2024 U.S. Election of President and Vice President

[Albany Rifles]

I wonder who Russia will favor in the 2024 Presidential Election....

Anyone not named Biden.

[TopHatter]

Trump continues to suck the air out of the GOP primary
It wasn’t long ago that many Republicans believed the party might finally be ready to move past former President Donald Trump. Nikki Haley was running for president. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was embarking on a book tour, and a raft of other prominent GOPers were visiting early primary states.

But in the span of a week, the script for the earliest stages of the 2024 primary was written; and once again Trump was the axis around which it all turned.

“It’s Groundhog Day,” said Mike Madrid, the Republican strategist who was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project.

While Trump’s approval ratings may be slipping and Republican voters tell pollsters they are willing to look elsewhere, a series of recent developments has kept the party fixated on him and the scandals that defined his time and office. Washington D.C. and the largest conservative news outlet have spent days reliving the Jan. 6 riot. And the specter of a Trump indictment in New York portends an early primary season spent relitigating his record.

“There’s no question he’s the giant in the middle of the room, and other people will define themselves in comparison to him,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster.

In recent days, Trump said he will “absolutely” stay in the race if he is indicted and that it would likely “enhance my numbers.” Far from distancing himself from the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6 — a general election liability with independents and pro-democracy Republicans — Trump has suggested pardoning some Jan. 6 defendants and recently collaborated on a song with some of them. More traditionalist Republicans winced at that — and again when Fox’s Tucker Carlson aired footage downplaying violence at the Capitol.

“Just reliving the worst moment of the Trump presidency is probably not exactly what the doctor ordered for 2024,” Ayres said.

For any other presidential candidate or any down-ballot Republican next year, said one Republican strategist granted anonymity to discuss the dynamics of the campaign frankly, the “huge risk” is that “we have to talk about Jan. 6 on the campaign trail.”

“God, I don’t want to be on this side of that issue,” he said.

The primary was always going to be, first and foremost, about the former president — who remains, despite his foibles, the frontrunner in the 2024 field. But after a less-than-red-wave midterm and the first few lackluster weeks of Trump’s campaign, it appeared he might not singularly set the terms of the debate. It was time for a “new generation,” Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, said when she launched her campaign. Republicans, said New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu — a potential candidate — would not choose “yesterday’s leadership.”

The problem for Republicans is that Trump is making it impossible to run anything other than yesterday’s campaign.

In Washington, Carlson’s relitigating of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol on Fox News forced Republicans to answer new batteries of questions about an event they’d been eager to forget — reminiscent of the Trump tweets they’d been forced, awkwardly, to respond to throughout his term. It sparked intraparty debates about whether the insurrection had, in fact, been essentially peaceful and led to accusations that those in the party who called it a dark day were ideological squishes.

Then came news that Trump had been invited to testify before a New York grand jury investigating his involvement in hush money payments during the 2016 campaign, raising the prospect of a bombshell criminal case that would again keep Trump as a central litmus test for the party: would fellow Republicans decry the prosecution or turn on the former president?

“Ignore it, deflect it all you want,” said Mike Noble, the chief of research and managing partner at the Arizona-based polling firm OH Predictive Insights. “This is, right now, going to be the Trump show … The oxygen is just going to be sucked out of the room focusing on Trump.”

The effects were already evident in the nascent campaign. In announcing last week that he would not run for president, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan pointed to Trump, saying he feared a “pile up” of low-polling candidates preventing an alternative candidate from “rising up.”

Vivek Ramaswamy — the wealthy biotech entrepreneur and longshot candidate — went the opposite way, diving right into Trump’s orbit. By mid-week, he was calling for “due process” for those arrested in the Jan. 6 riot.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, meantime, took his biggest swing yet at Trump, telling a crowd at the Gridiron dinner on Saturday that “history will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6.”

Even DeSantis, who has largely sidestepped the former president, appears unlikely to avoid him for long. His visit on Friday to Iowa came with Trump right over his shoulder, with Trump set to follow DeSantis into the first-in-the-nation caucus state on Monday.

And then there are the potential candidates who, by virtue of their resumes, are already inextricably tied to Trump. Haley, Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were all part of his administration.

“It feels like candidates are trying to break away from talking about Trump, but keep getting pulled back in,” said Bob Heckman, a Republican strategist who has worked on nine presidential campaigns. “That’s all good for Trump for two reasons. One, it keeps him relevant, and two, I think it’s what he wants. He wants to be the center of attention.”

Trump's likely to stay there, too, as multi-candidate events pick up this spring — followed by debates in which Republicans will be pressed for commentary on the riot and other elements of his tenure.

Already, lanes in the GOP primary are constricting in ways that nod to Trump’s strength, with Hogan’s announcement serving as a tacit acknowledgement of the lack of room for any outspoken Trump critic. Former Rep. Liz Cheney, the Wyoming Republican who became the GOP’s most prominent antagonist of Trump, hastaken an appointment as a professor of practice at University of Virginia. Former Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial, became a president ... of the University of Florida.

