GOP VOTERS IN 2021 SAID, "WE STILL LOVE TRUMP!" MERRICK GARLAND SHRUGGED IT OFF.

In a very good New York Times story about Merrick Garland's lack of urgency in bringing Donald Trump to justice -- the result of which will be, in all likelihood, that neither of Trump's federal trials will start before Election Day -- we're told that one reason Garland and his colleagues weren't aware of the time pressure on them is that they found it unimaginable that Trump might be the GOP presidential nominee again:

In trying to avoid even the smallest mistakes, Mr. Garland might have made one big one: not recognizing that he could end up racing the clock. Like much of the political world and official Washington, he and his team did not count on Mr. Trump’s political resurrection after Jan. 6, and his fast victory in the 2024 Republican presidential primary, which has complicated the prosecution and given the former president leverage in court.

In 2021 it was “simply inconceivable,” said one former Justice Department official, that Mr. Trump, rebuked by many in his own party and exiled at his Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, would regain the power to impose his timetable on the investigation.

I've always assumed that an excess of fastidiousness delayed these indictments. Some of you told me that I'm not a lawyer and therefore can't understand that the sauce has to simmer for the precise amount of time described in the recipe -- even a tiny compromise makes it inedible. Apparently, despite being an ignoramus, I had a point.

But I want to talk about the idea that in 2021 Nobody Could Have Foreseen a third presidential nomination for Trump. That's nonsense. Here's CNN's Harry Enten on January 30, 2021, ten days after Trump left office:

... make no mistake: This is still Trump’s Republican Party.

You see it in the actions of Republican state and local parties trying to punish those who went against Trump. You see this in a majority of congressional Republicans voting to uphold an objection to Pennsylvania’s electoral votes for President Joe Biden.

And more than that, you see it in the polling, which indicates that Trump’s in a historically strong primary position for an ex-president. Indeed, he’s polling tremendously well among Republicans in the context for any future presidential nominee....

After the US Capitol insurrection on January 6, Trump’s still cruising in a potential 2024 primary. A majority of Republicans (57%) said in an Ipsos KnowledgePanel poll that he should be the 2024 nominee.

Against named opponents, Trump easily leads the field. Among those who either voted for Trump in 2020 or are Republicans, Trump’s averaging about half the primary vote. No one else is even close.

At CPAC at the end of February 2021 -- a few days after Mitt Romney said that if Trump decided to run in 2024, he was "pretty sure he would win the nomination" -- Trump teased a third presidential run, then won the convention's 2024 presidential straw poll with a majority of the vote. At the next CPAC, in June 2021, the same thing happened:

Former President Donald Trump bathed in the adulation of an adoring crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference Sunday as he easily won the informal straw poll of attendees when they were asked who they’d like to see run for the White House in 2024....

Trump once again teased a 2024 run on Sunday: “I could have a nice, beautiful life and here I am on a Sunday in Texas.” The crowd began to chant “Four more years! Four more years!”

(Between the two CPACs, Sean Hannity asked Trump about a third run and Trump said, "I am looking at it very seriously, beyond seriously.")

Trump's plans for 2024 were so obvious in the first year of his post-presidency that Politico could run a story in July 2021 with the headline "Trumpworld Is Already Weighing Veeps for 2024. Hint: It Ain’t Pence." In September, Chris Cillizza published a piece with the headline "Donald Trump Is ‘99, 100 percent’ Likely to Run for President in 2024."

An October 2021 Quinnipiac poll found that 79% of Republicans wanted Trump to run in 2024.

How could Garland and his associates not realize that Trump wanted to run, and would be the front-runner for the nomination if he did run?

At the time, I was aware of Trump's enduring popularity among the GOP electorate. In April 2021, in response to a Ross Douthat column about Ron DeSantis's presidential prospects, I wrote:

Douthat is suggesting that DeSantis could beat Trump in the 2024 Republican primaries. That's insane. No one will beat Trump if he runs. That will be true even if he's under indictment. (Being under indictment would make him even more popular among Republican voters -- he'll say "witch hunt" every day and the rubes will go wild.)

But Merrick Garland, a very smart man, had no idea.