For Trump, one step forward, two steps back

“I’m more angry now,” Donald Trump said in South Carolina. So, what else is new? Trump’s second attempt at igniting his candidacy was another flop, making him look small and — worst of all — boring.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) gains ground yet again by sitting back and allowing Trump to do what he now does best: sink his own chances.

Trump had been having a good couple of weeks, before he once again exposed his shortcomings. After bleeding support all through the fall and slipping again in the aftermath of Republican senatorial candidate Herschel Walker’s embarrassing defeat in Georgia, Trump’s polling numbers against probable primary opponent DeSantis had stabilized. Trump was even beating President Biden in a few media polls.

In GOP primary polls the week leading up to his tour, Trump was leading by double-digits in most polls. To be sure, his numbers and the sample sizes ranged widely, making a determination of where he really stood hard to pin down. But a best guess is that he was sitting in the mid-40s, anywhere from 10 to 15 points ahead of DeSantis.

Against Biden, Trump led in several January general election polls, including Emerson, Marquette, Redfield & Wilton, and Harvard-Harris. The Harvard-Harris poll had Trump leading Biden 46 percent to 41 percent — his biggest margin.

Trump was smart to make South Carolina the focal point. His win there in 2016 cemented his status as frontrunner; the state is winner-take-all for delegates. In 2024, Trump could lose Iowa and New Hampshire and still snag the nomination, but he cannot lose South Carolina. So, leading up to Jan. 28, Trump had a lot going his way.

But once Trump got off his plane, he started moving backwards.

The events themselves showed that Trump and his campaign know there is an enthusiasm gap. These were desultory events in relatively small spaces. In New Hampshire, Trump had to crash the state GOP meeting. In South Carolina, Trump addressed a crowd estimated at anywhere from 200 people (not many more than are trapped on a stranded Southwest flight) to a very generous 500, many decidedly uncommitted. The by-invitation audience of local politicos, as opposed to the large, raucous rallies of the past, made Trump seem small and pedestrian.

And that’s a big problem for Trump.

This 2024 campaign looks like any generic stab at the presidency: Schmoozing a bunch of party workers, holding events in too-small spaces so they look crowded, standing on stage with a wallpaper of the local congressman, state officials, etc.

Trump adviser Jason Miller told the Washington Examiner that Team Trump wanted to make the South Carolina event “put the focus on [Gov.] McMaster and the leadership team.”

Is Miller joking? When has Trump been about anything but Trump?

Miller also claimed that Trump could have a rally with thousands of cheering fans anytime he wanted. Well, if Trump was confident he could do that, he would have done it. And he would have been on stage by himself. No governors or senators, just Trump, the star.

His remarks were the standard stuff, with him mixing in rants about electric cars and against banning gas stoves. In short, it was old news plus Trump trying to catch a ride on the latest outrage. For a man who once set the agenda and excited crowds, this kind of issue me-too-ism is another sign of Trump’s fading relevance.  

Trump also is taking on the trappings of an establishment politician. He headlined in South Carolina with the governor and a four-term U.S. senator. Earlier in the year, he forcefully backed Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for House speaker. There is little doubt Trump was in the corner of re-elected Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, the choice of a mere 15 percent of rank-and-file GOP voters, according to a Rassmussen poll.

Bottom line: Trump is looking rather swampy these days.

“Boring,” “small” and “establishment” aren’t Trump’s only trouble. He has done nothing to address his biggest and most fatal character flaw: a complete lack of discipline. Trump continues to rant randomly on his Truth Social account. Most recently, he began firing a series of indiscriminate attacks on DeSantis, blaming him for everything but the Lindbergh kidnapping. He remains obsessed with “loyalty” — ignoring the fact he himself is the most disloyal turncoat in politics.

Republican officials have started to push back.

Trump’s rage at the impending candidacy of Nikki Haley, once South Carolina’s Republican governor and his United Nations ambassador, also made no sense. Trump benefited enormously in 2016 from the fractured Republican field. The fact that he is stuck well below 50 percent of the Republican vote means he needs more than just DeSantis in the field. Three or four opponents need to soak up the “non-Trump” vote. Yet Trump apparently cannot handle any opposition or disloyalty. And this is a major problem: Even when something is in his best interest, he still won’t do it.

Trump has no discipline and that will never change.

Trump still has a strong base of voters and the ability to generate attention at will — two huge assets — but he is wasting those assets and creating opportunities for DeSantis. Of all the many factors in this race, the toughest one to overcome is DeSantis’s retort to Trump’s attacks: I won, you lost.

No longer being a winner is something from which Trump cannot recover.

Keith Naughton, Ph.D., is co-founder of Silent Majority Strategies, a public and regulatory affairs consulting firm. Naughton is a former Pennsylvania political campaign consultant. Follow him on Twitter @KNaughton711.