In the GOP primary, said former Illinois Rep. Joe Walsh — who unsuccessfully challenged Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2020 — “It’s going to be Trump, or it’s going to be the Trumpiest son-of-a-bitch out there.”

“That,” he added, “is what this base wants.”

In a normal reelection year for a sitting president, the opposition party would spend its primary at least partly focused on the incumbent — setting up a referendum on President Joe Biden in the fall. But as it was in the midterms in 2022 and, before that — in his own, failed, reelection campaign — the primary is unfolding as a referendum instead on Trump. Noble called it “the sequel, … 100 percent” about Trump. And his opponents, it appears, can do very little about it.

“The press likes him. He’s the story, he’s conflict,” said Beth Miller, a longtime Republican strategist. “How do you not continue to write about him, since all of those issues are still at the forefront.”

It’s possible, if DeSantis or some other Republican makes the primary competitive, that the singular focus on Trump will fade. Significant differences may arise between candidates on immigration, Social Security or any number of other issues.

It's also possible some other candidate will get in, appealing to what former Republican New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman called voters “who have been dissatisfied, who have moved to the independent column” and who “might come back if they saw a Republican they thought was viable and sane and a little more to the center.”

Asked if any names came to mind, however, she said, “No, not right now.”
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[DOR]

“Former Vice President Mike Pence, meantime, took his biggest swing yet at Trump, telling a crowd at the Gridiron dinner on Saturday that “history will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6.””

Hey, Mike: That doesn’t let you off the hook!

[TopHatter]

Trump lashes out at DeSantis, says he regrets his endorsement of him
Former President Donald Trump is intensifying his attacks on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, calling him disloyal and saying that his political career would have been over had he not endorsed his ultimately successful 2018 campaign.

“He was dead as a dog, he was a dead politician. He would have been working perhaps for a law firm or doing something else,” Trump told a small group of reporters aboard his plane on Monday afternoon en route to Iowa, where he was to make an appearance that evening.

Asked if he regretted endorsing DeSantis for governor in 2018, Trump responded: “Yeah maybe, this guy was dead. He was dead as a doornail…I might say that.”

Trump spent nearly ten minutes going after DeSantis, who is widely viewed as his most formidable challenger for the Republican nomination. The Florida governor, who is expected to launch his campaign following the end of the state’s legislative session in May, has been embarking on a swing of early primary states to promote his newly released memoir — including in Iowa, where he appeared on Friday.

Trump contended that DeSantis pleaded with him for an endorsement during his first run for governor, when polls showed him trailing his primary challenger, then-Florida agricultural commissioner Adam Putnam.

“I said ‘You are so dead right now you are not going, no endorsement is going to save you. George Washington won’t save you.’ He said, ‘I’m telling you, if you endorse me, I have a chance,’” Trump said.

Trump said he eventually decided to support DeSantis because he defended him while he was facing a Democratic-led impeachment into allegations that he pressured Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy into investigating Joe Biden’s family. In fact, DeSantis got on Trump's radar by defending him from Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe into Russia's attempts to influence the 2016 election.

DeSantis went on to win the primary while heavily promoting his support from Trump. He then prevailed in the general election over Democrat Andrew Gillum. Trump said that ahead of the general election, DeSantis had harbored doubts that he would win.

Trump said that he was later dismayed when DeSantis, at that point serving as governor, declined to answer questions about whether he would challenge Trump for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination.

Trump said he last spoke with DeSantis several months ago. His remarks signal that he is intensely focused on DeSantis, who he conceded was “probably” his most serious challenger. Behind the scenes, the former president’s team has been conducting polling research in order to gauge the governor’s weaknesses. There was one attack Trump refused to make, however: calling DeSantis “Meatball Ron.” It had been reported that Trump was workshopping the nickname. But he dismissed the idea, calling the moniker “too crude.”

A DeSantis spokesperson declined to comment on Trump’s remarks. The governor has largely avoided engaging with the former president, saying recently that doesn’t spend his time “trying to smear other Republicans.”

Trump was also asked about comments made by former Vice President Mike Pence over the weekend at the Gridiron Dinner, in which he called Jan. 6 a “disgrace” and said Trump should be held “accountable” for the deadly assault on the Capitol.

Pence is now contemplating challenging Trump for the nomination.

“I heard his statement, and I guess he decided that being nice isn’t working because he’s at 3 percent in the polls, so he figured he might as well not be nice any longer,” Trump said.
________

[TopHatter]

Trump prepares an extensive opposition file on ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’
An early look inside Trump’s operation into his rival for the nomination reveals nothing is off the table.


Donald Trump’s team and his allied PAC are preparing an expansive opposition research file by poring over Ron DeSantis’ record.


Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has not yet officially entered the 2024 presidential arena but former President Donald Trump’s campaign is preparing a grenade to launch his way.

Trump’s team and his allied PAC are preparing an expansive opposition research file by poring over DeSantis’ record as a prosecutor, member of Congress, and Florida governor. Among the items a Trump-allied group has drilled into is DeSantis’ record while serving as an assistant U.S. Attorney before running for congressional office, with plans to accuse him of being an “extremely lenient prosecutor” in cases involving, among other things, child pornography.

