Trump is the acknowledged Republican front-runner, the supposed man to beat, and yet most of his supposed competition won’t say word one against him, which leads me to believe that the position they are jockeying for is VP. Do you agree or disagree, and in what camp (actually running for Prez, or sucking up to Trump) would you put each candidate?
At this point I would disagree. Way too much still up in the air and not only no primaries yet but not even one debate. Plus all the DJT legal issues make this race very unsettled. The silence of most of them is because they know they have to win over the MAGAts to win.
I also reject the idea anyone ever gets into the Presidential primaries angling for the VP slot. I truly believe they are all in it to win the top spot. Would some of them be open to the idea? Maybe, but if they declare it is because they believe they can win the nomination.
I’ll disagree, too.
Why would anyone want to hitch their wagon to the corrupt dead man walking that is Trump? Most of them are just waiting it out like a flock of vultures, waiting for the cumulative weight of Trump’s indictments/trials/sentencings to overtake the race, leaving one of them to emerge as the new great hope.
They all know Trump can’t win in a general election. They know the big donors know Trump can’t win in a general election. They’re just waiting him out, and none of them want to play second fiddle to an old worn-out tune.
Agreed.
ron is trying real hard to inherit donald’s mantle. Chris Christie is clearly calling him out as a bad man. The rest, it seems, are lining up somewhere between these two extremes.
All, though, are trying to fill the vacuum when - not if- donald is no longer viable as a candidate.
Does this sound familiar to anyone else?
Sure, but history is no guide for what happened before. We’ve learned from this experience. Trump has a “record” now. He’s horrified a lot of people – including a lot of Republicans, who, while they may publicly proclaim they’d vote for him again, probably won’t on a secret ballot.
Women are pissed. Blacks are pissed. Young people are pissed.
I’m not worried about any who are currently in the mix against Trump. I’m worried about a dark horse like Glenn Younkin jumping in at the last minute and coming across as a young, reasonable “moderate” Republican choice against Biden. And he is anything but. He’s young (comparatively) – but that’s it.
From history, if you will.
I honestly think if Trump gets the nom, he’ll announce MTG as his running mate. 
I’m putting my money on Kari Lake. She’s just as nuts, but has “the look” Trump finds so important.
Kari Lake wouldn’t even bother with the election. Trump was the real winner → Trump anoints her → Therefore and ipso nutzo she is automatically President!
Agreed, she is truly deranged.
I’m not sure any are running for VP, but I’m sure some are running just to increase their name recognition. That gives them a better chance four years from now.
Examples are David Burgum, governor of ND, and Francis Suarez, mayor of Miami. I hadn’t heard of either one before they declared their candidacy. I’m sure there are many other people who hadn’t either. Not that this makes me any more likely to vote for them but perhaps that’s not the case with others.
I sort of split the difference on their various objectives. I think many if not most of them are open to either pursuing the top spot if Trump’s legal troubles make him genuinely non-viable or accepting the VP slot if Trump winds up as the presidential nominee.
There are exceptions who are clearly gunning for one or the other (Christie for sure and DeSantis probably are under the first heading but not the second). But the majority, I think, have put themselves forward on a vague, non-specific contingency basis.
True. The intense focus on the man Donald Trump has facilitated the climb of those who would do as much harm, but who run on the platform of “hey at least I’m nowhere near as much of a chaos goblin as he is”.
And I would say Vivek is that man.
In demeanor he comes across as fairly reasonable – not a bobble-headed fanatic like RDS.
But his views are actually just as odious as Trump’s. Anti-vax, abortion banning, disenfranchizing millions of voters. He also wants to abolish the Department of Education, FBI, and IRS and do everything by executive order (yes, I don’t know what that means in practice either, but it doesn’t sound good).
Yes, a lot of these are the Mayor Petes’of this race, in that they’ll happily jump on any chance of a Trump implosion and grab a Cabinet post if offered. Nothing wrong with that in a normal race, of course.
Blech. I wish I shared your confidence. But I just don’t buy it. I don’t think most Trump voters are all that turned off by his actions and when push comes to shove I have no doubt they will turn out for him. If we underestimate his appeal to a certain sort of voter again, this election could be absolutely disastrous.
There’s no way Trump doesn’t get the nomination. I really, really hope that I am wrong and you are right, but I just don’t see it.
And let’s remember the R primary is by design weighted towards simple-plurality winner-take-all front-loading of the contest. DJT can repulse and piss off 2/3 of the R voters and still prevail if those 2/3 are scattered across a clown-carful of lamers who insist on sticking around into Super Tue trying to inherit the MAGAs “when he inevitably falls”. (That’s why Rondee felt he had to strike Big Hits in the War on Woke a year before the primaries, seeking to at least be an early contender who’d have votes worth trading.)
I was about to remark that Republican primaries on Super Tuesday can’t be winner-take-all at any level according to the current party rules, but then I remembered that all of California’s delegates somehow went to Trump. As long as everybody else splits the vote to the point where none of them get more than some minimum, which can be as high as 20%, Trump would get all of the delegates even in a “proportional” primary. For that matter, the Democrats have the same rule, but the minimum is 15% in every state and every district.
I’m going to go with that. Just as lotteries are tax on people who are not good at math, the most intellectually challenged of these guys must realize that Trump is going to get half the votes, and the other half will be spread out over a dozen others.