This doesn’t mean that Trump is certain to run for president again in 2024. In fact, at this point I suspect he won’t. But it does mean that he is going to dangle the possibility until the last moment, roughly three years from now, in order to keep the party and fundraising dollars planted firmly in his pocket. And this means, in turn, that his hold over the GOP between now and then is going to be close to absolute.
This first became clear on Sunday a couple of hours before Trump arrived to deliver his remarks at CPAC. That’s when the results of the famed straw poll of attendees were announced: Sixty-three percent want Trump to run again in 2024, and if the primaries were held today, 55 percent would pick Trump as the nominee. That’s in an imagined field of 21 candidates.
But the number that really stood out in the poll was this: a grand total of 95 percent of attendees want the party to continue Trump’s policies. This astonishingly high number guarantees that, regardless of whether Trump himself actually runs — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis polled a very strong 43 percent when the former president was removed from the primary question, showing him to be a very early frontrunner for the nomination — Trumpism is going to be in the driver’s seat.
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