The first stirrings of the 2020 GOP primary: What will they tell us about a man who left Washington after leaving Washington in disgrace?
Some of the potential competitors for the Republican nomination in the future are making clear moves towards the race with one of the defining questions of the election about to be answered.
A source familiar with Haley’s plans tells CNN she will launch her campaign in Charleston on February 15. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is promoting a new book on the conservative media circuit and making statements like would-be candidates. And South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott is setting off on a listening tour focusing on faith. The first two stops just happen to include Iowa and his own state – early voting pillars that will frame the GOP primary contest early next year.
Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor is the most formidable potential Trump challenger so far. He attacks what he calls liberal orthodoxies in government and culture. A DeSantis campaign probably won’t arrive for months, after Florida’s legislative session ends and Mr. DeSantis has new policy victories to promote.
The only real test of political viability for the GOP is cast votes a year before the general election. But the first stirrings of the Republican race are important because they will help shape what is already certain to be a turbulent campaign that, given the dominance of election denialism in the GOP’s grassroots, could be another election that tests US democracy.
It would not be possible to say that the former president had weakness in his rivals. But Trump’s so-so fundraising to date, his low-energy launch last year and his infrequent campaign appearances underscore his electoral liabilities, especially after his often disastrous midterm interventions.
Still, having multiple rivals would help Trump, as it did in 2016, since the winner-take-all nature of most Republican primaries allows a candidate with a mere plurality of votes to build up big delegate leads in a crowded field.
In other words, if Trump can split the opposition, he can win the primary, but that’s no guarantee for the general election given that the twice-impeached former president left Washington in disgrace after trying to steal an election and fomenting a mob attack on the US Capitol.
What Will Nikki Haley Do if He Runs? A Tale of Two Races for the VP and the Dilated Candidate
Trump had said in the weekend that he had told her to “do it” when she called him. He put out a video on what Haley would do if he ran for president.
McCarthy She is the sort of running mate the party would like to have for McCain in 2008 in order to appeal to a more diverse and feminist America. But Trump changed the dream of the G.O.P.’s destiny: appealing to the working class, rather than to a wider ethnic profile within the class of educated professionals, is what Republicans voters now expect. Haley is too representative of the party elite’s desires to be seen as a plausible tribune of the working class.
But if Ms. Haley can gain traction — if she can raise big money, if she can land a punch on the debate stage, if she can draw applause for linking immigration and inflation, or attacking Mr. Putin — it may say something about the appetite for her brand of conservatism.
Her credentials look formidable in isolation but less so when looking at the party’s values. For example, is there really a market in the GOP for a more multicultural, less strident delivery model for Trump? The ex-president’s profanity and bombast create a more emotional connection with his biggest fans than with the liberal government and media elites.
For instance, after leaving the administration on good terms, she rebuked her party for following Trump down a “path he shouldn’t have” taken with his election denialism that led to the January 6, 2021, insurrection. But with Trump still a powerful figure in the GOP, she repositioned herself in October 2021.
And the former South Carolina governor’s casting around for the GOP sweet spot has some observers wondering exactly how she will build a sufficiently wide support base to take her to the nomination.
There is just enough room for three people in this race. The more anti-Trumper is also called the Trump lite, which is where Ron DeSantis is, and then Trump himself, according to former Illinois Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger. “Nikki Haley’s struggle is going to be: she’s been pro-Trump, anti-Trump, she said she isn’t going to run if he runs, now he is going to run. She isn’t having a natural constituency yet. The smart lady will see how she goes.
I spent time in Iowa and New Hampshire. This is not random,” he said at a forum in Washington, DC, on Wednesday. We are just trying to figure it out. It is a huge decision to say you believe you should lead the United States of America.
The First Time: Meeting Ms. Haley in a Town Hall Gym Before the 2012 South Carolina Republican Primary, Prior to the 2016 General Election
Pompeo appears to have an even more acute positioning issue than Haley, since he was the ex-president’s effective enforcer at the State Department and while director of the CIA, and shared many of the populist, nationalist foreign policy instincts of his former boss. Almost everything that a GOP primary voter could get from Pompeo, they might be able to get from Trump, although the West Point graduate and former Kansas congressman would no doubt argue that he boasts a calmer temperament.
I saw her the first time. It was in a high school gym before the 2012 South Carolina Republican presidential primary. She was at a town hall where Tim Scott was a congressman. The first woman governor of South Carolina, the first Indian American ever elected to statewide office there, the youngest governor in the country. Whatever that “thing” is that talented politicians possess, Ms. Haley had it. She seemed to like people and people liked her. She made your conversations feel special and important by not talking to you. She seemed to have unlimited potential.
The politician who saw herself as a role model for women and immigrants transformed herself into everything she claimed to oppose: By 2021, Ms. Haley was openly embracing her inner MAGA with comments like, “Thank goodness for Donald Trump or we never would have gotten Kamala Harris to the border.” She praised the man she had vowed never to stop fighting while attacking women and immigrants. She had gone from saying “I have to tell you, Donald Trump is everything I taught my children not to do in kindergarten” to “I don’t want us to go back to the days before Trump.”
The decision to get rid of the Confederate flag is a good example of common decency. On the other hand, there was an awful lot of complicity and silence when she served under Trump.
Mike Pence and the House of Representatives: The Case for a Democratic Vice President? The Answer to a Problem of Mike Pompeo
Mike Pence. The former vice president has stumped for midterm candidates, toured early-voting states to sign a memoir and poached staff members from rivals. His popularity with Republican voters has decreased since he refused to block the 2020 election, but he is hesitant to criticize Trump. Mr. Pence doesn’t seem to be rushing to make a decision.
Mike Pompeo. Mr. Pompeo has an imposing résumé: congressman, C.I.A. director, secretary of state. A new memoir allowed him to tour and test out a presidential message. A home-state paper, The Kansas City Star, said the book reads “like a guy at a bar trying to show his toughness.” Mr. Pompeo expects to make a decision in the next few months.
Other people are Republicans. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland and Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire are seen as weighing 2024 bids. There’s a possibility that Senator Cruz of Texas, Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Liz Cheney lost their seats because of their involvement in the Capitol riot inquiry.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/15/upshot/nikki-haley-republicans-president.html
Can the Old Reagan Playbook Be Dusted Off? The Case for a Cold War, Higher Military Spending, Cooperation, and More Cooperation
There will be plenty of other opportunities to dust off the old Reagan playbook if she so chooses. She could argue that lower government spending, free trade and more legal immigration is the textbook solution to high inflation and a soaring national debt. She could even argue that Mr. Trump’s big government spending and trade wars helped contribute to inflation in the first place. The 1980’s were the years when neoliberalism took off.
The opportunities on foreign policy are fairly clear as well. With Chinese balloons in the air and Russian troops advancing on the ground, a hawkish candidate should find it straightforward to argue for higher military spending and closer cooperation with allies — and to argue against cozying up to the likes of Vladimir Putin. It would be easy to imagine a chance to attack Mr. Trump.
Ms. Haley’s strength in the polls may not be a great test of the electoral appeal of traditional conservatism. She’s a first-time candidate with single-digit support in the polls. Almost all presidential candidates who start in the single digits end at zero, and that usually doesn’t say much about the strength of their ideological faction.