Republican Party now stuck with Trump

Acquitted in short fashion after all. So the Republican Party is now stuck with Donald Trump. Only seven Republicans had the moral courage to convict him of incitement to insurrection. The rest chickened out on the basis that convicting a president out of office was not constitutional. Mitch McConnell, the so-called leader of the Republicans in the Senate, demonstrated not for the first time that he puts party and partisan politics before anything, even while acknowledging that Trump had been guilty of very bad behaviour. He probaby thought he could square the circle by criticising the former president for acting in a very unpresidential manner while at the same time using a legal technicality to justify his decision to acquit him of anything inappropriate. Political cowardice through and through, although his dilemma was shared by the other 42 Republican senators who acquitted Trump. They didn't dare join the Democrats and convict Trump for fear of losing their jobs and livelihoods by upsetting the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump in the 2020 election. They knew that if they acquitted Trump, the former president would probably eventually announce a new campaign to be reelected in 2024. If even a small number of them share the same view as McConnell, that Trump was guilty of gross misbehaviour, then how can they contemplate the idea that this man could once again represent the Republican party and stand again for the presidency? I thought at one point that once Trump had left office, the Republican party obsession with this former TV reality showman would fade and Trump would be cast aside and forgotten. But clearly this is not the case, and now he has been acquitted for the second time, his confidence and motivation for trying again in four years'time will have been boosted a hundredfold. Nikki Haley, a 2024 hopeful, has had the courage to back off from Trump, saying that the party was wrong to follow him. But I fear that her disaffection from the president she once loyally served as US ambassador to the United Nations will come to haunt her when she puts her name forward for the 2024 nomination. Who will dare to drop Trump and campaign for Nikki Haley?