They have recently conducted focus groups and looked at polling to hone in on the best messaging to take on DeSantis. And they’re wasting no time to get organized and scoop up talent in key primary states.

“The team itself has felt like he has had a free ride without scrutiny for a number of years,” said Bryan Lanza, who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign and remains close to Trump’s team. “Just because he’s aggressive and willing to fight doesn’t make him MAGA. MAGA is the policies and there is a tremendous amount of sunlight between Trump policies and DeSantis policies. The more and more that gets highlighted the more DeSantis is going to get exposed as just another member of the establishment and compared to Jeb Bush.”

The preparations are the latest sign of a bruising primary fight to come, one that could make the 2016 primary fireworks look tame in comparison. It’s a high-risk, high-reward play. The child pornography charges, for one, mirror those used by Republican Senators against then Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. And in the case of DeSantis, his contemporaries have insisted that the plea deals he signed were not unordinary.

“To make any allegation that he was soft on any kind of case, especially child pornography, is just ludicrous. It defies the logic of what I saw in the office or what my office would let happen,” Ronald Henry, a retired assistant U.S. Attorney who served as supervisor to DeSantis when he was special assistant U.S. Attorney, told POLITICO. “He wasn’t a lone wolf on his own making deals without the entire weight of the U.S. Attorney’s office overseeing what he was doing.”

Already, Trump has seen several notable defections from his camp, with former allies citing the ex-president’s “childish” antics.

“Trump was a good policy guy and I’d put him up there with Ronald Reagan on policy, but presidentially he was a disaster the way he acted, the calling people names,” said former congressman Tom Marino, who co-chaired Trump’s 2015 campaign in Pennsylvania but is now supporting DeSantis. “He’s just not a nice person…If he thinks he had trouble getting elected before, there are more and more people out there across the country who said I was for him the first time, the second time, but what’s going on and his problems I don’t think I can support him.”

Trump hasn’t waited to get started on what is expected to be a major anti-DeSantis broadside. He’s made digs at the Florida governor’s backpedaling on raising the retirement age and privatizing Social Security and Medicare, has floated unsavory questions about DeSantis’ time as a teacher in Georgia, and has considered different nicknames for the governor including “Ron Establishment” and “Tiny D,” which he told reporters he likes. For now he is settling on “Ron DeSanctimonious,” or, for short, “DeSanctus.” Trump denied he was ever considering another oft-mentioned nickname — “Meatball Ron” — and told reporters it is “too crude.”

“I’m a very loyal person,” Trump told a small group of reporters on his way to Iowa on Monday. “There’s no hostility but I think it’s a strange thing he was out of politics, he was dead…I don’t think it’s nasty. I’m a very loyal person so I don’t understand disloyalty but you do see it in politics.”

Trump even released a video on Tuesday praising past Florida governors and claiming the state was “doing fantastically” before DeSantis. “Sunshine and ocean are very alluring, it’s not too hard to work with those factors.”

The Trump campaign’s goal is to capitalize on the months before DeSantis announces by rolling out new attacklines on the Florida governor and painting him as the handpicked establishment favorite, not the heir apparent to the MAGA throne.

DeSantis himself has brushed off Trump’s attacks as mere noise.

A spokesperson for DeSantis declined to comment.

“DeSantis doesn’t need to promote himself,” Marino said. “He’s a leader. He doesn’t call people names. He doesn’t make fun of women. That’s an easy one. I truly meant Trump was a genius on policy and he really blew it. I told him about it. He knows it all.”

In public remarks, DeSantis has drawn a contrast with Trump without naming him by emphasizing his overwhelming win in 2022, noting that he doesn’t rely on polls — a favorite tool of Trump’s — to dictate decisions, and that his administration is leak free.

But the rivalry that has been simmering for months could start to boil over as the two men criss-cross the country, hob nob with donors in the wealthy enclaves of Palm Beach, and start to unveil key campaign support.

On Friday, DeSantis made two stops in Iowa as part of a tour for his book, “The Courage to be Free,” and visited Nevada on Saturday. Trump visited Iowa on Monday for a roundtable on education policy.

As DeSantis spoke to Iowans, Trump went after the Florida governor on Truth Social, taking aim at his “very small crowds,” his support for ending an ethanol mandate, and his votes on Social Security and Medicare.


Copies of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis's book "The Courage to Be Free" are given away before he speaks at an event March 10, 2023.


DeSantis did not mention 2024 during his speech in Iowa, but his decision to visit the state that holds the first contest in the Republican nominating calendar indicated he is doing more than flirting with a run. DeSantis is not expected to make a presidential announcement until Florida’s legislative session ends in May.

DeSantis’ Iowa visit came as a new aligned group, Never Back Down PAC, launched on Thursday. That group is being led by Ken Cuccinelli, one of Trump’s former administration officials. And in a potential sign of defections to come, Marino and another former Trump booster, Lou Barletta from Pennsylvania, also announced they plan to support the committee.

