The 2024 Presidential Campaign: Expectations for the Semi-Inclusive former president and his stalled rivals as they move toward the nomination
One of the defining early questions of the 2024 presidential election seems about to be answered with some of the ex-president’s potential rivals for the Republican nomination making clear moves toward the race.
A source familiar with Haley’s plans tells CNN that she is expected to launch her campaign in Charleston on February 15. There is a kind of political throat clearing noises similar to that which would-be candidates make when they promote a new book. 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.
This sudden flurry of activity follows Trump’s initial-two state campaign swing last weekend, which saw the former president slam another potential rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who he claims is showing disloyalty by considering his own run. This sparked a counter-punch from a rising star of Republican politics, who pointed out that he had won reelection.
Increasingly clear indications of several forming campaigns are notable because they appear to show that Trump, who has been the most influential force in the GOP ever since 2016, is not so prohibitively formidable that he cannot be challenged by serious rivals.
It would be too much to say that his rivals sense weakness given the former president’s deeply loyal bond with activist Republicans who decide primaries. 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.
If Trump can split the opposition, then he will win the primary, but he will not win the general election as the disgraced former president ruined Washington by attempting to steal an election.
What is the vision for America that Haley saw before deciding to run for the presidency? A question of faith, humility, empathy and humility
I would want to know what vision for America they had. What exactly is Haley offering that is distinctly different from the Generic Republican that Donald Trump (whom she reportedly asked first before deciding to announce her candidacy) became? She is selling the idea that she is somehow both distinct enough to separate herself from the former president she continues to support and similar enough to win the nomination with this Republican Party. I don’t believe it.
“It is time for a new generation. It is time for more leadership. In an interview with Fox News, Haley said she lost the last seven popular votes for president. It’s time we put a Republican in there that can be the one to win the election.
Yet the most fundamental question that Haley will face is whether the Republican base, which has rewarded culture warriors, extreme “Make America Great Again” rhetoric and election denialists, has any interest at all in what she plans to sell.
Her credentials look formidable in isolation, but less so when considering values of the party she is seeking to join. For example, is there really a market in the GOP for a more unifying, multicultural, less strident delivery vehicle for Trump’s “America First” creed? The ex-president created a greater emotional connection with his fans than with liberals because of his frequent profanity, laceration and bombast.
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. She shifted her position in October 2021, because of Trump’s popularity.
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.
If there was a suggestion that the Republican Party should not support Haley because she is the Republican Party shorn of the former president, it would be taken as meaning that the candidacy of DeSantis is meant to convey that he isTrump shorn of the former president. A woman, a minority, an immigrant background, a self made person, without having to say a word she embodies everything Trump thinks America isn’t. She wouldn’t be as susceptible to Democratic attack lines about Republican bigotry.
The Momentous Decision to Be the Leader of the United States of America: Memories of an Indian Woman in Washington, DC, During the 2016 South Carolina Primary
“I’ve spent time in Iowa and New Hampshire. This is not random,” he said at a forum in Washington, DC, on Wednesday. “We’re just trying to figure our way through this. He said that it was a momentous decision to say you believed you should be the leader of the United States of America.
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 remember seeing Haley the first time. The high school gym was used for the 2012 South Carolina Republican presidential primary. Tim Scott, who was then a congressman, was holding a raucous town hall, and Ms. Haley was there to cheer him on. The first Indian American ever elected to statewide office in South Carolina was the youngest governor in the country. Whatever that “thing” is that talented politicians possess, Ms. Haley had it. People liked her, and more important, she seemed to like people. She talked with you, not to you, and made routine conversations feel special and important. She seemed to have so much potential.
Ms. Haley became everything she claimed to be against by the year 2021, when she was able to use her position as a role model for women and immigrants. In one sentence, she managed to attack women and immigrants while praising the man she had vowed never to stop fighting. 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.”
Brooks Her immigrant story is a good one, her decision to get rid of the Confederate flag showed common decency. On the other hand, there was an awful lot of complicity and silence when she served under Trump.