Trump can't help being his awful self.

Republicans can't help letting him be their champion.

For decades, the GOP was known as “the stupid party.” I went along with the joke, but never thought Republicans were less intelligent than Democrats.

Until the party’s lengthy love affair with Donald Trump.

It’s not just that Trump is an appallingly dishonest narcissist. It’s also that he has led the party to three consecutive defeats, yet is still its champion.

Trump did pull off a narrow victory in 2016. It helped that his opponent was massively unpopular (as Trump is now) to the point that I believe any credible Republican nominee would have defeated her. But we’ll never know.

We do know that Republicans have suffered three consecutive election defeats with Trump as their champion. The 2018 and 2020 defeats were referenda on his character and presidency. The 2022 election was decided by a referendum on the weak, and in some cases ridiculous, candidates he propelled to nomination for key Senate seats.

All three elections went poorly. Yet, the Republicans have nominated Trump again.

How did it happen? The answer resides to a significant extent in the most damning fact about Republican intelligence. Trump managed, without sufficient evidence, to convince a big majority of Republicans that his defeat was not legitimate.

The GOP candidate should win this year’s presidential election fairly comfortably. The nation is dissatisfied with the Biden administration, and although Biden has been replaced, the candidate who replaced him is (1) the number-two person in that same unpopular administration and (2) a candidate of less than middling political talent.

Yet, this mediocrity has pulled about even with Trump in the polls. Why?

The main reason is that Trump is unpopular. With a president who manifestly isn’t up to the job no longer on the ticket, the focus once again is on Trump, which is exactly where both he and Harris want it.

The attempt on Trump’s life gave him the opportunity to cash in on some good will. Trump squandered that opportunity — first, in his acceptance speech at the Convention and second by his clumsy attacks on Harris.

Instead of focusing on Biden’s record and Harris’ leftist positions, Trump is lodging personal attacks on her. These attacks play well at rallies of the faithful and on the Fox News shows Trump consumes. But when it comes to the voters who will decide this election, they are irrelevant and, for many, off-putting.

To make matters worse, Trump continues to harp on the 2020 election and, in furtherance of his obsession, to attack key officials whose support might help him win this time around.

I’m referring to Trump’s recent attack on Georgia’s popular governor, Brian Kemp. For a discussion of that unfortunate development, I’ll turn to Erick Erickson, who knows Georgia politics inside (he’s been elected to office there) and out. In an article called “Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory,” he writes:

Ninety-three days before the election, Trump decided to attack the sitting Republican Governor of Georgia and his wife. Kemp had already said he’d support Trump in 2024.

Trump either lost or had Georgia stolen from him by less than twelve thousand votes. He needs a turnout machine in Georgia and the only available turnout machine happens to be that possessed by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s political operation.

If Trump wants to win, he needs Georgia. Perhaps he should not attack the most popular politician in the state and presume he can bully that man and his wife into helping him.

Erickson continues:

If this keeps up, you’ll have a lot of Republicans start reasoning that they could put up with Kamala Harris for two years and lock in the House and Senate in 2026 and it’d be far better to go through that than put up with Trump for four years and all the down ballot disasters that would come in 2026.

The whispers are already there, folks. Some Republicans see this behavior and think the party would be better off with Trump losing and pushing out those tied to him because of the loss.

It’s foolish thinking, but it is growing. People are tired of being bullied with all the demands for unity and loyalty flowing in one direction — that’s more bowel movement than political movement. And it’s not just Trump, but his diehard supporters who wear people out who are willing to vote for Trump, but don’t want to hump his leg

I wonder whether even another Trump defeat would bring an end to his hold on the party.

Erickson moves on to recent Georgia political history:

In 2020, Trump lost the state by less than 12,000 votes and 30,000+ refused to vote for President.

In 2021, Trump convinced 427,205 Republicans not to turnout for a runoff because it would be stolen. Democratic groups bought billboards in rural Georgia that proclaimed, “Why vote? It’s going to be stolen.” They reinforced Trump’s talking points and the GOP didn’t show up, handing the United States Senate to the Democrats.

In 2022, the Kemp ground game got Trump’s Senate pick, Herschel Walker, through a general election into a runoff, but couldn’t carry a bad candidate across the runoff finish line without Kemp also on the ballot. The GOP won every other statewide race and generated more votes statewide than the Democrats for legislative races.

The anomaly is Trump and his handpicked candidates. They underperform other Republicans in the state. So attacking a guy who has endorsed you whose ground game you need to win in 2024 is not wise. Luckily for Trump, Kemp is not a petty man. Unfortunately for Trump, he’s reminding those 40,000+ voters who wouldn’t vote for him in 2020 in Georgia why they didn’t vote for him.

Then comes this warning:

A candidate who is known and disliked will lose to an unknown and undefined candidate through whom voters can pour their own dreams. The Harris campaign is outspending Trump in Georgia positively defining herself.

The state leans Republican right now and leans Trump, but there are ninety days for Trump to further screw it up. . . .

This won’t end well if Trump doesn’t do something else and he does not seem capable of doing something else.

(Emphasis added)

The last half sentence is the key. Trump can’t be something other than the outrageously nasty narcissist he’s always been.

The even bigger problem is that Republicans can’t seem to be something other than the party that continues to anoint him their champion.