\n\n“Nobody expected the mob of bands that followed the Beatles\u2019 early success would replicate the lads\u2019 triumphs just because they wore their hair long, sported the same suits and drew on the same musical influences. And they didn\u2019t. The imitators wrote hits, filled theaters and even caused young girls to scream, but Beatlemania\u2014almost a mass delusion, a form of ecstatic consciousness provoked just by the toss of a mop-topped head, or an arrival on an airport tarmac\u2014remained highly specific to the actual Beatles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Donald Trump phenomenon is the closest thing we\u2019ve seen in American politics, with the Republican base standing in for smitten teenagers in 1964. So it shouldn\u2019t have come as a surprise that when the base gathered for its annual conclave at CPAC last week, none of Trump\u2019s would-be successors roused more of a response than a group of Fab Four impersonators at a sock hop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They tried\u2014boy, did they try. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), trying to boost his anti-immigration credentials, dropped a quip about the Biden administration\u2019s border policy\u2014\u201cThat\u2019s not catch-and-release,\u201d he said, \u201cthat\u2019s recruit-and-release!\u201d\u2014at which point a \u201cfew polite titters rippled through the ballroom,\u201d reporter Elaina Plott observed<\/a> in the New York Times<\/em>. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) bombed, too, as he tried to out-Trump Trump with an anti-China line that zinged Hunter Biden. (He \u201cpaused for a reaction that never came,\u201d wrote Plott.) Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), the college debate champion and one-time Tea Party darling, treated the session like a stand-up comedy gig, drawing only scattered applause. The only Cruz line that made the crowd roar was one in praise of Dear Leader Trump, the Texas Monthly<\/em><\/a>reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo\u2019s Trump impressions did better, but the winners of the battle of the bands were Govs. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) and Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), both of whom ranked second and third to Trump in CPAC\u2019s 2024 straw presidential poll\u2014but more from their resistance to the pandemic lockdown than their evocation of Trump himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Can nobody in the GOP wear the big man\u2019s big suit and endless red tie? Trump himself got a decent response<\/a> from the \u201cebullient crowd\u201d (Washington Post<\/em>) when he spoke at CPAC, so the base hasn\u2019t tired of his jokes, insults, grievances and bombast. They just needed to hear the original hits as performed by the original hit-maker.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n