2024 GOP Presidential Race (3 Viewers)

[SteveSBrickNJ]

Many of Trump's endorsed candidates did not do well on Nov. 8th.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis DID do well.
He won convincingly.
Yet in this OP's opinion, Donald Trump is an egomaniac who is seemingly incapable of putting "Party over Self"
Trump has ZERO chance of being elected our next president.
In my opinion, if Trump would just shut up and go away (fat chance of that)...but "if" Trump did that, Gov. Ron DeSantis would have a CHANCE to be a formidable candidate for President in 2024.
Here is an interesting article on this topic...

Donald Trump warns Ron DeSantis against 2024 presidential bid as Republican rising star wins big

Donald Trump has warned Florida's Governor Ron DeSantis against running for president in 2024, saying doing so would harm the Republican Party.

www.scotsman.com

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What do any of you think re. Trump vs DeSantis?

 

[barbar]

I caught a bit on Morning Edition in the car earlier, and someone mentioned that he dismissed critics as people who can harp on about problems but never actually fix them, then spent a big chunk of the speech criticizing Biden and the Democrats.

Meanwhile, we are still waiting on his "really good healthcare" plan he announced in 2016.

 

[Nolaswede]

Meanwhile, we are still waiting on his "really good healthcare" plan he announced in 2016.

Agree, and in 2016 they held both of the House and Senate, and still couldn’t come up with a decent plan! I guess that’s what happens when you(the party) spends 99% of your energy talking about how bad everyone else is.

Before 2016, I was kind of in the middle, slightly leaning left, but would have had no problem voting for a moderate Republican. I think John Kasich was the best person running for President in 2016 and I most likely would have voted for him. But now it’s just a #**% show!

 

[SFIDC3]

Agree. I don't believe a WORD that comes out of his, Pence's, mouth. Not one word.

Nope….anyone who puts party over family is a coward to me….it’s odd, and Pence gets a lot of credit for “doing the right thing” but in the end I think he is at least intelligent enough to know what would have happened if he went along with the attempted coup…

If it had been most of us though? Would have tracked down and physically attacked Trump…my god man ….his whole family narrowly escaped what could have been a very serious situation….

 

[BullSheetBuddha]

Nope….anyone who puts party over family is a coward to me….it’s odd, and Pence gets a lot of credit for “doing the right thing” but in the end I think he is at least intelligent enough to know what would have happened if he went along with the attempted coup…

If it had been most of us though? Would have tracked down and physically attacked Trump…my god man ….his whole family narrowly escaped what could have been a very serious situation….

Frankly, he just did what so many have done before. I don't give him anymore or less credit than someone who stops at a red light. You're supposed to.

 

[BullSheetBuddha]

Opinion | Donald Trump Is Finally Finished (Published 2022)

The only coherent explanation for Republicans’ underperformance is the ex-president.

www.nytimes.com

"Last week, the realization finally dawned on his devoted supporters that Trump can no longer deliver what they want most: power. Or, let me put it in language more congenial to them: Whatever purpose they believe he was meant to serve — bringing working-class voters back to the Republican fold; restoring nationalism to conservative ideology; rejecting the authority of supposed experts — has been served. Others can now do the same thing better, without the drama and divisiveness. He’s yesterday’s man."

 

[Optimus Prime]

It's fine for Fox, the GOP and billionaires to say they're done with Trump now.

Plenty of people said in 2019 and 2020 that they were done with Trump and voted for him again anyway

Depending on what happens with all the legal cases

Depends what happens to DeSantis, the tide could turn him over the next 18 months

Also depends on what happens once the primaries and debates start. What happens if Trump's well on his way to winning the nomination? Will they all still be done with him?

 

[SFIDC3]

It's fine for Fox, the GOP and billionaires to say they're done with Trump now.

Plenty of people said in 2019 and 2020 that they were done with Trump how voted for him again anyway

Depending on what happens with all the legal cases

Depends what happens to DeSantis, the tide could turn him over the next 18 months

Also depends on what happens once the primaries and debates start. What happens if Trump's well on his way to winning the nomination? Will they all still be done with him?

I don’t think Trump is going down without a major fight….It’s only fine if it tears the party of Fox, billionaires, and MAGA enabling idiots….down….

