The Life, Times and Death of Liz Cheney: Women in the Party of a New Found Founding Body: A Case Study of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem
South Dakotas two-term Gov. Kristi Noem has published a memoir and taken on a variety of national issues, including abortion and immigration, and she is expected to run.
The GOP’s first voting events next year will feature a number of women, including herself, in the ranks of current and former officials.
If Trump wanted to get the party’s nomination a third time, Noem would back him. But, also like Haley, she declined to endorse him when he declared formally in November. Noem told The New York Times that Trump did not offer the best chance for the GOP.
Former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, once a name in the conversation for speaker of the House or the national ticket, fell from grace when she defied her Republican colleagues and co-chaired the House Select Committee on the January 6th Attack on the Capitol. Cheney was at least as prominent as any member of that panel in condemning Trump and declared she would do “whatever it takes” to prevent his return to office.
There was speculation that this was a ruse to have a challenge on the former president. After Cheney lost her own primary in August, she had lost her future prospects in the party she had long served.
Ranging beyond the realm of Republican officeholders, there are other women with conservative credentials or points of view who have shown interest in the nation’s highest office as well. This past week when a congressional panel had a hearing on how the Biden administration was “weaponizing” federal agencies against citizens, one witness getting a lot of attention was Tulsi Gabbard.
After leaving the Democratic Party in 2022, she appeared on Fox News and was a critic of both Democrats and social media.
The First Woman President: Sarah Harris, Donald Trump, and the Role of Donald Pence in the 2020 Presidential Campaign – A Tale of Two Faces
Many political observers have long believed the first woman president would achieve that office after first being vice president. And now that could happen at any time, a possibility Harris personifies wherever she goes.
This trend was on full view in the 2020 cycle, when Harris was one of six women participating in the Democrats’ early rounds of presidential debates in the summer of 2019. All of this increases the ante on the part of Republicans, as women now cast more than half the vote for president.
When women ran for the White House it was more to make a point than to win an office, and for a century after the first woman declared herself a protest candidate, it was more to make a point than to win an office. Margaret Chase Smith was the first woman to receive votes in primaries and at the national convention.
In 1984 and 2008 both women were nominated as vice presidents by the major parties. The party’s convention, media coverage and even the contest all had to be changed for a period of weeks.
But ultimately neither could alter the underlying dynamics of those races or supply what may have been lacking in their parties’ presidential nominees. Women voters across party lines were disappointed by supporters who thought these gender breakthrough might motivate them.
A key complicating factor for women contemplating 2024 is the role of Trump. While Haley is his first official challenger, no one expects her to be the last. His failure to clear the field as a former president has been noted.
Strengths: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is the name on the tips of Republicans’ tongues. He’s being described as “Trump without the baggage” or “Trump with a brain.” He attended both Harvard Law School and Yale University. He is more than a generation younger than the former president. He has been governor of a big state — Florida — and gained prominence for his defiance on COVID-19 regulations, immigration and education. While he hasn’t announced his candidacy yet, several state and national polls show that he leads Trump and people in his inner circle may believe that now is the time.
Pence, too, for his part, has been showing up in the early primary states, but not showing well in the polls. Trump’s true believers don’t see him as disloyal, yet Pence seems part of the Trump legacy to those who want the party to move on.
Is it possible to be his running mate if you opposed him in the primaries? Harris’ chances were not killed when she took on Biden in the debates. The other side of the coin was that Harris dropped out before the primaries began and endorsed Biden.
After Hillary, Huckabee, and the First Two Years: Resurrecting the Republican Party after a Weird Election
Some of the posturing may have been done before Huckabee gave the official Republican response to the State of the Union on Feb. 7. That speaking slot has often been seen as an audition for statewide politicians with national ambitions. Sanders used it to deliver a strong message of condemnation against the Biden administration and against Democrats in general, especially on social issues.
She mentioned her role as White House press secretary going to Iraq to visit troops with the President and first lady without mentioning her name, but also included considerable personal information. Many conservatives and Trump supporters criticized her for doing this.
He has not broken with Trump. Huckabee, her father, was once Arkansas’ governor and was also seeking a safe distance. Huckabee ran for president in 2008 and again in 2016, and while he has supported Trump he did not take a job in the Trump administration, pursuing his TBN talk show and speaking engagements.
Some Republicans might be torn between their gratitude for Trump’s assistance and their desire to be part of a new generation of Republican leaders.
Some, such as Rep. Marjorie TaylorGreene ofGeorgia, are too closely associated with Trump to have other options. But someone such as Elise Stefanik, the New York congresswoman who replaced Cheney as the House GOP’s third-ranking leader, might have maneuvering room in either direction.
There also exists the possibility that a resurgent Trump might look beyond current officeholders for an outsider with no second thoughts as his running mate, someone with mediagenic appeal who is willing to embrace his “stolen election” obsession about 2020 with fervor to match his own.