Some Trump allies acknowledge DeSantis has been able to attract deep-pocketed donors and some establishment Republicans who are eager to move on from the constant chaos of Trump. They say it could be challenging for him to bring together that cohort and some of the populist, right-wing voters who have been a part of the ex-president’s base in the past.

Trump’s team has tried to drive a wedge between the two by highlighting DeSantis’ voting record in Congress on support for military involvement overseas and entitlement cuts. They’re also keen to go after DeSantis’ response to Covid, although it is unclear how potent of an attack line that will be to voters who saw thousands flock to the Sunshine State during the pandemic.

But they also plan to highlight what’s described as the “personality factor.” Trump allies say the Florida governor can be awkward and mechanical in public, and note he has largely avoided the press. To contrast that, Trump’s team organized a trip to East Palestine, Ohio to bring attention to the train derailment there and interact with residents affected by the crash. They have given local and national media opportunities to ask Trump questions, and have scheduled unannounced stops in places like McDonald’s where he can interact with the public.

Trump’s team also sees an inherent advantage within their ranks. The top lieutenants for Trump’s campaign and aligned PAC, including Susie Wiles, Jason Miller, Taylor Budowich, Justin Caporale, and Tony Fabrizio, all of whom have past experience working for DeSantis.

One of Trump’s aides noted that it was a reflection of DeSantis’ high staff turnover, although Trump himself has cycled through dozens of top aides over the years, often in very messy and public ways — a fact DeSantis has referenced. Indeed, some of Trump’s top administration officials like Haley, Pence, and Pompeo, have announced a presidential run or are actively considering it.

“You look at my administration, part of the reason we’re able to do well, they’re not leaking to the media, we don’t have palace intrigue, we don’t have any drama. It’s just execution every single day, and we end up beating the left every single day for four years,” DeSantis said in Des Moines.

When asked by POLITICO at the recent CPAC gathering what that might say about his own leadership, Trump described his former cabinet officials as “ambitious” and said he was “proud” of their accomplishments working under him. “The more the merrier,” he added of them entering the campaign.
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[rj1]

I'm going to go out on a limb and surmise that rj was actually making a damning indictment of what an incompetent trainwreck the Trump "Administration was.

Yes. Glad you got it.

statquo:

That's what I mean though. They had incompetent idiots before. This time they'll come back with the know how and an actual plan.

Is that a plan based on running the country effectively or a plan based on revenge?

I've left the Republican Party and became a Libertarian Party county chairman not entirely due to Trump but mostly when I realized the Republicans had en masse embraced big government with greater control over your life and a more monarchial executive that governs by sound bites instead of actually getting shit done, so I'm an outsider. But the GOP are absolute complete idiots if they nominate Trump again. The way forward for the party as a whole is you have a nominee that has some Trump items about him but unlike Trump is competent, so candidates like Liz Cheney and Larry Hogan are persona non grata, Ron DeSantis sure. For the Republicans that don't want Trump as nominee, they have to pre-primaries consolidate on one candidate and tell everyone else to take a hike, or in other words what the Democrats did in March 2020 to get everyone that was not Biden to drop out to stop Bernie Sanders winning.

[rj1]

“Former Vice President Mike Pence, meantime, took his biggest swing yet at Trump, telling a crowd at the Gridiron dinner on Saturday that “history will hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6.””

Hey, Mike: That doesn’t let you off the hook!

I've never understood the path for Mike Pence to victory. For the people that are anti-Trump, he was an enabler too long. For the people that are pro-Trump, they see him as stabbing Trump in the back. Where's his base of votes coming from?

[TopHatter]

I've never understood the path for Mike Pence to victory. For the people that are anti-Trump, he was an enabler too long. For the people that are pro-Trump, they see him as stabbing Trump in the back. Where's his base of votes coming from?

He doesn't have a path to victory. My favorite - and only - political blog had a post about that very point:


Mike Pence Reminds Us Why He'll Never Be President

As we noted on Monday, former VP Mike Pence gave a speech at this weekend's black-tie Gridiron Club dinner. The big news was that he took a direct shot at his former partner in... well, whatever they were partners in, namely Donald Trump.

That said, there is another element to the story that's worthy of some attention. These sorts of speeches are supposed to be fairly breezy, and to have a few laugh lines. And so, among his other bits, Pence uncorked this snide remark at the expense of Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg:
-

When Pete's two children were born, he took two months' maternity leave whereupon thousands of travelers were stranded in airports, the air traffic system shut down, and airplanes nearly collided on our runways.

Pete is the only person in human history to have a child and everyone else gets postpartum depression.

We can't find video of the speech, and we believe the Gridiron Club prohibits recordings. But the crowd was reportedly underwhelmed by that particular bit.

