You may have thought that after 14 months of relentless media coverage and hype about the 2024 Republican presidential primary contest, the voting to select a candidate has just begun.
You were wrong.
The voting did, in fact, just begin with the Iowa caucuses. And the second state's balloting comes next week in New Hampshire. And then many, many more through February into March with Super Tuesday and even beyond.
Not to mention the opening of several Donald Trump trials and possibly some verdicts.
Trump easily won in hog country this week with 51 percent of the votes. Ron DeSantis was a distant second with 21 percent and Nikki Haley right behind with 19 percent.
So, one down, many more to go.
But wait!
Media has been financially stunned since their Orange Man left the Swamp stage and much of the interest in his unpredictable utterances evaporated. Joe Biden's public statements are scary, often incoherent, and usually rambling.
But they simply do not draw the volume of eyes and online clicks of Trump, which he knows and uses.
So, to the amazement of people who still do follow political news, media this week has reported with grand enthusiasm that the GOP primary contest is just about settled with the man they love to hate but desperately need coming out on top.
For the duration of Trump's term, the Washington Post chronicled virtually daily the accumulating total of the president's lies and falsehoods into the many thousands.
That felt good for the MSNBC crowd and business was brisk.
But with Trump gone and banned from tweeting, the attraction of WaPo and other sites waned considerably. That newspaper that belongs to Amazon's Jeff Bezos has had several rounds of layoffs, internal turmoil, new leadership, and lost income from more than a half-million online subscribers. Advertisers took note.
The bleeding has become so severe over there that apparently there's simply no one left to chronicle the landslide of lies that come out of Joe Biden's mouth just about every time he opens that mouth in public.
So, as much as the mainstream media detests the billionaire, how he behaves, what he says, the campaign promises he keeps, they're not just eager. They're desperate to get this man back into their daily news reports.
That's what ignited this week's audio commentary about media's, in effect, disenfranchising millions of primary voters patiently waiting their turn in our cockamamie candidate selection process.
The most recent audio commentary, which drew an unusual amount of interest, examined the strange, unexcused and still unexplained absence from duty of Joe Biden's Secretary of Defense, the former four-star general Lloyd Austin.
He had, perhaps still has, a serious prostate problem of cancer that required surgery, which was initially described as elective. But that only came after the discovery that the man who served 41 years in the Army had simply disappeared for nearly one week without telling anyone, including the commander in chief.
The trouble is in the military chain of command — not to mention the presidential line of succession — you can't disappear without notice. Such an arrogant absence is dereliction of duty. Ask Bowe Bergdahl.
This week's column examined in detail what's yet to come in this year's preliminary political season. Including the question of televised debates. Both Biden and Trump have dodged them so far for differing reasons.
Will they become only the third pair of candidates in 15 presidential elections to deny voters the opportunity of seeing their prospective leaders duke it out rhetorically on national television? And the first in 52 years?
Finally, my RedState colleague Nick Arama has a delightful post here about a lonely Democrat challenger to Joe Biden, Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota. His new video pokes hilarious fun at Biden for skipping the primary in New Hampshire where voters have demonstrated their disdain for him.
Biden finished fifth there last time. So, he moved South Carolina up to be the first primary election because he did much better there. Alas for that presidential petulance, New Hampshire moved its up to first this coming week.
Biden failed to register as a candidate. So, Rep. Phillips is guaranteed a first place finish and a top-notch embarrassment for his party's incumbent.
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Donald Trump Is a Lock as the GOP Nominee, Unless...
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