Kari Lake, a former local TV anchor in Phoenix, has shown that kind of devotion to her insistence she was elected governor of Arizona in 2022 — a race she lost. This weekend Lake is visiting Iowa, where the first Republican caucuses will be in a year’s time.
And Palin is still politically active and still telling Alaskans she would be their elected member of Congress right now if it were not for a “weird” voting system voters adopted there by referendum the year before her defeat in 2022.
Gray Not so long ago, the Republican National Committee was predicting continued electoral doom unless the party expanded beyond its mostly white base. The failed Gang of Eight immigration bill was thrown into by Marco Rubio, while Paul Ryan went on a listening tour of poor urban areas and Haley removed the Confederate flag from the State Capitol grounds. For a time, Trump seemed to upend any hope that these savvy rising stars had of one day reaching the White House. Haley’s candidacy will test that assumption, and that’s why she matters. The dream of a friendlier Republican Party may have been snuffed out by Trump. Or did he merely put those ambitions on hold?
If the subtext of the candidacy is that he is Trump shorn of the former president, then the candidacy of Haley is the Republican Party’s shorn of the former president. She embodies everything Trump is not: a woman, an immigrant background, a self-made person. She also would be less vulnerable to Democratic attack lines about Republican bigotry.
Brooks Her immigrant story is a good one, her decision to get rid of the Confederate flag showed common decency. There was a lot of quiet and conspiratorial when she worked for Trump.
Pence’s polarization after the January 6, 2021. Instigation by the U.S. Capitol riot, and what he can do about it
Republicans could have a crowded field of choices to challenge President Biden, who, at age 80, is the oldest person to serve as president — and yet is expected to announce a bid for reelection.
Strengths: Mike Pence’s biggest strength — as well as a big reason he was Trump’s vice president in the first place — is his appeal with white Christian evangelicals. They are a large portion of the Republican base in Iowa. He has a national profile and has been involved in a presidential campaign once already.
His situation seems to surround him. The January 6, 2021. riot at the U.S. Capitol was instigated by Trump and he is under investigation in a number of states. Majorities have consistently disapproved of the job he did as president and continue to have a negative view of Trump personally.
Weaknesses are listed. Her intense opposition to Trump, despite her conservative policy bona fides, makes it difficult to see how she could gain enough support to win the GOP nomination. And with the Republican National Committee mandating that candidates pledge to back whoever wins the nomination, in order to participate in its debates, she may never be seen in one.
It’s hard to see how Pompeo emerges from the Republican Party that is Trump. When asked if he would support Trump in the election of 2024, he said ‘Oh Goodness, no.’ leaving the chance that he would run or support another candidate open. “I’m very hopeful that people won’t choose tweets and celebrity, but rationality and arguments. We will have a real conversation within our party. Though he had high-profile jobs under Trump, he doesn’t have a natural base with any particular segment of the Republican Party, isn’t well known nationally and doesn’t have a very dynamic personality.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu will try to carve out an anti-Trump lane. He has tried to say that his party needs to move on from Trump and that DeSantis’ style of governance is too authoritarian. His home state is a key early-primary state and he’s popular there.
Strengths: Tim Scott is Black and from a key early GOP primary state — South Carolina. While he’s conservative, his diverse background and upbringing bring a different perspective to the white-dominated Republican Party. The only black Republican senator can give a commanding presence and is more optimistic than either of the other two. He has also hoarded millions of dollars and started to reach out to a national donor base.
Weaknesses: It’s not clear the model he won on can be replicated nationally and in a presidential-election year. He did the same thing with Biden in his first year as president, and usually the candidate of the opposing party has an advantage in Virginia governor’s races. The scrutiny of his business and financial dealings would be intense as he is not well known nationally.
Weaknesses: Coming from such a small state is a difficult jumping-off point for a presidential candidate. Fewer than a million people live in South Dakota. It would not be included in the country’s top 40 counties. Noem is untested on a national stage, and with a potentially crowded field of people with higher profiles from larger states, Noem’s likeliest shot at the national ticket is making the shortlist for vice president.
There are some strengths. Asa Hutchinson is Arkansas’ former governor, and that executive experience is usually a good launching point for president. He’s trying to create a position that appeals to Republican-leaning independents while standing against the “chaos” of Trump, and has criticized the former president for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. He has a conservative record on taxes, which could appeal to the GOP base.
Strengths: Liz Cheney, Wyoming’s former congresswoman and the daughter of a former vice president, is well known and prosecutes the case against Trump well, making her potentially formidable on a debate stage.
The former national security adviser under Trump, John Bolton, had a prominent career and had served four Republican presidents. He’s also likely fairly well known to Fox News viewers, as he regularly appeared on the network. He has expertise in foreign policy, which is likely to help him take on Trump, since he had harsh words for the president after he left the administration.