Former President Donald Trump’s loyal band of supporters have brushed aside his recent electoral struggles and are hankering to go back to the future in 2024, saying American voters now know how good they had it and what they’ve been missing.
Mr. Trump’s third quest for the presidency is testing whether the adulation extends to a broader audience or whether it has siloed them from a majority of voters who might not be able to stomach the idea of another Trump presidency.
Activists at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference just outside Washington said Americans are sure to have a bigger appetite for Mr. Trump now that they have had a taste of life under President Biden, 80.
“I think that a lot of people have been enlightened … since Biden has been in office,” said Rae Luzzi, a 66-year-old from New Jersey who recently retired from her job in supply chain management. “I don’t know how people cannot be enlightened, to tell you the truth. How can you look at the president of the United States now and be proud?”
Similar dismay about the Trump presidency led voters to oust him in the 2020 election.
Voters also rejected Mr. Trump’s preferred candidates, some who emulated his brash style and message, in key House and Senate races in November. The rejection overshadowed the dominance of Trump-backed candidates in Republican strongholds and allowed Democrats to hold on to the Senate majority while flattening a red wave that many predicted would create a massive House Republican majority, not the slim majority they got.
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Nonetheless, most of the activists at CPAC believe Mr. Trump is destined for a second term in the White House.
He easily crushed a list of other Republican names in the CPAC straw poll, which asked attendees who they would vote for in the Republican presidential primary. Mr. Trump earned 62% of the vote and defeated the next most popular Republican candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, by 42 percentage points.
In a speech Saturday that capped CPAC, Mr. Trump basked in the glow of what he called the “beautiful” straw poll results and thanked participants for the “big win.”
He assured the enthusiastic crowd that he is not beholden to the “freaks, neocons, globalists, open borders zealots and fools” who ruled the Republican roost before he rose to power.
“Our enemies are lunatics and maniacs,” Mr. Trump said. “They cannot stand that they do not own me. I don’t need them. … They cannot steer me, they cannot shake me, and they never ever will control me, and they will never ever, therefore, control you.
“At the end of the day, anyone else will be intimidated, bought off or ripped to shreds,” Mr. Trump said. “I alone will never retreat, and that is why we need to stand together. … We have to charge full speed ahead.”
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The former president’s enthusiastic and loyal following at CPAC, when asked to justify their support of a candidate who lost in 2020, recited Mr. Trump’s claims of a stolen election and aired theories about orchestrated efforts to stop him from winning a second term.
“This [COVID-19] pandemic was formed for a lot of reasons — depopulation and to keep him out of the presidency because when he was our president, he was working for us, not the swamp creatures, by which I mean the politicians, and I don’t just mean Democrats,” said Charles Hibbs, 68, of South Dakota.
Mr. Hibbs, a semi-retired carpenter who used to coach middle school football, gushed over Mr. Trump’s record of accomplishments, including his appointments of conservative judges to the Supreme Court who overturned Roe v. Wade, the move of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and a supercharged economy.
Maureen Myers, a retired surgical nurse from Godfrey, Illinois, said Mr. Trump was treated unfairly but managed to fulfill many of his campaign promises, unlike other Republican presidents. Those pledges from Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign such as increasing border security and promoting U.S. energy independence were what first attracted Ms. Myers to Mr. Trump in 2016.
Ms. Myers said there is a small window of opportunity to steer the country back in the right direction and Mr. Trump is best equipped to do it.
“Trump just keeps fighting, and I love that,” Ms. Myers said. “And I am willing to go all the way in the trenches for him.”
Updating his pitch to voters, Mr. Trump has rolled out a list of bold plans for his next administration.
He wants “baby bonuses” for young adults to “launch a new baby boom,” the development of vertical takeoff and landing vehicles for families and individuals, and a contest for plans to build 10 “freedom cities” on federal lands.
“We’ll actually build new cities in our country again,” Mr. Trump, 76, said in a video. “These freedom cities will reopen the frontier, reignite American imagination, and give hundreds of thousands of young people and other people, all hardworking families, a new shot at homeownership and, in fact, the American dream.”
Mr. Trump’s current and potential rivals have reminded voters about the Republican Party’s struggles in recent elections and made subtle digs blaming the former president.
“We can’t become the left, following celebrity leaders with their own brand of identity politics,” former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told the CPAC gathering. “Those with fragile egos who refuse to acknowledge reality.”
Later at CPAC, Mr. Trump said he did not think Mr. Pompeo’s remarks were targeted at him. “I don’t consider myself a celebrity leader; I consider myself a leader of the country,” he told reporters.
In another CPAC speech, Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley put a fine point on it. “If you’re tired of losing, put your trust in a new generation,” said Mrs. Haley, 51, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a former South Carolina governor.
The attempts to dent Mr. Trump did not resonate at CPAC. Mrs. Haley was met in the corridors with chants of “We Want Trump! We Want Trump!”
Debbie Lissaur of Randolph, New Jersey, acknowledged the quandary of supporting Mr. Trump again for the Republican nomination after he lost the general election in 2020.
“That is a very big question,” she said.
She said she won’t dwell on her doubts.
“If someone decides they don’t want to vote for Trump because they don’t like them, I respect that,” Ms. Lissaur said. “If they decide they don’t want to vote for Trump because they think he can’t win, in a way, they’re kind of giving into the nonsense on the left.”
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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