2024 election

What if the problem for Ron DeSantis isn’t that he resembles the spiraling candidacies of the past, but that he’s emulating someone who had a great start, then turned a plateau into a cascade? The general experience in Republican presidential flameouts over the past decade and a half has been the very obvious crash and burn. We have Rudy Giuliani in 2008, who botched his Houston abortion speech then said he would wait until Florida and dropped from a 44 percent lead into utter ignominy. We have 2012’s Rick Perry, who surged to a 29 percent lead over Mitt Romney’s 17 percent in the summer of 2011, only to drop out in the same place he announced, South Carolina.

This week a new Morning Consult poll — a qualifier for the first Republican primary debate — shed new light on the effectiveness of the various campaign strategies employed by the 2024 primary candidates. Former president Donald Trump, unsurprisingly, leads the field significantly; 55 percent of expected GOP voters say they would vote for Trump if the primary or caucus were held in their state today. Florida governor Ron DeSantis is in second place, trailing Trump by a whopping thirty-five points. How did Trump manage so quickly to neuter his strongest challenger, who was adored by conservatives for his common-sense Covid policies and “war on woke” in Florida?

They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and we are seeing that truism play out in real time with what C-list Republican presidential candidates are doing to qualify for the presidential primary debates. While it’s increasingly unclear if former president Donald Trump will even appear on the debate stage himself, candidates such as North Dakota governor Doug Burgum are trying something new out: paying people to recruit more donors. The routes being taken by these also-ran candidates are slightly different. America Strong & Free PAC, which is backing former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, is offering to make some small-dollar bundlers contractors by paying them for every new donor they recruit, Cockburn can first report.

The Trump-DeSantis Twitter wars are raging on — and now some real celebrity is involved. Caitlyn Jenner, the transgender woman formerly known as Bruce, previously said in 2021 that she would support Donald Trump if he ran for president in 2024. The Olympic champion in the decathlon also said in an interview in April that the country needs an "alpha male" like Trump in the White House. The DeSantis camp drew the ire of Jenner and other LGBTQ+ Republicans with a new ad attacking Trump for various statements he made in support of Pride month and trans people using the bathrooms of their chosen gender.

Miami mayor Francis X. Suarez should pick Gary “Aleppo” Johnson for his 2024 running mate. After a revealing interview on The Hugh Hewitt Show Tuesday morning, it seems the two are both woefully unaware of foreign policy.  Suarez was taking a hardline against China when Hewitt asked him if he would make the Uighurs a part of his campaign. “What — the what, what's a Uighur?” Suarez responded, parroting Johnson’s famous “What is Aleppo?” gaffe during the 2016 election. https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1673687808282697728 After Hewitt scolded the presidential hopeful for his ignorance, Suarez promised, “I’ll look at — what’d you call it, a 'Weeble?’” Cockburn can’t help but think Suarez’s blunder is a bit worse than Johnson.

Seventy-two-year-old entertainment mogul and campaign advisor Jeffrey Katzenberg has some sage advice for President Biden: eighty is the new sixty.  In the Wall Street Journal, Katzenberg encouraged Biden to “own” his age and tout his longevity and wisdom as assets. Katzenberg pointed to Harrison Ford and Mick Jagger, similarly geriatric celebrities who still make splashes in their industries, as style models for Biden. Cockburn can’t help but think Katzenberg is onto something here. Imagine: Joe Biden and the Trials of Burisma — that's sure to help with the youth vote. And as long as there aren’t any sandbags present, Biden could do well to launch a stadium tour when he hits the campaign trail.

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie has come out against banning sex changes for minors, putting him at odds not just with the conservative base of the GOP, but with a large majority of Americans. "I don't think that the government should ever be stepping in to the place of the parents in helping to move their children through a process where those children are confused or concerned about their gender," Christie said in a CNN interview Sunday. "The fact is that folks who are under the age of eighteen should have parental support, and guidance, and love as they make all the key decisions of their life, and this should not be one that's excluded by the government in any way.