It's remarkable, but in just 51 words, Pence managed to squeeze in the four biggest things that make him unelectable as president. To wit:

1. He's anti-LGBTQ: The meat of the joke, of course, is that Buttigieg, as a gay man, behaved more like a woman than a "real man." Ho, ho! When Pence was governor of Indiana, his signature "accomplishment" was securing passage of a bill called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. As is generally the case with bills that have names like that, the legislation was meant to give Hoosiers the right to discriminate in the name of freedom of religion. In particular, the bill was carefully worded in a manner so as to allow discrimination against LGBTQ people. Pence gaslighted for a couple of months, insisting that the bill did not sanction anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Nonetheless, the blowback was so great (very similar to the blowback to the North Carolina "bathroom bill") that it became necessary to pass an addendum that specifically prohibited anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
   
   In short, Pence was anti-LGBTQ 10 years ago, and he's still anti-LGBTQ. That attitude didn't play in ruby red Indiana in the 2010s, and it's definitely not going to play with a national electorate in the 2020s. And there's no way that Pence could ever convincingly change course on this; his whole persona is rooted in his evangelicalism, and it's not a secret that evangelicals of his type are almost invariably anti-gay.
2. He's anti-woman: Pence's "joke" was nominally about paternity leave. But we have a sneaking suspicion that women voters who hear about it are also going to see it as pooh-poohing maternity leave. What they will definitely hear is that Pence is a man very much invested in traditional gender roles—man work, woman barefoot and pregnant, grunt. His unwillingness to dine with other women if his wife is not present, which is rooted in the notion that women are all teases and men are beasts who cannot control their sexual urges will not help dissuade folks from this perception.
   
   Oh, and Pence's other signature legislation was a series of bills that significantly restricted abortion in Indiana. That position isn't going to play with a national electorate either.
3. He's a hypocrite: Pence's brand, like all evangelical politicians, is that he's about family values. But someone who is actually family values does not shame a father (or a mother) who chooses to prioritize their premature infant over their job.
4. He's terribly media unsavvy: We have pointed out before that Pence brings to mind Alica Roosevelt's observation about Thomas Dewey, that he looks like "the bridegroom on the wedding cake." The former VP is truly plasticine, and is utterly lacking in charisma. If he and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) somehow end up on the same debate stage, it's entirely possible that the charisma void will be so profound that it will spontaneously trigger a black hole.
   
   Beyond that, however, is the fact that the Gridiron Club dinner attracts a huge media contingent, in part because it's in Washington, and in part because each year some politician says something really outlandish. Pence knows full well that it's a media-heavy event; that's why he chose the occasion to slam Trump. And when you know full well the media is sitting there, ready to pounce, how stupid do you have to be to say something offensive?

Note that all of this is in addition to the fact that most Republicans hate Pence, either because he "betrayed" Donald Trump or because he hasn't been sufficiently fanatical about the religious stuff. We've already pooh-poohed Nikki Haley's chances in 2024, but she's gotta be 10 times more likely to be elected president than Pence is. (Z)
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[TopHatter]

Yes. Glad you got it.

Is that a plan based on running the country effectively or a plan based on revenge?

Revenge, purely and simply, spiteful revenge, with a desire to burn everything to the ground.

[TopHatter]

Trump weakening? Not judging by his Iowa swing.

Braving the cold March Iowa wind, Patty Havill stands amid a snaking line of red MAGA hats and flag-themed costumes, waiting to see the one man she believes can still save America from all its problems. Other Republican presidential hopefuls have been through town recently – including, on Friday, hot-ticket Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis – but Ms. Havill is single-minded in her devotion. For her, it’s Donald Trump or no one.

“Our country is in chaos. We need him to straighten it out,” says the retired nurse. “Trump is the only one.”

Since launching his third bid for the White House some four months ago, Donald Trump’s campaign has, from the outside, frequently seemed fizzling and unfocused. The former president is juggling distractions in the form of mounting legal troubles and the very real possibility of a criminal indictment. After many of his hand-picked candidates lost in the 2022 midterms, his grip on the GOP was widely proclaimed to be weakening – with even his former vice president apparently gearing up to take him on.

But those factors belie a set of strengths that are in many ways now becoming evident.

As the contours of the 2024 primary battle start to come into focus, Mr. Trump is already benefitting from some of the same circumstances that helped him in 2016. A large, unwieldy Republican field that divides the anti-Trump vote. Opponents too afraid to attack him directly. Above all, a set of diehard fans like Ms. Havill, who are providing him with a solid, unshakeable floor of support.

At the same time, it’s becoming clear Mr. Trump is bringing an entirely different level of political and professional experience to this primary process than in 2016. He’s wooing key officials for endorsements and behind-the-scenes support. And he’s wasting no time building an on-the-ground apparatus with experienced hands in early voting states like Iowa that could give him a significant edge over his GOP rivals – some of whom, like Governor DeSantis, have not even formally entered the race.

“You’d be foolish to underestimate Donald Trump,” says Luke Martz, a Republican strategist based in Iowa.

Some Trump supporters began lining up more than 10 hours in advance of Monday’s event in Davenport, a city in eastern Iowa on the Mississippi River, where Illinois-born Ronald Reagan began his career as a radio sportscaster in the 1930s.

“This isn’t a rally. We’ll be back for a rally soon,” Mr. Trump said, midway through his two-hour speech at a packed theater, in his first visit to the state where the 2024 road to the White House begins for Republicans. As he spoke, volunteers collected names, emails, and addresses from the audience and passed out voter registration forms.

