A thought exercise: Describe a scenario under which former President Donald Trump clearly loses the 2024 election — and reacts by gracefully conceding to President Joe Biden.
It's a trick question, of course. No such scenario exists. As Trump has repeatedly demonstrated, he is psychologically incapable of acknowledging electoral defeat.
That's why he was willing to fling a mob of his supporters at the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the election certification process on Jan. 6, 2021. And it's why his newfound control over the Republican National Committee is such a dangerous development.
Trump's audacious purge of the RNC is about more than just seizing the party's central organizational apparatus to help fund his campaign and possibly pay his legal bills.
It also gives him a menacing weapon to hold over the heads of any congressional Republicans who might be tempted to resist a repeat of Trump's Jan. 6 attempted coup when it's time to certify the 2024 election results.
It's common for presidential nominees to work hand-in-glove with the RNC and its counterpart, the Democratic National Committee. But as he has clinched the nomination this month, Trump's relationship with the RNC has been more like hand-on-throat.
He began by pressing the organization to elect his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as RNC co-chair. In the process, he effectively booted former Chair Ronna McDaniel, whose long tenure as a shameless Trump sycophant apparently (and typically) earned her not one molecule of reciprocal loyalty.
Lara Trump promptly suggested that the RNC — whose primary function is to coordinate fundraising to aid Republican candidates ballot-wide — should help fund her father-in-law's astronomical legal fees from his various criminal and civil trials.
Then came the purge. Dozens of RNC employees, including most at the top, have been fired and replaced with Trump loyalists.
And what will be the focus of this new army of loyalists in the GOP's central fundraising organization? Lara Trump has announced creation of a division of " election integrity " — Republican-speak these days for election denial.
Top Trumpian troll Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia congresswoman, tweeted approvingly about what she called the "bloodbath" at the RNC, adding with uncharacteristic accuracy: "MAGA is now in control of the Republican Party!!"
So why should anyone outside the GOP care that the party is escalating its self-immolation on the MAGA pyre?
Because even if the GOP loses control of the House before Jan. 6, 2025 — when Congress meets to certify the Nov. 5 presidential election results — the party will still in theory have the power to steal the election.
If it appears Trump has lost, some Republicans will almost certainly object to various states' electoral results. If, this time, they are successful in creating an electoral stalemate, the president would be chosen by a House vote — not a vote by member but by state delegation.
Even if Democrats take over the chamber when the new Congress is sworn in three days earlier, Republicans are expected to retain their slightly larger number of state House delegations.
And the RNC controls those Republicans' purse strings.
And Trump now controls the RNC.
Trump will, of course, claim victory no matter how America votes.
But a decisive defeat for Trump at the polls will make it that much harder for his congressional allies to do his bidding and steal the election, even with the RNC blade now hanging over them. The wider the margin, the harder it will be.
It's the best argument there is for setting aside whatever legitimate qualms that progressives, centrists and good-faith conservatives have about Biden and voting for him. The alternative isn't just a thought exercise but a nightmare scenario.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch