Trump's legal troubles have emboldened his political rivals, who are now taking a more aggressive approach. They know that backing down now would only embolden Trump, and they are likely to continue their offensive moves as the 2024 election approaches.
For months now, the GOP frontrunner has assumed that he can bully and insult, that he can create carveouts from GOP requirements not afforded to other candidates; that he can flout not only the law but also political decorum with impunity; and that this would all be one-directional, with his opponents too cowed to give as good as they get. But now several of those opponents have begun taking baby steps to show that this isn’t the case.
Once they’ve embarked down this road, given Trump’s penchant for vengeance politics, there’s really no turning back. In other words, as a matter of self-survival if nothing else, having started to intimate that Trump’s criminal propensities render him unfit for office, the GOP’s presidential hopefuls will be compelled by circumstances to launch ever-more forceful critiques of Trump and of his legal difficulties in the coming weeks.
While the conventional wisdom is that Trump is a shoo-in for the nomination, I’ve never entirely bought into that. Six months is a long time in politics, even at the best of times. When the leading candidate is facing scores of serious felony indictments, it’s an eternity. If Trump’s rival candidates finally find their footing and go onto the attack, if they finally conjure up the language that they need to hold Trump to account for his slew of criminal actions and to explain to their base just how dangerous to democratic institutions his rhetoric and actions are, it’s entirely possible that the GOP primary season will yet throw up some unexpected results.
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