“I said, ‘Why aren’t we doing one at an airport where we can have 50,000 people?’ They said, ‘Sir, it’s too cold.’ That was a good call,” he said, cracking a smile. “Because it’s very cold outside.”

Earlier, Mr. Trump made a brief unannounced stop at a local restaurant where he posed for photos with diners, the kind of retail politicking that Iowans have come to expect. At the theater, he took questions at the end from the audience after joking that the evening should end on a high note, like a concert that ends with a great encore.

In 2016, Mr. Trump famously finished second in the Iowa caucuses behind Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, after a campaign that relied on celebrity and media exposure but fell short on organization. (Mr. Trump conceded but then claimed Senator Cruz “stole” the election.) This time, the former president seems determined not to make the same mistake. Mr. Trump has hired Marshall Moreau, who helped GOP candidate Brenna Bird defeat a 10-term Democratic attorney general in November, to lead his Iowa efforts.

Other hires include state lawmaker Bobby Kaufmann, who appeared on stage with the former president in Davenport. His father, Jeff Kaufmann, a Trump ally, is the chairman of the Iowa Republican Party, leading some Republicans to grumble about a potential conflict of interest in a party-run caucus.

Also on Team Trump: Eric Branstad, whose father Terry Branstad is a popular former Iowa governor who served as Mr. Trump’s ambassador to China. Eric Branstad helped run Mr. Trump’s state campaigns in 2016 and 2020 and is a senior advisor this time.

“Having a strong organizational base in Iowa is really important,” says Doug Gross, a Republican activist here who has been critical of the former president. To win here, campaigns need to be able to convert pledges of support into actual votes on the one night in January – typically a dark, frigid night – that matters.

Mr. Trump’s core of committed supporters, even if they’re a minority, are an enormous asset in a caucus, notes Mr. Gross. “You’ve got to be a pretty committed partisan to go to a caucus and get your voice heard,” he says. “That gives [Mr. Trump] a natural advantage.” But having a campaign that understands the complicated mechanics and rules of caucuses, and can maneuver strategically, can compound that advantage dramatically.

Other Republicans note that the pressure will be on Mr. Trump to win – and to win convincingly – in Iowa, unlike in 2016 when his campaign benefitted from low expectations. Indeed, even a narrow Trump win could be seen as a disappointment, giving momentum to a second-place finisher.

“There’s a big hole for someone to come through,” says David Kochel, an Iowa-based strategist and former advisor to Mitt Romney who helped lead Jeb Bush’s 2016 campaign.

Mr. Trump’s appearance in Iowa came on the heels of a hotly anticipated visit by his putative rival, Governor DeSantis. Mr. DeSantis held two events Friday that were ostensibly to promote his new book but were widely seen as putting down a marker for 2024. He met Republican state lawmakers after his stop in Des Moines, where he was joined by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who also introduced Mr. Trump at his event.

While early national polls often reflect little more than name recognition, the upward trajectory for Mr. DeSantis in states like Iowa seems clear. And his rise in popularity is coming at Mr. Trump’s expense, sharpening the rivalry between the two men, and setting the stage for a potentially drawn-out battle.

An Iowa poll released Friday showed a softening in Mr. Trump’s support, with just 47% of Iowa Republicans saying they would “definitely” vote for him if he’s the GOP nominee, down significantly from 69% in June 2021 (another 27% would “probably” vote for him). The former president’s favorability rating among Iowa Republicans has also declined more than 10 points and is now at 80%, just slightly higher than Mr. DeSantis’ at 75%. (That said, 1 in 5 respondents said they didn’t yet know enough about Mr. DeSantis to assess him.)

“There’s a subset that will be with President Trump no matter what,” says Brett Barker, GOP chairman in Story County. But “I think Iowans in general have an open mind.”

At a recent event in Iowa for defeated Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, former Gov. Branstad told the Monitor that he would remain neutral in 2024. (In 2016, he warned Iowans not to back Senator Cruz over the Texan’s opposition to ethanol subsidies.) But he expressed doubts about Mr. Trump’s chances this time because, he said, the former president has “too much baggage.”

Judging by the responses from Mr. Trump’s supporters, social and cultural grievances will drive the race for the GOP nomination in 2024. The biggest and most sustained applause was for Mr. Trump’s calls to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports, stop the teaching of critical race theory in schools, and “break up” the federal Department of Education.

Mr. Trump seemed to take note. “Look at the hand you get for that,” he said, after the crowd roared its approval. “Bigger than ‘we’re going to be energy independent,’ ” he said, referring to one of his regular applause lines.

By contrast, Mr. Trump’s digs at Florida’s governor – “Ron DeSanctimonious” – received a more muted response. (Mr. DeSantis has so far resisted making direct attacks on the former president.) He said Mr. DeSantis had voted in Congress to cut farm subsidies, and to reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits, both of which Mr. Trump said he would protect.

