, I suspect that last week will mark a definitive end point.

First there were those Capitol Hill police officers who testified about battling a host of Trump supporters determined to disrupt Congress.

Then there was the revelation that Donald’s endorsement didn’t have enough weight to tip a congressional primary in Texas.

If Trump can’t even muster enough muscle to win a Texas primary, what can he do?

It can give the mainstream media endless opportunities to jump from the subject of the Biden administration’s muddle to Donald’s latest bitter remark about losing the election.

The problem with Trump, if my observations over the past decade are any indication, is that he has started to believe his own rhetoric.

I was there at the creation of his national political career. It was in 2011 at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. CPAC, as it’s called, is a kind of debutants’ ball for those who want to run for the Republican nomination for president.

The pitch for 2012 contained plenty of notables who weren’t very notable, from former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to Michele Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota who gave speeches so tangled up the U.S. military would end up fighting. the Marines during World War II. .

The final winner was another non-entity, Mitt Romney.

I suspect that looking around the room that day in 2011, Trump thought to himself, “I could beat those clowns.

Indeed, he could. As 2016 unfolded, the consensus was that it was going to be a predictable primary season, which would end with another Bush-vs.-Clinton race.

Say what you want about Trump, he spared us this dismal fate. Then he shocked the establishment again by stealing much of the Democrats’ blue-collar base from under their noses. Before long he was the hero of the heart.

Those of us who had watched his antics in Atlantic City were stunned. How does an amoral schemer from Queens develop such fanaticism among the people of the states overflown?

I asked this question of one of the Donald’s most astute political analysts, Seth Grossman of Atlantic City. He’s a lawyer, but during his time running a security firm, Grossman had the honor of being stiffened by Trump, a common current in AC.

As a constitutional conservative, however, Grossman liked Trump’s policies. In 2018, he ran to Congress as a pro-Trump candidate and came within 8 points of winning a race he was scheduled to lose in a landslide.

But the day after the January 6 riot, Grossman released an analysis explaining why Trump was wrong and Vice President Mike Pence was right.

“Any American who calls himself a conservative must understand and respect our Constitution,” he wrote on the Liberty and Prosperity site. “Vice President Pence did what the Twelfth Amendment to the US Constitution required him to do. He should be commended and not criticized for doing this. Mike Pence did his job. President Trump’s lawyers have not done theirs.

This job would have been to verify the signatures on the disputed ballots. Instead, Trump’s lawyers tried to get away with vague accusations of corruption.

By mid-December, states had chosen their voters. The only role left to the Vice-President on January 6 was to observe the counting of the ballots.

“He’s like Bert Parks in the old Miss America pageant,” Grossman said of the vice president. “He can announce the vote but he cannot change it.

By ignoring this key fact, Trump has put his supporters at risk.

“He led his supporters right into a trap on Jan.6,” Grossman said. “Even though he tried to say he just wanted a peaceful protest, he was trying to do something that couldn’t be done.”

The result was a disaster for the rest of Trump’s Republicans.

Trump’s main weakness is that he is not a team player, Grossman said.

“He sees himself as a champion, as a boxer, as opposed to a member of a team,” he said. “And because of that, he sees no obligation to strengthen his team.”

He certainly doesn’t make the GOP team any stronger with all of these primary fights.

Another congressional primary will be held in Ohio on Tuesday. If Trump’s candidate wins, it will barely make the headlines. But if his candidate loses, it will be seen as the beginning of the end for Trump as leader of the Republican Party.

After the events of last week, the end cannot come soon enough.

(These events include revelations that in late December Trump urged his Justice Department to participate in his unconstitutional effort to overturn the certifications of voters chosen two weeks earlier by states.)