Is the 2024 Republican Presidential Nomination Race Already Over?
Not yet, but the trajectory of the race is increasingly clear.
I’m Michael A. Cohen, and this is Truth and Consequences: A no-holds-barred look at the absurdities, ’ absurdities, hypocrisies, and surreality. If you were sent this email or are a free subscriber and would like to become a paid subscriber, you can sign up here.
On Friday afternoon, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that he will not seek the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2024. The practical effect of Pompeo’s decision is that now someone else will have to finish next to last in next year’s Iowa caucus. But in the larger scheme of things, Pompeo’s decision is a telling sign of where the Republican presidential race is likely headed — with Donald Trump as the party’s standard bearer for a third straight election.
Pompeo, like a number of other Republican presidential aspirants, was smart enough to read the writing on the wall — namely that he wasn’t going to win but that challenging Trump is more trouble than it was worth. As I’ve written before, the smart move for most Republicans not interested in serving as Trump’s running mate in 2024 is to wait until 2028. Ordinarily, there is some upside in a long-shot presidential run because it builds up name recognition and perhaps positions a candidate to try again four years later. But when you consider Trump’s desire for vengeance against anyone who challenges him and the likely embarrassment of a public political pratfall, the benefits of a 2024 presidential bid are more difficult to discern. I suspect it’s why Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin is also taking his name out of consideration.
Ordinarily, the winnowing of the primary field would be bad for Trump, but when you consider who is running (and who is likely to get in), it looks like it won’t be a huge problem for the former president. Consider some of the stories about Republican presidential contenders over the past week.
When Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign announced its first quarterly fundraising haul earlier this month, the figure sounded impressive.
The former U.N. ambassador’s campaign said it had raised $11 million between her mid-February launch and the end of the quarter on March 31 … But after Haley filed her first-quarter report to the Federal Election Commission late Saturday, an altogether different story has emerged. Her campaign’s math didn’t add up.
What Haley’s campaign and two affiliated groups actually raised was about $8.3 million. The discrepancy between the Haley campaign’s public statements and the numbers on the filings appear to be a case of double-counting.
To be sure, $8.3 million in the first quarter is not a bad number but is less than half of the $19 million raised by Trump in the same period. But getting caught lying about her fundraising haul is deeply embarrassing.
Already in full campaign mode a day after announcing his intent to run for president, the conservative lawmaker was outside a New Hampshire diner when reporters confronted him on where he stood on federal abortion restrictions.
After hemming and hawing when one reporter asked him about a federal judge’s recent decision to suspend access to an FDA-approved abortion pill, Scott was asked whether he supported fellow South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham’s proposal to ban abortions nationwide … “I would simply say that the fact of the matter is, when you look at the issue of abortion, one of the challenges that we have, we continue to go through the most restrictive conversations without broadening the scope and taking a look at the fact that…I’m 100 percent pro-life,” the South Carolina lawmaker stumbled.
“I never walk away from that,” he added. “But the truth of the matter is that when you look at the issues on abortion, I start with the very important conversation I had in a banking hearing where I was sitting in my office and listening to Janet Yellen, the secretary of the Treasury, talk about an increase in the labor force participation rate for African-American women who are in poverty by having abortions.”
Continuing to not answer the question, Scott went on to fixate on Yellen while insisting that there needed to be a “serious” national discussion about the issue.
If you’re running for president in 2023 and can’t answer a simple question about your abortion stance, you’re not a serious presidential candidate. And this isn’t the first time Scott struggled to answer an abortion question. Perhaps this is a by-product of serving as a senator in a red state and not getting asked many tough policy questions, but Scott does not appear prepared for the rough and tumble of a presidential campaign.
Ron DeSantis
I went over this on Friday, but DeSantis’s presidential bid is self-destructing. He’s getting hammered by Trump over his past support for cuts to Social Security and Medicare (the pudding ad on the left). And the 6-week abortion ban he signed at 11:30 PM on Thursday will kill his support among not just Democrats but likely some Republicans as well. Amazingly, DeSantis traveled to Liberty University this week and didn’t mention the abortion ban. What exactly is the point of taking a hardline position on abortion and not bringing it up when speaking to hard-core conservatives at a university founded by Jerry Falwell? I’m legitimately baffled by the game DeSantis is playing here. Does he think swing voters will not notice that he signed one of the toughest abortion bans in the country if he doesn’t talk about it publicly? And if you signed the bill to win over anti-abortion conservatives, why not try to get some political mileage out of it?
