Republican primaries 2024

The summertime auguries bode badly for former president Donald Trump, who has made a business of harmlessly splashing his feet in the Rubicon. He has reportedly made up his mind about running for president again in 2024 but won't say whether he'll cross the river yet — so you'll just have to keep giving him your money to find out. Naturally, people are growing bored and frustrated with the spectacle. QAnon supporters are probably Trump's most fervent followers, and they received his recent rally in Wellington, Ohio, with a sigh of ennui. Apart from the standard artillery blasting traitorous RINOs, Trump railed against the rising tide of crime and ridiculed 'woke' generals. But the diehards snored.

The term ‘Florida man’ usually comes loaded with negative connotations, but not if you’re talking about Ron DeSantis. The first-term Republican governor’s approval ratings have reached 64 percent; a recent poll had him at 55 percent, still high for an unabashed conservative in a swing state. Enterprising apparel companies are already selling ‘DeSantis 2024’ gear — and a Trafalgar poll of likely contenders (excluding Trump) shows DeSantis leading the pack with 35 percent support among Republican voters. The Florida governor also bested Trump in a straw poll conducted during June's Western Conservative Summit in Denver. DeSantis’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has earned him adoration from the right.

The vice presidency, as even the most remedial student of American politics will tell you, is not the most exciting gig in the world. Our first veep, John Adams, famously hated it so much that he called it ‘the most insignificant Office that ever the Invention of Man contrived’. It’s a sleepy position, one that doesn’t typically involve, say, surviving a mob that believes you’re conspiring to steal the election away from your own ticket. Yet this is the fate that’s befallen Michael Richard Pence. Prior to January 6, Pence had been wraithlike even by vice-presidential standards, overshadowed by one of the most inescapable presidents in American history. The attack on the Capitol fixed the attention of the world upon him. Would he carry out his constitutional duties?

Say what you want about the media in 2021, they never let a dream die. For over a year now, the activists who play journalists on TV have been hell-bent on destroying Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. The press is trying, with all their might, to turn him into the second most evil man in America. The latest hit job, by 60 Minutes’s Sharyn Alfonsi, was particularly egregious because of CBS’s incredibly sloppy execution. At a press conference, Alfonsi asked DeSantis about a scandal she was desperately trying to gin up. Her spiel was this — Publix received exclusive rights to the vaccination distribution from the DeSantis administration because the grocery chain had contributed $100,000 to the governor’s PAC.

Donald Trump is not retiring. He’s not disappearing to live the range life and he has no intentions of remaining quiet over the coming months and years. Acknowledging his loss somewhat for the first time from the CPAC stage this weekend was simply a way of paving a golden road heading into 2022 and 2024. Trump still believes he’s the future of the Republican party, even as a one-term defeated president pushing 75 years old. He clearly still has enthusiasm of the CPAC crowd — but straw polls and speeches will not be the deciding factor for Trump in 2024 so much as the success of candidates he backs heading into 2022 in GOP primaries, designed to upset incumbents Trump considers unfavorable.

Forty minutes into Donald Trump’s remarks at CPAC, I’d formed a conclusion. Donald Trump hasn’t just taken over the Republican party, I thought, the Republican party has taken over Donald Trump. The speech got off to a slow start, with Trump’s familiar critiques of illegal immigration failing to elicit much excitement from the audience. Was this tried and true, as far as they were concerned, or just tired and true? Soon enough Trump was uttering phrases that any Republican leader of the last 30 years might have recited: socialism, radical Democrats, exceptional nation, Judeo-Christian values. Farmers this and farmers that. Mostly fine — all routine. The urgency was gone. But the speech kept going. And while little was new, Trump started to sound like Trump again.

Donald Trump was over an hour late for his first speech since leaving the White House at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Florida. The former president finally emerged at 4:47 p.m., kissing the American flag as the PA system blasted Lee Greenwood’s ‘God Bless the USA’. He waited, applauding the crowd for the duration of the song before beginning his prepared remarks at 4:50 p.m. ‘Hello CPAC — do you miss me yet?’ he asked the crowd. Trump quickly laid to rest some of the stories that have swirled since his departure from office. ’We’re not starting new parties,’ Trump said. ‘We have the Republican party…that was fake news.’ He then launched into the issue everyone expected him to tackle: immigration.

While Donald Trump appears to have lost the 2020 presidential election, Trump’s agenda of populism focused on the working class and putting America first won, well, bigly. Contrary to the Democrats’ claim that Joe Biden’s razor-thin win gave them a mandate, the only mandate America’s voters gave this year is that they want more Trumpism. To wit, the swing of roughly the same number of voters in a handful of states by which Trump won in 2016 is the gap of Biden’s win. Going forward, Republicans must focus on maintaining that sentiment and fight off attempts by NeverTrumpers and Establishment Republicans to throw Trumpism out with Trump.

Now that the conventions are over and the general election is joined, it’s worth pausing to ask if our nominating processes really reflect the will of voters and fully enfranchise all voices in our republic. As state party chairs from opposite parties, we see the incredible promise of adopting ranked choice voting to protect against wasted votes, ensure convention delegates reflect the will of the people and upgrade our outdated caucus system, as a new report from the Unite America Institute details. Vicki, who chairs the Kansas Democratic party, oversaw the use of ranked choice voting in her state for this year’s presidential primary.

Former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley effectively launched her 2024 presidential campaign during her Monday night speech at the Republican National Convention to much media fanfare. Less noticed was an equally qualified and camera-ready Republican woman that is arguably much better positioned to carry the party torch post-Trump: South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. The media was split on reactions to Haley's audition: some mocked her declaration that America isn't a racist country, but others applauded her as the GOP's own 'return to normalcy' and 'compassionate' candidate. Voters who support the Trump agenda ought to be wary of this praise.