National Review’s Jim Geraghty has written an impressive summary of Donald Trump’s re-run announcement, reminding us of the infernal role he is likely to play in 2024. He begins by pointing out that Trump announced his first presidential run some 7,211 days ago and has been dominating the political scene ever since.

He goes on to write, “If the Republicans nominate someone else, such as Ron DeSantis, in 2024, at least the country will be debating what policies to enact. If the Republicans nominate Trump, we’re in for at least another two years of, ‘what do you think of the latest crazy thing Trump said?'”

Trump’s advisors reportedly pleaded with him to hold off announcing his candidacy until at least after the Dec. 6 U.S. Senate run-off in Georgia. There are likely two practical reasons he didn’t; first, it is a desperate attempt to clear the GOP primary field, hoping that Ron DeSantis and perhaps others will be intimidated away from their own potential runs; and second, he likely wanted to get ahead of a possible indictment – if it comes down from the Biden Justice Department while he is an active candidate for president, it bolsters Trump’s argument that the whole thing is simply a political ploy.  

But the greater point is that he wants to run, and his ego far exceeds anything approximating reason, loyalty or a sense of duty to either his country or his party. And so he is running. It’s to the detriment of both his party and his country.

Trump’s announcement is a gift to the Democrats, no less so than his teasing it the night of the election was. There is little point in rehearsing the litany of Trump’s character faults – everyone is acutely aware of them – which render him so unpalatable to most voters and toxic to any campaign he touches. His claims of “winning” are now laughable – he won the presidency in 2016 with 46.1% of the vote and lost it in 2020 with 46.8%. He single-handedly lost the Senate for Republicans in 2020, giving Joe Biden a clear path to do things like sign the still-most ironically named piece of legislation in the history of the Republic, the hyper-inflationary “Inflation Reduction Act.” And almost all of his hand-picked coterie of clowns lost their races around the country costing the Republicans the Senate and a commanding majority in the House. Even worse, as I pointed out in this space last week, in some cases, particularly in Colorado, Trump’s toxicity led to the defeat of solid GOP candidates as well, victims of even an arms-length association.

Yes, some good policy came out of his presidency – or more accurately, his administration; improvements to the tax structure, meaningful deregulation, legally sound judges, degradation of ISIS, historic cooperation between Israel and the Gulf States, and some others, which deserve recognition. These are things a future Republican president can emulate and build on.

None of which excuses the excesses, chaos and moral turpitude exhibited by Trump while in the White House. We cannot pretend that character is an outdated or immaterial trait in a president. The Constitution imposes only three eligibility requirements for the presidency: age, residency and citizenship. As Justice Joseph Story wrote, the 35 years-of-age requirement speaks directly to character and judgement, since that “is the middle age of life, by which period the character and talents of individuals are generally known, and fully developed; and opportunities have usually been afforded for public service, and for experience in the public councils.” Character mattered then, it ought to have mattered when Bill Clinton ran (as Republicans correctly claimed then that it did), and it ought to matter now.

The intellectual and moral bankruptcy of Donald Trump represents possibly the greatest disservice ever to the proud intellectual and moral tradition of conservatism, the Republican Party which serves as its standard bearer in the United States, and, by extension, to the country that risks being deprived of the economic and civil blessings and accumulated wisdom of its philosophical offerings. As it stands, the threat a Trump candidacy presents to the future of the conservative movement and the Republican Party is surely an argument, among so many others, for Republicans to finally and decisively reject Trump and select instead a strong conservative candidate.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.