Then over the weekend, there was an absolutely brutal piece in the Financial Times with Tomas Peterffy, a billionaire GOP donor, deriding DeSantis as too “extreme” to win the presidency. According to Peterffy, “Because of his stance and abortion and book banning … myself, and a bunch of friends, are holding our powder dry.” He says he no longer sees DeSantis as having the momentum to defeat Trump.
Oof.
Trump is in The Cat Bird Seat
Marsha Blackburn might be the most dim-witted member of the US Senate, which is really saying something in a body that includes Ron Johnson and Tommy Tuberville. But just because she’s dumb doesn’t mean she’s stupid.
Blackburn joins Senators Hagerty (TN), Hyde-Smith (MS), Mullin (OK), Vance (OH), Graham (SC), Tuberville (AL), Schmitt (MO), and Budd (NC) in endorsing Trump. What do these nine Republicans have in common? They all represent solid red states, with the possible exception of Budd in North Carolina, which is more lean red. These endorsements are emblematic of the GOP’s Trump problem: the political incentive for red-state Republicans is to remain on Trump’s good side. If Blackburn et al. thought that Trump was in trouble for 2024 or that his voters were abandoning him, they might go in a different political direction. But clearly, they are reading the tea leaves and are choosing the safest political option.
They are also making a political judgment about DeSantis. They don’t think he is strong enough to beat Trump. Even if they wanted to rid themselves of the former president (which I imagine most would prefer), there’s simply no good reason to get in a pissing match with Trump when he is more likely than not going to win the GOP nomination in 2024.
What makes things even more difficult for the “not Trump again” crowd is that lane is now firmly held by DeSantis. If he gets in the race, it will be more difficult for any other Republican to raise enough money and build up the name recognition necessary to compete effectively in 2024. I suspect that’s another reason most ambitious Republicans have abandoned the presidential race: Trump and DeSantis have scared them away. Yet, there’s increasingly less reason to think DeSantis has what it takes to seriously challenge Trump.
On January 21, Trump had a 13-point lead over DeSantis. Now it’s nearly 29 points. And DeSantis has been a disaster over the past few months — flip-flopping on support for Ukraine, signing a 6-week abortion ban and then acting like it didn’t happen, getting hammered daily by Trump and refusing to respond in kind, and doing little to excite GOP voters. DeSantis’s nomination strategy appears to be sticking as close as possible to Trump on policy (even trying to outflank him on cultural issues) while at the same time making the argument that he is more electable. The abortion ban demolishes the latter claim, but even without that political problem, he’s asking the GOP electorate to vote with their head and not their hearts (insert your own joke here).
If DeSantis decides not to run (and I’d put the odds at 20-30 percent), it doesn’t really solve the not Trump-ers’ problem. First, Trump will look politically invincible, and it’s hard to imagine any other Republican not already in the race risking a DeSantis-style crash and burn. Second, it might be too late for a serious Trump alternative to emerge — unless one thinks that Haley, Scott, or the other collection of GOP also-rans (Pence, Christie, Hutchison, Sununu) can give Trump a run for his money and there’s little evidence they can.
I’ll be the first to acknowledge that you can only glean so much from polls this early in a nomination fight. There is a more than reasonable chance that more criminal indictments will be levied on Trump, which might give GOP voters pause when they actually have to cast a ballot. But we also know that plenty of Trump supporters (maybe 30-40 percent of the party) will vote for him no matter what. So to beat Trump, Republicans need a reasonable alternative. The current sorting out process of GOP presidential aspirants and the endorsements of Republican elected officials suggest that the party’s primary voters aren’t going to get one. Or if they do, it will be one with little party support or the resources to tangle with Trump.
Look, I’m not excited about it, either. I’ve spent the last nearly 8 years writing about Trump, and it’s exhausting. But it’s very difficult to look at the current trajectory of the GOP nomination fight and conclude that anyone but Trump will win.
Today In Bob Dylan
Dylan is currently touring in Japan, and he’s been playing a bunch of Grateful Dead tunes. His first-ever version of “Truckin’” is pretty strong.
He also played “Not Fade Away,” which is a Buddy Holly song, but the Dead played it live 566 times.
This version of “Brokedown Palace” didn’t get far because Bob couldn’t remember the words.
Surprise, Blackburn has her head up her ass, or even more likely just lying it off. Like every other Trumprat concerning everything she babbled about TraitorTrump
I just love your columns and have subscribed for quite awhile. I like you even better on Lawrence's show but I understand why you can't do much of that anymore. I don't know or even care now how you ended up with the orange menace. You've paid for that! What you've shared has shed so much needed information. I hope Trump ends up in jail, but if not, broke, disgraced and far below you!!!