The Wall Street Journal on Monday took another shot at former president Donald Trump and his legacy.
“If he was so great politically for the GOP, why is the party now out of power?” the editorial board of the Rupert Murdoch-owned asked in their opinion piece titled The Grievances of Trump Past.
The board pointed to Trump’s weekend appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference, his first speech since leaving the White House in January. The paper argued that “if CPAC represented America, Mr. Trump would still reside in the White House, not Mar-a-Lago,” so his warm reception at the annual event means nothing.
The “cold reality,” according to the board, is that “if 2020 was so fabulous, why are Republicans shut out of power up and down Pennsylvania Avenue? They have zero influence over the $1.9 trillion spending extravaganza they rightly deplore. Democrats are slowly erasing the Trump legacy on taxes, deregulation, energy, education, and so much more.”
The Journal has been hitting Trump in recent weeks. In December 2020, the opinion section called his refusal to accept the outcome of the election “embarrassing.” Last month, the paper warned that Trump was dead, politically, and Republicans can’t tie themselves to his messaging any longer as a result, lest they face the consequence of being voted out of office.
“As the Biden months roll on and the policy consequences of the 2020 defeat become stark, perhaps the party’s grassroots will begin to look past the Trump era to a new generation of potential standard-bearers,” the Journal concluded. “As long as Republicans focus on the grievances of the Trump past, they won’t be a governing majority.”
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