The president expounded at length on his administration’s record of fighting trade wars with China, Mexico, and Europe, and standing up for farmers in Iowa, including ethanol producers. “I fought for Iowa ethanol like no president in history,” he said.

Outside the theater, some attendees said they would support Mr. DeSantis as a presidential candidate, should he win the nomination instead of Mr. Trump. Others suggested the Florida governor, who is 44, ought to wait his turn.

“I think DeSantis would make a good VP, but Florida needs him right now,” says Roy Nelson, a retiree from Iowa who had traveled from Nevada for the event. “He’s a young man. He has time. This will probably be Trump’s last shot.”
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[rj1]

He doesn't have a path to victory. My favorite - and only - political blog had a post about that very point

He's a super politically ambitious guy but without the chops to do anything. I'm in Indiana where he was Governor. Trump picking him for being VP kind of saved him because he was looking at what at the time was a tough reelection fight. Part of it was he followed Mitch Daniels, the OMB Director for President George W. Bush in his 1st term, and Daniels was a super-effective Governor for 8 years, but Pence's administration there was not much substance there as far as policy, direction to the legislature, or get shit done. The one thing he cared most about was RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which blew up in his face.

If he wants to become President, which he does, his best route to me is sit out 2024, and see if you can come back in 2028 following a Biden 2nd term. (Not saying Biden will win in 2024, I think he does if Trump is the Republican nominee, but if Mike Pence wants to become President, his best bet like Joe Biden is for the other party's guy to win in the interim. Joe Biden never becomes President if Hillary Clinton had won in 2016.) I don't think Pence will ever become President, but if he was paying me to advise him it's what I'd tell him.

[rj1]

"I think DeSantis would make a good VP, but Florida needs him right now"; says Roy Nelson, a retiree from Iowa who had traveled from Nevada for the event. "He's a young man. He has time. This will probably be Trump's last shot."

Of all the backhanded compliments...

Trump's vice presidential pick in the event he wins the nomination will be interesting. It's going to be Trump effectively announcing his choice for his successor since he'll only be able to serve one term.

[TopHatter]

He's a super politically ambitious guy but without the chops to do anything. I'm in Indiana where he was Governor. Trump picking him for being VP kind of saved him because he was looking at what at the time was a tough reelection fight.

Bingo. Trump saved Pence and Pence delivered the Christian Right to Trump.

Of all the backhanded compliments...

Trump's vice presidential pick in the event he wins the nomination will be interesting. It's going to be Trump effectively announcing his choice for his successor since he'll only be able to serve one term.

Cult45 is desperate to see DeSantis and Trump as allies. This MAGA civil war is absolutely torching their cognitive dissonance and they're still holding out hope that Trump and DeSantis will both be on the ticket for 2024. The power of delusion is staggering.

As for Trump's VP pick, I have a strong feeling that it will be a woman. He needs to balance the ticket in a different direction now that he doesn't need Christian Right anymore (he's already delivered for them and there's not much left he can promise them anyway)

[TopHatter]

The Republicans Have A DeSantis Problem
Been A Very Rough Couple of Weeks for the GOP's Bumbling Golden Boy

Perhaps the central insight of my 2022 election analysis was that I believed the Republicans had made a huge strategic blunder by running towards a politics - MAGA - which had just been overwhelmingly rejected by the American people in two consecutive high-turnout elections. As far back as late October 2021 I warned that if this “anti-MAGA majority” came to understand that the GOP was once again all MAGA it would make 2022 far more likely to be a close, competitive election than a red wave. And that’s basically what happened.

In the battlegrounds, where our campaigns had the resources to control the information environment and push turnout, we outperformed expectations, and MAGA once again disappointed. Incredibly we gained ground in AZ, CO, GA, MI, MN, NH and PA in 2022. In the battlegrounds MAGA has now failed the GOP in three consecutive elections, not just two. There is deep muscle memory and understanding of the dangers of MAGA in the battleground today. Running and winning as MAGA there will be very hard in 2024.

Ron DeSantis looked at all this and decided to become even more MAGA, super MAGA. He’s moved from a 15 week abortion ban to 6 weeks. He’s sold his Presidential campaign as a war against woke. He’s banning books, removing elected officials from office, mounting unprecedented assaults against undocumented immigrants and punishing businesses which don’t agree with his agenda. His response to the Silicon Valley Bank implosion was buffoonish and embarrassing. He choose Putin over America and the West. Republican Senators have been dumping on him all week. What in the world he is doing? As someone who has been in this business a long time it’s not easy to understand.

Last week we started to get polling showing how unpopular DeSantis’s agenda is even in Florida. I wrote a series of threads on Twitter going through the polling, and raising questions about whether DeSantis was blowing it. These threads got millions of views and kicked up an important conversation about DeSantis’s wild rightward lurch.

Simon Rosenberg @SimonWDC

We're getting some polling now on DeSantis's rightward leap, and it's all really bad for him. As someone who's been around a while it just feels like he/his team blew it. They've misread the world north of FL, embraced a politics which has failed in 3 straight elections.

