I would exclude Christie.
Because none of the candidates who are ostensibly trying to beat Trump took any real swings at Trump means that Trump won the debate that he didn’t participate in.
All of those who did paticipate may as well have arrived in the same tiny car, and wearing clown shoes.
The funniest part was when they got to the questions about Trump and the audience started getting rowdy. The moderator had to turn around and face the audience and tell them to shut up so they could “just get through this section”.
I think Haley was the most electable candidate there. High probability she’ll be the VP candidate. The GOP horse race still depends on when Trump drops out.
I see no evidence that Trump will drop out. But, it could happen.
Nikki is arguably the best at actually stating the current problems in the GOP (followed by Christie) but that costs them in the MAGAsphere.
I don’t -think- though that she inspires enough fervor to get people to go out and vote for her in the way that Trump does, and without that, she absolutely could not afford the MAGA stay-at-home risk.
And as for VP? No one is going to be a Trump VP pick without absolute fealty and/or a metric ton of “consideration”. And she isn’t there. At least, not by current appearance.
If you mean as a VP candidate to another of the current (R) crop after Trump backs out (which again, I doubt) - then yeah, she’d be a nice counterpoint to some of the hardliner candidates we’d see otherwise.
No, honestly, I think she’s aiming for a future position in government, or, with her age, a better shot as President/VP in 2028 or later.
If offered, she would jump at the chance to be VP with Trump. She’d say whatever she needed to in order to get it.
If I were a Republican and not a frothing MAGA, I would be very interested in a Haley-Christie ticket (regardless of who was the P and who was the VP).
Considering the alternative of being an authentic conservative, that sounds so good. When President Trump exhausts appeals of his Georgia and New York State sentences in 2025 or 2026, she could tell the nation how sad it makes her to be invoking the 25th amendment.
She might be a bad president, but within normal parameters.
Not me – I’d be too disgusted by their prior support for Trump. But then again, I probably wouldn’t still be a Republican by that point.
They were saying “Booo-randon!”
There are plenty of current new “independents” and “conservative Democrats” (speaking of several of my associates) who were comfortable being socially liberal “greed is good” old school Republicans who would love that ticket.
The sorts who (as discussed in many other threads) want taxes low, less investment in things they felt didn’t directly affect them (often including excess military spending which put them at odds with other (R)) but absolutely didn’t want the government interfering with who they could go to bed with and if they could get/have their SO get an abortion.
So I agree it would be a dream ticket for those such and any remaining “Traditional” Republicans, and probably pretty dangerous competition for the Democrat team. Thankfully (?!?) the Republican party has made those sorts who don’t go for full on social war and bible-thumping outcast as RINOs at best. So locally (and I’m betting nationally) they’ll be primaried out, and ever further marginalized.
Do we know what the consequences of breaking the RNC loyalty pledge are?
I’m assuming, should Trump run independently, any of the candidates that run as his VP would be breaking that pledge.
If the punishment for that is something like a lifetime ban from any type of RNC backing, that’s probably a risk many of these candidates are willing to take. Many people don’t seem to have a problem risking their career for him anyway.
OTOH, if the RNC’s pledge requires candidates to reimburse the RNC for anything they’ve spent promoting them, that could be different.
I’m just thinking a lifetime ban from the RNC isn’t going to matter to them. A million dollar fine might.
PS The smart idea would be to say ‘I’ll leave the RNC and run as your VP right after you send them the payment to cover the fine for breaking the pledge’. This would allow the candidate to remain part of the RNC until they know Trump is good for the money while making sure they don’t go bankrupt waiting for it.
Though a vice president actively going through bankruptcy proceedings due to the broken promises of the president would be, if nothing else, amusing.
Likely nothing. It’s just a feel-good campaign promise not intended to be kept, and a risk and consequence-free “pledge” that plays well with the base.
A Sternly Worded Letter[tm], probably.
A couple of the also-rans have said they’re not gonna sign it, but that won’t mean much anyway. If someone with a shot like Vivek said it (not much of a shot, but you know) it might be different.
Yeah, the whole exercise is founded on that once an actual nominee is picked the issue is moot.
A couple polls on who Republican voters think did best.
The Washington post survey says DeSantis, Vivek, Haley, in that order. (survey of 775 people)
The New York post says Vivek, DeSantis, Pence. (survey of 1,800 people)
Pretty interesting. I thought RDS was a turd as always and that bizarre moment where he had to individually instruct the muscles of his face on how to smile I thought would have sunk him. All he did was repeat his standard talking points whether they were related to the question or not. And it was also obvious that during the “hands up” moments he was waiting to see what the others were doing. But…I guess the prepared speeches worked.
Meanwhile Vivek…as I understand it, those people who managed to stomach the whole thing say Vivek had a great first hour then got increasingly schooled in the second hour. So the opinion of how well he did may differ between people who watched different durations of the “debate”.
And yeah, “debate” in scare quotes. 2 hours of disinformation and cowardice from almost everyone on stage.
Wow, since those polls go against what all the Pundits thought- they thought DeSantis did horribly.
If you’re watching a debate and one speaker is literally promising nothing but crap, you’d probably also criticize their performance, but if the audience is a bunch of flies it will win them over.
(They’d probably also be favorable toward Pence, flies just love him at debates.)