Assuming Trump serves a full term and runs for re-election, do you think any Republicans will mount a serious challenge in the primaries?
On one hand, if things continue as they are, the GOP will have a harder and harder time justifying standing behind him as a candidate. But on the other hand, a primary fight could further weaken a party in serious disarray.
Of course, none of us know for sure what the next 3 years will bring, but it’s interesting to speculate.
Absolutely not. Republicans would never challenge an elected president. The only challenge to a sitting president that I can recall is Reagan taking on the unelected Ford in 1976. Nixon, Ike, Bushes did not face primary challengers if I recall correctly.
Much more recent example: Pat Buchanan challenged Bush in 1992. Wikipedia sez he got 23% of the vote. (The whole “read my lips” thing.) Pat got a convention speaking slot, which he used for the “culture war” speech. It was a kinda crazy year.
EDIT: and back to the OP’s question - I think it’s far too early to say who, but I’d expect at least one credible challenger if things continue roughly as they are now and Trump stays in office.
I’ve already predicted that Cruz, running as a “true conservative fulfilling God’s will”, will emulate Reagan in 1976 and mount a strong challange.
Yes it is. I’m going to see if he lasts 6 months first before I start thinking about it.
There probably will be one, but I suspect he’ll be a nobody like Evan McMuffin and only win some counties in the Mormon cultural belt and rich suburban areas.
I am becoming increasingly skeptical that Trump will last for four years but if he does, yeah I would expect to see a primary challenge from the conservative wing of the party. It could be Cruz or a Never Trumper like Ben Sasse. The Reagan precedent will be powerful because because these guys generally worship Reagan and because it shows that even a failed challenge can be a stepping stone towards success.
If Trump serves a full term – a big if – I’d be surprised if enough Republicans weren’t so disgusted with him that someone wouldn’t want to challenge him.
He has ~80% approval among Republicans and is giving them exactly what they want. Best hope is his age and diet catch up to him. Maybe the Russia thing will get bad enough that the GOP will dump him after the mid-terms, but I wouldn’t count on it. The Dems will probably put up another corporate robot who loves gun-control, immigration, and free trade, so no hope there.
Okay, so they may not want to challenge an elected president.
But what about an elected buffoon?
Trump once declared that he could murder somebody in broad daylight on Fifth Avenue and his believers would still love him…
And that was true before the election. People wanted change.
But his tweets keep coming and coming, and getting more and more ridiculous. There is a possibility that one night at 3 in the morning he’ll go too far. He might yet shoot himself in the foot, and tweet something so outrageous that even his believers will be shocked.
Some of his followers actually thought that his rhetoric before the election would calm down when he took office, and now they’re slowly starting to have second thoughts. If 20% of his voters change their minds, that could be enough to convince the Republican party to nominate somebody else in 2020.
I had forgotten about Buchanan, thanks snoe for the reminder.
Is there something so outrageous that he could tweet it and lose his followers? I don’t think so. If they haven’t lost their faith now, they’re not going to. Seriously, check out some of the Facebook groups. This is a cult, not a political movement. Well, maybe if he tweeted “Allah Akbar, Islam is the true religion” that might do it.
I think that if he stops eating KFC , he might make 2020. I heard recently he had to go see the Gastroenterologist. Can he make it eating like that?
Compared to 2016, 1992 was mildly eccentric.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if Pence was the one who did it?
Even one or two years will already be enough for the Trump family to gain huge wealth and power. It is also more than enough time for the man’s incompetence and perniciousness to become more apparent. Aging and under stress, it is far more likely that Trump will not even last four years than that he will want to run again four years from now.
But … Please! Why the focus on 2020? The present government may be doing damage which is almost irreparable, but two years of destruction is still better than four years. The Democrats must strive to gain control of one or both Houses of Congress in the 2018 election. If, despite clear evidence of harm, the American electorate chooses to leave the GOP in full control with that election to just wait for 2020, I can only mourn.
It is imperative to focus on 2018, not 2020.
The real takeaways to determine whether there’s a challenger are the 2018 mid-terms and the economy. Trump is still 5 points underwater on his approval rating so he has very little in terms of margin of error.
If the democrats make significant gains in 2018 it’ll be hung on Trump - he’ll deny being responsible - and if the economy has a recession - which it will and he’ll also deny responsibility for - then that opens the door for someone to run against him. That’s really all there is to it.
If his approval rating is above water and the economy is going gangbusters in 2019-20 then no, there’ll be no challenge outside of a crank or two.
What septimus and Jonathan Chance said – barring force majeure considerations that prevent him running again, the key will be what happens in 2018. If the Dems come out of 2018 looking good, some Reps will become alarmed and seek a pitching change. If things hold together or even worse if Populist Trumpians make a good showing against Establishment Conservatives in the 2018 primaries, nobody will dare.
Kasich seems to be setting himself up for one. He’s got a political book coming out in April (which he actually wrote himself not ghost written) - Two Paths: America Divided or United. His current term as governor ends Jan 2019 and he’s term limited; the timing works well to declare in summer of 2019. He’s also been engaging audiences outside his state electorate on national issues. The post-election meeting with Obama to assess ways to try and pass TPP in a lame duck session and the NYT Op-ed followed by today’s Meet the Press interview on ACA reform are some examples. He’s even extended that to international relations where he’s spoken out about supporting our NATO allies.
I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in late Feb when he met with Trump, at Trump’s request.
Why not a moderate like Collins or Murkowski?
Mostly because I don’t think that they want it bad enough.
It’s easy - because Trump breaks the standard model - to think of a primary challenge coming from the further right. Honestly, it’s not hard to be further right on a great many issues with Trump. He’s certainly not doctrinaire and at some point during the next two years he’s going to throw his soi-disant congressional allies under the bus in the name of his approval rating. That should start sparking discussion.