There's been a lot of bumper-sticker sloganeering and non-strategic thinking from some quarters in the Republican Party that it's time to make Donald Trump emeritus.  That would be a fatal mistake.

Although Florida's Ron DeSantis is a fine governor, he has never garnered a single vote outside Florida.  He has never run a national campaign.  He has never had to formulate a foreign policy.  He has never dealt with, nor does he have any currency with, world leaders.  In other words, there is a massive learning curve for DeSantis that Trump has already learned.

Further, our friends with the bumper-sticker mentality are certain that the problem of Trump's "baggage" would disappear with another candidate.  They misguidedly believe that the Dems, and their Amen Corner in the media, would suddenly see the light and start playing fair and square, engage on the issues, and not launch vicious personal attacks if only that means Trump would go away.  Horse pucky!  The Dems and their media partners will come after any Republican nominee with every weapon in their arsenal.  Only Trump has proven that he can take everything they throw and keep moving forward.

Clearly, the Dems think Trump is the most dangerous opponent, or else they would not still be gunning for him.  If the left thought Trump was a sure loser, they wouldn't be holding the 1/6 hearings, which are solely constructed to try to take Trump out of the picture.

Trump has the singular ability to bring a populist coalition to the party.  The blue-collar former Democrats decided to vote Republican not just because of fungible policies and a track record of broken promises.  No, they came over because of Trump.  They believe in him.  Then Trump did something no other Republican president has ever done before: he kept his promises!  Trump received more votes than any Republican in history.  He got 20 million more votes than Reagan.

Image: Donald Trump by Gage Skidmore.  CC BY-SA 2.0.

In 2016, with Trump being a non-politician and coming from the outside, he had to start from scratch.  He had to rely on Washington insiders for key positions, and he brought people with him who were wholly unsuited for the Washington internecine hurly-burly.  But he's past that stage now.  He has his own Rolodex.  He knows where the bodies are buried and how to deal with the long knives.  The almost unbelievable thing about all of this is that Trump managed to achieve all that he accomplished with a RINO swamp that was even more evil than the Democrats.  Trump exposed Paul RYANO for the swamp creature he was, as well as the rest of his ilk, like Mitch McConnell.

Trump also had to operate under the constant pressures of nonstop investigation and impeachment.  He had to survive an attempted coup, led by the Obama-Hillary axis of evil, with a mighty assist from the intelligence services and the FBI.  No president in history faced such an awesome onslaught of power and remained standing — undaunted, fearless, still optimistic about America and her future.

Almost everything that President and Ex-President Trump said and/or predicted has come true.  His stature, competence, and incredibly conservative accomplishments now stand even taller in comparison to the disaster that is Team Joey.  The Democrats have proven, in just a scant year, that their vision of America is a lawless, Marxist, winner-takes-all Stateocracy — a country in which opposing ideas are crushed.  A world in which you bow to the State or pay an enormous price.

The stakes are simply too high to place our bets on the come.  You don't replace Tom Brady with a young upstart who looks good.  You dance with "them what brung ya," especially if he can defeat the forces of evil we face and has proven that he has the right stuff to get the job done, both at home and abroad.

Imagine a Trump administration with a Republican House and Senate, bereft of most of the RINOs, without endless Democrat investigations, complete with a tested Team Trump, delivering on the promise of a Main-Street, America-first, conservative agenda, based on the ideals set forth by the Founding Fathers and enshrined in the Constitution.

That is why it must be Trump in '24.