Is Trump A Genius, Or Is Biden Just Really Dumb?

Consider developments for Trump in the less than two weeks since the Mar-a-Lago raid. The polls:

The FBI raid on former President Donald Trump‘s estate bolstered his support among GOP primary voters and widened his lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, according to a new poll.

The Politico/Morning Consult poll found that 57% of primary voters would back Mr. Trump if he ran and the primary were held now, a 4-point jump from the 53% who backed the ex-president in a mid-July poll.

Mr. DeSantis, meanwhile, saw his support slide from 23% to 17%, meaning Mr. Trump saw a 10-point boost over his nearest rival after agents searched his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The never-Trump Allahpundit at Hot Air senses Maybe the "DeSantasy" really is over:

I was, am, and will remain bullish that DeSantis still stands a chance at the 2024 nomination, at least as long as you-know-who isn’t indicted. In the bizarro world of modern-day Republican morality, criminal charges against Trump really would seal the primaries for him.

. . . After all, it was a poll of New Hampshire in June that set the commentariat on fire when it showed DeSantis leading Trump in a hypothetical primary there, 39/37. That survey was conducted by UNH whereas today’s data comes from St. Anselm, so we can’t say definitively based on the two that there’s now been a shift.

. . . From DeSantis +2 to Trump +21. Maybe the “rally ’round the document thief” effect following the search of Mar-a-Lago really has ended the 2024 “DeSantasy,” as one Trump advisor put it.

Let's look at what's happened here. DeSantis has been doing a workmanlike job, running in Florida on a potentially very attractive national platform of anti-woke, anti-COVID overreach, pro-prosperity. It's been so effective that Gavin Newsom ran ads against him. The conventional wisdom would say he's proving himself a sensible guy, as opposed to the unpredictable, narcissistic nut job Trump.

But right now, Trump has surged back into full stature as a national figure based on one issue, Trump himself. Last night he posted,

My rights, together with the rights of all Americans, have been violated at a level rarely seen before in our Country. Remember, they even spied on my campaign. The greatest Witch Hunt in USA history has been going on for six years, with no consequences to the scammers. It should not be allowed to continue!

Earlier,

When will people realize that the atrocities being perpetrated by the FBI and DOJ having to do with the Raid and Break In of my home, Mar-a-Lago, or after years of other atrocities and unthinkable violations of freedom and the law, this has been going on for years, from the moment I came down the golden escalators in Trump Tower, right up until the present. At some point you have to look at what took place in the past to determine what is going on in the present. . .

At this point, you can't argue with success. DeSantis's handlers have paused their presidential fundraising in light of Trump's complete possession of the floor. It's also at least conventional wisdom that the focus on Trump after the Mar-a-Lago raid contributed to Liz Cheney's margin of defeat in her Wyoming primary. But that was just a bellwether:

Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney’s GOP primary defeat this week did more than just end her family’s dominance in U.S. politics dating back to her father’s role as President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff in 1974.

It also marked the coming end of a long stretch of at least 75 years of somebody from one of America’s modern political dynasties serving in federal elected or appointed office.

Since 1947, when then-Sen. John F. Kennedy came to Washington, there has been either a Kennedy, a Bush, a Cheney, or a Clinton in office.

The one name the never-Trump Examiner doesdn't mention until several paragraphs later is Donald Trump, but it's worth stressing that the Kennedy run ended on its own before Trump's time, but Trump himself ended the political careers of Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, and opposition to Trump ended Liz Cheney's career as a Republican. The Examiner took the long way around to say Trump has shaped the modern political landscape. In an alternate universe, after all, you could have sold the idea that Liz Cheney was the sensible, moderate centrist, and likely this is the bubble the remaining Bushies inhabit.

Look no farther than Leader McConnell's assessment of Republican chances to take the Senate this fall:

The Kentucky Republican Senator had said on Thursday, “I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate. Senate races are just different. They’re statewide. Candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”

That's a thinly veiled swipe at Trump and a backhanded acknowledgement of Trump's 93% success this year in getting candidates he's endorsed nominated in primaries. I think the problem, though, is that McConnell is also living in a Bush-Cheney era alternate reality.

We'll have to see how things play out, but if I look at Ukraine's President Zelensky and compare him to wartime leaders like Lincoln, Churchill, and Roosevelt, I'm increasingly looking at Trump and seeing something more like Queen Victoria, who had an uncanny ability to connect with the British public despite living a life entirely isolated from them, and indeed despite the fact that she spoke German in private.

At this point, Trump is singlehandedly defining the US political environment, helped enormously by the grave blunder of Biden's handlers and enablers in staging the Mar-a-Lago raid. What on earth were they thinking?