Republicans beware, Donald Trump will turn his Big Lie against the GOP

I wish I understood what all these longshot Republicans running for president hope to get out of it. It can't be that they actually believe they are going to win. We know that Donald Trump will never accept that he lost so he will proclaim that the winner stole it from him and many of his followers will believe him so they'll stay home, handing the election to Joe Biden. Remember, Trump initially claimed that Ted Cruz stole the Iowa caucuses in 2016. After first conceding the race he turned around and tweeted:

He eventually removed the word "illegally" but then followed it up with:

He let that beef go when he started winning primaries but once he got the nomination, Trump famously declared that he would only accept the results of the general election if he won.

He did win but he still wasn't satisfied because he lost the popular vote so within a couple of weeks he was declaring that it was the result of voter fraud.

He even went so far as to create the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity and packed it with vote suppression activists to prove fraud. They were unable to do that of course because there were no facts to support it.

Fast forward to 2020 and we all know what happened. The results of Trump's Big Lie are that even today, nearly three years later, 63% of Republicans still believe the election was illegitimate. Yes, it has shrunk from the 71% who believed it was stolen right after January 6 and the number of Republicans who now believe Biden won the election fair and square has risen from 22% to 36%. Big deal. The vast majority of Republicans are still convinced that Donald Trump is the legitimate president and most of them are going to vote for him.

And why wouldn't they? If you really believe that the election was stolen from him you must also think that he's got a right and a responsibility to take the White House back from the usurper.

Even if any of the challengers to his claim to the throne wanted to explode the Big Lie (which thus far only seems to be former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie) it would be hard to know where to start. Trump had dozens of different reasons why the election was stolen from him and there are new ones every day. Whether it's the mail-in ballot scheme or the election machine rigging or censorship of the Hunter Biden story or foreign interference, Trump has claimed at one time or another that each was responsible for his loss.

He understands instinctively that when you are advancing a totally preposterous lie, the best thing you can do is offer as many rationales for it as possible. Some people will pick a particular reason and that's good enough for them. Others just see it as "there's an awful lot of smoke, there must be a fire." Most Republican officials, including his rivals, have therefore decided to either back Trump's lie outright or simply say that the election was full of "problems" that need to be fixed, which tacitly amounts to the same thing. They will twist themselves into pretzels making that case.

Here is GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel:

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

You don't get any more "establishment" than the chair of the Republican Party and she says she does not believe the election was fairly decided. So, of course, the rank and file are going to believe that as well.

So let's say that one of the other candidates starts to make a move and turns this into a real race. And let's say that they end up eking out a win. As we know, Trump will not graciously concede and endorse his rival. And I do believe that many of his followers will stay home. But I also think there's every chance that he will tell them to write him in and many of them will. He's just not the quitting type.

Maybe these candidates thought (hoped?) he would be taken down by one of the criminal investigations that are dogging him in various places around the country. I'm not sure why they would have thought that changed anything, however. He claims that too is a rigged deal on behalf of the "deep state" and his followers are in lockstep with him on that as well. Most of these candidates are barely willing to even timidly suggest that taking classified documents might not be exactly legal so there isn't going to be much pushback there either.

So why are all these people running? They have to know that Trump will never admit that he lost. He even protested when he won insisting that he actually won bigger but they cheated him out of it! And by now they must realize that his base is going to stick with him no matter what.

I would guess that many of them just want to remain relevant in politics. Maybe they think that if Trump beats Biden they can get a job in the Cabinet. Some might even think they have a shot at vice president, although I can't imagine Trump rewarding anyone who had the temerity to run against him in this race. He believes he is the president in exile and shouldn't have to run for the nomination at all. I'd be shocked if he chooses someone from the pack.

Florida Gov. Ron Desantis may have been the one who believed his own hype and thought that because he won re-election handily he really was in a position to knock out Trump. He's clearly starting to see the error in that calculation. Florida isn't America and even there, he's losing to Donald Trump by 20 points. He'll be lucky to get out of this with a political career at all. But the rest of them aren't dumb and they had to know that Trump would not stand for anyone else snatching away the nomination from him — that he would sabotage the ticket if he isn't on it simply because he is congenitally incapable of admitting that he lost.

I think the thing is that they all just want to be in a position in case he moves beyond the Big Lie and takes the Big Sleep. For all the yammering about Biden's age, after all, Trump's not a young man either. This primary is basically a kind of death watch, hoping that if it should happen, one of them will be the next in line and he or she will have preserved themselves as MAGA's heir apparent by never being disrespectful to the late leader. The problem is that people like Trump tend to live long lives. And even if he doesn't, he will rise up from the grave to claim the deep state had him deep-sixed to prevent him from becoming president again and then demand a recount. In this election, for the GOP it's Trump or no one. Either they let him have it or he'll burn the party down.

Read more

about Trump's domination over the GOP

• Joe Biden vs. a dead skunk: Our president may be old, but the opposition is literally rotting

• Let's all stop pretending anyone but Trump will be the GOP presidential nominee

• Trump's messianic appeal can't be replicated