“Trump is toast.”

So proclaimed National Review’s Andrew McCarthy after the most shocking Republican Party flop since, oh, 1948, which was followed by the least shocking Republican event imaginable, Donald Trump’s Tuesday announcement of a third run for president.

McCarthy joins a significant lineup of conservative pundits and media in blaming the GOP’s embarrassment on Trump and his demands for 2020 election denial with resulting candidate picks. Democrats took the Grand Rapids, Michigan, area by 12.8%, for goodness sake. The former federal prosecutor contends that Trump has not only surrendered his 2024 chances but is certain to face federal indictment.

Well, no matter what such elite conservatives suppose, Trump retains a massive grassroots following. However, the first post-election poll of Republicans and Republican leaners, from YouGov, put Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the 2024 front-runner with 42% to Trump’s 35%. A month earlier YouGov gave Trump 45% vs. DeSantis’s 35%. A poll of Texas Republicans was similar.

An intriguing Wall Street Journal package recently offered scholars’ speculations on what Russia will look like in the long term whenever Vladimir Putin’s reign ends. The media could borrow the idea to explore what the American religion landscape might look like when Donald Trump no longer rules the Republicans, whether that’s in the primaries or Election Day 2024, or Inauguration Day 2029.

If you grab the theme, also run this one past your sources: Has this secularized, former Mainline Protestant and onetime “reality” TV personality had more impact on American religion than any member of the clergy during these years?

Other assorted post-election musings.

As GetReligion often observes, Catholics are the swing vote to watch, since white evangelicals are locked into lopsided Republican loyalty (this long before the Trump years).