volunteered for the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump. Thrilled with Trump’s triumph
R
that year and believing her prayers had been answered, Hunter was crushed by the 2020 election and the resulting presidency of Joe Biden. “I fi rmly believe President
Trump should run for offi ce in 2024,” Hunter, of Rocky Hills, Con- necticut, says now without hesita- tion.
“He put America and its people
fi rst, and I believe the world was a safer and better place because of him.” There are a lot of Rosanne Hunt- ers out there. Brought into politics by Trump’s candidacy, they were key to turning out like-minded voters fi ve years ago for their outsider hero. And now they want him back. Whether Donald Trump should
pursue his old job, whether he will, and what might be the outcome of a Republican nomination fi ght and subsequent general election are not easy questions. That they are being asked and re-asked at GOP forums nearly three years before the next gen- eral election speaks vol- umes about American politics. T rump
BY JOHN GIZZI
John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax.
remains ex- 60 NEWSMAX | OCTOBER 2021
etired state employ- ee Rosanne Hunter prayed hard for the di- rection of the country to change, so in 2016, she
I fi rmly believe
President Trump should run for offi ce in 2024. Trump put America and its people fi rst, and I believe the world was a safer and better place because of him.” — Rosanne Hunter
tremely popular among the grass- roots of his own party — a group that he has enhanced by regener- ating the ranks of activists with followers who hitherto had no in- volvement in politics. “The base continues to stand
with Trump, including the swath of new voters that he brought into the party,” said Arizona businessman Dan Eberhart, who contributed $100,000 to Trump’s 2020 cam- paign and raised even more. “His hold over the Republican
Party is those base voters that other Republicans are afraid to alienate.” An August 2021 Quinnipiac Poll
showed 73 percent of Republican voters felt it “would be good for the country” if Trump ran again. Moreover, the same poll found
61 percent of Republicans feel Trump “will run again” and 48 per- cent of independents agree. Among conservative activ- ists, the verdict is even more over-
whelming. Following an address by Trump
at the Conservative Political Action Conference in which he was wild- ly applauded for calling the 2020 election “a disgrace to our nation” and charging that the “radical left” cheated at the ballot box, a straw poll found that 70 percent favored him to be the Republican nominee in 2024. Coming in a distant second (21
percent) was Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a Trump loyalist.
Not Your Father’s GOP Among Republican powers-that- be, the “Run, Donald, Run” senti- ment runs strong and loud. Evidence of this was ample at
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