Perhaps you’ve been avoiding the whole thing, and no one could blame you. But with Donald Trump’s victory in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, and the Republican nominating contest all but sewn up, the 2024 presidential campaign looks set to be among the bleakest in memory.

Nikki Haley’s second-place finish was small consolation. She may not be every Republican’s cup of tea, but she has conventional qualifications — a former businesswoman, state legislator, two-term governor and United Nations ambassador — and has articulated a plausible agenda. Polls show her strongly favored against President Joe Biden. She would stand a decent chance of getting conservative policies enacted.

As for her opponent … well, you know already. Republicans must by now realize that nominating Trump will not advance their interests. In addition to the disorder, ineptitude and ambient corruption that characterized his first term, Trump was the weakest president since the New Deal. Outmaneuvered at every turn, he caved repeatedly to Democrats, ran up huge deficits and accomplished nearly no policy goals. He couldn’t even build his border wall, the notional premise of his campaign.

A second term promises more of the same, but worse. Trump’s rallies this time around have been uniformly dreary affairs, all menace and grievance and simmering paranoia. He occasionally feigns interest in the proposals his associates have cobbled together — more tariffs, more oil, more drama — but let’s be honest: Trump is facing 91 felony charges and counting. He is being sued by dozens of interested parties. He has appropriated the GOP’s fundraising apparatus to pay his legal fees and hopes the presidency will somehow shield him from further liability. If he can put some of his critics in jail, that’s fine, too.

With this oh-so-inspiring agenda, Republicans can expect Trump to have his usual electoral effect — that is, to drag down his own party at every opportunity. Recall that Trump was the first president in about nine decades to lose the House, the Senate and the Oval Office in a single term. Remember, too, that in competitive races his preferred candidates underperformed by about 5 percentage points on average. Trump himself remains remarkably unpopular, and he shows no inclination to widen his appeal.

It’s all so unnecessary. Biden is a weak incumbent. He polls poorly, blunders frequently and lacks (shall we say) a certain youthful vitality. He will soon be asking voters to keep him in office until he’s 86. Nearly half the country thinks his age and health “severely limit his ability to do the job.”

Unburdened of Trump, Republicans would have a good chance of winning the White House and making gains in Congress. They could pursue the pro-family, anti-crime agenda many of them say they want while reforming the party to meet the needs of a new demographic and economic era. And they could do so without endangering the foundations of the republic. We could all, you might say, start getting back to normal.

It’s not happening. Time has run out. Trump is their man. As Republicans continue down this ugly road — with all the anger and spite and division it entails — they’ll have only themselves to blame.

— The Bloomberg Opinion editorial board

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