Trump is under indictment in the Story Daniels thing, and will be indicted any day now for the Mar-a-Lago documents. Further indictments are possible for January 6 and in Georgia for election fraud. Plus, there’s an investigation into whether raising funds to “stop the steal” constitutes wire fraud.
So he could be on trial for 5 separate crimes by the time the primaries begin. Any normal candidate would say “that’s too much…I’m out.”
We all know Trump is not normal, but let’s pretend that he is, and that he ends his candidacy around the Iowa caucuses.
This would be a huge boon for all the remaining Republicans. Trump’s voters have to go somewhere. The candidates can all pretend they never heard of the guy, and it would be inappropriate for them to comment on any criminal trials. The only candidate with ties to Trump is Pence, and he’s already branding himself as the Savior of Democracy for his role on Jan. 6.
We may even get a non-crazy Republican jumping in.
This would be a terrible development for Biden and Democrats. Even though I think Biden has done a fine job, his age probably makes wobbly Democrats and independents uneasy. Having Trump as the only alternative is Biden’s best route to re-election.
Since both DeSantis and Trump (the presumed front-runners) both do about equally well against Biden (neck-and-neck based on recent polls), it’s hard to see Biden’s chances dropping catastrophically if Trump drops out.
Of course, Trump will never do such a thing. He’ll run from prison if it comes to that. And get plenty of votes.
I don’t think DeSantis makes it past the first primary, Don or no Don. He’s got the face you want to slap, not sit down and have a beer with. He’s been losing support for months now, the more you see him the less you like him.
I would put my nickel on Christie. He’s brash and loud- that’s what Republican voters seem to value.
And by today’s Republican Party’s standards, he is a moderate from a liberal state. He’s going to find that tough to overcome in the primaries among the faithful. He would play better in the General Election then the Primaries.
I’m far more concerned that someone who is a wolf in sheep’s clothing will jump into the race.
Think Glenn Younkin, current governor of Virginia. He’s as unhinged as the rest of the extreme Right, but he puts a good face on it. It’s how he won the governorship. But make no mistake, he is a dangerous guy.
Not necessarily. The most rabid (and honestly, any voters still backing Trump when there are other Republicans available are pretty rabid by definition) will likely not vote for anyone else, taking some non- zero percentage of likely Republican voters out of the equation entirely.
I don’t know who the remainder might coalesce around, if it’s a single candidate or if they’ll spread out between the remaining candidates not named Pence or Christie.
My pet conspiracy theory is still that Trump figured all along that some Republican candidate or other would offer him a straight cash bribe if he’d agree to drop out of the race with a ‘kingmaker’ endorsement on his lips, and ever since he’s been a little amazed that no such offer has been forthcoming.
I don’t think anyone of the Republican brand would find their candidacy an easy sell. Donald Trump remains a concern for two interrelated reasons: he’s got the charismatic appeal that motivates right-wing voters and gets them all fervently involved not just blandly willing to vote in his direction; and he flat-out doesn’t give a shit whether he wins by any discernable rules, and will overturn / coup d’etat / cheat / etc his way to reoccupation of the palace, is blatant about that fact, and hence directly encourages others to engage in illegal political processes, see again the charismatic-appeal part, so that makes him dangerous.
The rest of the crop of Pubbies don’t have that going for them. There are those I wouldn’t trust not to do nefarious shenanigans, but they don’t have the star calibre snake-oil sales appeal Trump has. They have nobody else that has lots of preacher-man crowd-firing-up talent. So they’d have to sell themselves the old way, “here’s what will happen if you vote for me”, and the problem with that is the last decade has given too much of the electorate a lot of reason to not want those folks in power; the base will mostly vote (though some will opt out if the Anointed One isn’t there to vote for) but no appeal to the crossover / independent voter types, and even Trump probably can’t win without dishonest and undemocratic measures at this point.
That is, I think the GOP has run into a demographic wall: if their brand represents 50% of the electorate (which it may not, but bear with me a minute), then 10% of that (5% of the whole electorate) is crazy-MAGA-Trumpie cult members, but another 10% is sensible, Never-Trumpers. If you appeal to one 10%, you lose the other one. So the brand is underwater in any nationwide election, and the only way to pull off a victory is to cheat–depend on gerrymanders, voter suppression, inequities in the Electoral College, reliance on foreign subterfuge, misleading fundraising appeals, and all the rest of Trump’s bag o’ tricks.
They MUST rely on fraud in one way or another, so they will. An honest Republican will be one who rejects one of these fraudulent methods, but an honest Republican will be very rare indeed.
There will be a handful of candidates who will fight each other in a death match to gain his seal of approval. They will court him as if he were the prettiest girl at the ball.
So my first thought is that a more realistic scenario (because, you’re right he’ll never leave) is what if Trump due to age, health and eating habits dropped dead after Iowa, what would happen? But that’s another thread.
However, not fighting the hypothetical, my first instinct is close to
Although with caveats: it has to be a candidate that hasn’t yet aggressively insulted or betrayed Trump (so Christie, Pence and DeSantis are right out) AND he’d want a guarantee (probably via some form of blackmail or other non-legal but effectively enforceable) of an unconditional federal pardon, which would vastly reduce the number of actions pursuable against him.
But the more people fight to win, and take shots at Trump, the fewer will ever be able to get past that first point, because Pride beats greed and security for his Orangeness.
Oooooh…that would be an interesting topic for the Republican debate! Somebody like Christie asks for a show of hands for all candidates who would swear that they would never pardon Trump.
I’m still voting for a Russian plane from a makeshift airfield out in the countryside to Cuba and thence to Moscow, a la The Americans, as his chosen method of dropping out of the race.
The guaranteed pardon is no good. No one can promise to win the Presidency, nor to keep his word. If you’re suggesting that the would-be pardoner offer up blackmail on himself to assure Trump he’ll stay in line, why would someone do that?
Rather Trump already has the blackmail material. So he tells, e.g. De Santis: “If you’re elected President and don’t pardon me in the first week, I will release [whatever]. I’ve got nothing to lose. You do.” Repeat for each primary candidate who Trump thinks has a chance of the nomination.
I presumed that the candidates would be embarrassed to go on the record as saying they would pardon Trump.
I presumed incorrectly; apparently they’ll be pushing each other out of the way to indicate their eagerness to kiss Trump’s ass. Ramaswamy has already said he would pardon Trump on Day 1 of his administration.
I, Ramaswamy, want to be the R nominee. And since we don’t have a transferable vote system, I want to get all the MAGAt votes if for some reason Trump is out and those votes are up for grabs. And if not, I’m no worse off making this promise. At least no worse off with the voters I care about.
From a game-theoretic POV it’s not a bad play.
If the parties did primaries by an STV system and not separately by state but only counting the national totals at the end, this gamesmanship would not be necessary. But we’re stuck with primitive 18th century ideas of how to determine collective preferences despite 400 years of cumulative research into smarter methods.