Simon Rosenberg @SimonWDC
The national media has to start discussing whether DeSantis blew it; he thought a red wave was coming, committed to the right on all sorts of issues, and made himself unelectable in the battlegrounds. And even with all this authoritarian horseshit he is still losing to Trump. https://t.co/8lCct5bi3z


Let’s look at this polling we saw last week. This first one is from USAToday/IPSOS, and asked about the meaning of woke. Not so good for Ronny D:


Next was a Navigator poll which showed voters far more concerned about protecting their kids from gun violence than from woke.



Then came a University of North Florida poll which showed how unpopular this new super-MAGA DeSantis agenda is in FLORIDA:

Simon Rosenberg @SimonWDC
From the thread. Here's how DeSantis's big new legislative initiatives are polling in FLORIDA. Imagine how these play outside FL: 6 wk abortion ban, no exceptions Support 22 (!!!!!) Oppose 75 Concealed carry Support 21 Oppose 77 Ban CRT/DEI on campus Support 35 Oppose 61

This idea that DeSantis may have blown it by lurching too far right has begun to take hold in the national media. David Frum has a terrific new piece in the Atlantic, Is Ron DeSantis Flaming Out Already? Greg Sargent has a brutal new piece in the Washington Post about DeSantis’s book banning. Politico has a very rough piece this morning, “Ron DeSantis Has A Florida Problem.”
-

But as DeSantis edges closer to announcing, he is testing the limits of how hard right he can go without undermining his rationale for running in the first place. It’s a significant risk in a primary in which Republican voters — sore from losing the White House in 2020 and a less-than-red-wave midterm two years later — are desperate to nominate a candidate who can win.

“In a way, the Republican dominance of the Florida Legislature may end up hurting DeSantis because his proposals can become reality,” said Barrett Marson, a Republican strategist in Arizona. “That may help him in a primary in Iowa or Texas or South Dakota, but in a general election in Arizona, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin, it could be ruinous for him.”

For all those Rs hoping DeSantis would be a reasonable and capable alternative to Trump this has been a very bad week. It appears the Rs might be on the verge of another cycle of “candidate quality” problems. It is another reason why as we head into 2024 I would much rather be us than them.
___________

Not going to count DeSantis out so soon. He's too valuable to MAGA to let go of so easily.

[rj1]

Bingo. Trump saved Pence and Pence delivered the Christian Right to Trump.

I don't know if you can say he delivered them to Trump. Who else were they going to vote for? The Constitution Party are not a thing in most states. Right to Life locally where I live are grassroots politics powerful and they fell behind Trump post-primary simply due to they didn't want Hillary Clinton to appoint Supreme Court justices.

I did county-level analysis of voting in my state in 2016 and the astonishing thing to me was I took all counties in the state, ordered them from highest number of votes to lowest, and broke into quadrants so that each quadrant had exactly 25% of the vote +/- 1 vote. (Counties on the quadrant boundaries were split to get each group to 25% while maintaining vote percentages.) Look at McCain and Romney vote shares in 2008 and 2012, they won the bottom quadrant (the counties with the smallest number of voters) by about 180k. It's easily the most Republican quadrant although Republicans also normally win the middle 2 quadrants as well, at least in this state. Obama won the state in 2008, Romney won the state in 2012. 2016 comes around, and Trump won that bottom group by 370k, slightly more than double than what Romney/McCain could do. Same group of counties as before so we're comparing like to like. 2020 it declines slightly but the levels largely hold and it also applies to all elections now, not just President, i.e. the Democratic Party in my state is a zombie and the Democratic Party in the majority of counties in the state are practically entities that only exist on paper as we have widespread single-party government and the Democrats can't even find candidates willing to run, and the elected Democrats in the cities have no interest in leaving their confines to go help. It's the reason I'm now a Libertarian Party county chair, the Democrats have given up and we can take 2nd-party status on a local level.

I hate Trump but I'll give him credit for touching a nerve that galvanized people. Other candidacies throughout time that were able to do that: Andrew Jackson 1828, Abraham Lincoln 1860, William Jennings Bryan 1896, Teddy Roosevelt 1912, Franklin Roosevelt 1932, Ronald Reagan 1980, Barack Obama 2008.

Cult45 is desperate to see DeSantis and Trump as allies. This MAGA civil war is absolutely torching their cognitive dissonance and they're still holding out hope that Trump and DeSantis will both be on the ticket for 2024. The power of delusion is staggering.

I don't know if it's desperate to have them as allies more than they just want Trump to win and are seeking to eliminate a contender. Trump's not playing 2nd fiddle to anyone in any alliance, and that's not unique to Trump, a lot of politicians have that mentality. DeSantis is clearly flanking Trump on issues and he's held up best so far of people that can challenge Trump in a primary and have a chance at winning. We also have 10 months until polls actually matter and a lot can change.

Whoever the "not Trump" candidate is going to be that is last one remaining in the primary, it's going to be Trumpish on certain items. Republican primary voters are not voting for Larry Hogan, who has acknowledged reality and said he won't run, so good on him for not doing it out of personal vanity. So think about what the Republican alternative to Trump is that has a chance of winning.