 

[Optimus Prime]

Donald Trump, the twice-impeached former president who tried to overturn the 2020 elections and inspired the violent attack on the Capitol after he lost, tried his best to woo the QAnon crowd during his 2024 campaign announcement speech on Tuesday night.

Not only did he invite QAnon influencers to attend the event at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, Trump repeated several QAnon dog whistles during the 70-minute long speech, including multiple references to the storm, a well-known trope within the conspiracy movement.

But while influential adherents to the movement were thrilled, most QAnon-ers posting on Telegram last night, in fact, reacted angrily to Trump’s announcement. This could be a worrying sign for Trump’s 2024 campaign, coupled with the growing resentment against the former president inside the Republican party after major GOP midterm election losses.

Certainly, the response among the major figures within QAnon, a group of influencers and grifters who have driven the movement in recent years, was almost universally positive. “Make NO mistake…President Trump is absolutely UNSHAKABLE,” an influencer known as QAnon John wrote on his popular Telegram channel, adding: “That’s WHY God picked him.”

Jordan Sather, a QAnon influencer who uses his popularity within the movement to shill vitamin supplements, also hyped Trump’s return. Sather was actually in the Mar-a-Lago ballroom for the announcement and excitedly wrote on Telegram that during lunch earlier in the day Trump had passed his table and gave the group a thumbs up.

But for rank-and-file QAnon supporters, who have spent the last two years loudly voicing their anger at having the 2020 election stolen, the announcement was a bitter blow.

The majority, who voiced their opinions on Telegram channels and fringe message boards, viewed Trump’s speech as a tacit admission that the 2020 election wasn’t stolen.

“Does he seriously think there will be anyone left to vote in two years, or better yet, that our country will even be viable?!!! We will NOT make it two more years! This is a flippin joke! I don't know about you guys but I'm pissed! The storm is coming…in two years,” one member of a popular QAnon forum wrote on Telegram after Trump’s speech.

“Patriots aren’t in control of anything, the cabal is,” another wrote.

Others were even less conciliatory: “I'm forking done with this political shirt show and WILL NEVER VOTE AGAIN! FORK POLITICS AND THE NAZI REGIME,” one Telegram user wrote.

Some influencers tried to quell the concern. But after QAnon John suggested in a post that Trump’s abandoning of the 2020 election denier claims was all part of the plan, one Telegram user responded, “Trump pissed off a LOT of people tonight. Never thought my loyalty would be challenged by the Dems, but Instead from Trump himself. We will NOT wait until 2024. Trump conceded tonight. It's over. Trump being "one of them" seems much more plausible now.”..............

QAnon Is Not Very Happy With Trump’s 2024 Announcement

“Does he seriously think there will be anyone left to vote in two years, or better yet, that our country will even be viable?!” a QAnon-er posted on Telegram.

www.vice.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

I don't know if this is Newsmax turning away from Trump and his claims or more because of that billion dollar lawsuit
====================================================================

A Newsmax host swatted down actor Kevin Sorbo parroting the false notion there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Wednesday’s Prime News played a soundbite of The View host Joy Behar earlier in the day mocking Trump’s 2024 presidential candidacy announcement on Tuesday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida and calling him a “kind of like a defeated Mussolini sort of guy.”

Fill-in anchor Lidia Curanaj asked Sorbo for his reaction.

“I was there last night. I was at Mar-a-Lago, I was fourth-row center and I tell you what? That was the most presidential speech he’s given. I mean, seriously. I thought that this was awesome. I’m not surprised he’s coming back. I am a voter denial. There was definitely fraud in this election, as there was two years ago. So –,” said Sorbo.”

“Well, we don’t have any proof of that,” interjected Curanaj. “And we’re going to look forward. We’re going to look forward and focus on the policies and the positivity of America.”

Newsmax has been sued by Dominion Voting Systems for $1.6 billion due to allegedly spreading disinformation about its voting machines...........

MSN

 

[SaulGoodmanEsq]

It is ABSOLUTELY because they are being sued.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Ronald Dion DeSantis is an Inevitable. He is 44 years old, a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law, a Navy Reserve officer with a telegenic, accomplished wife and three adorable children.

In 2018 he squeaked into the governorship of Florida by about 32,400 votes, but he was reelected last week by a margin of about 1.5 million.

He reddened traditional Democratic counties, drafted large shares of the youth, independent and Hispanic votes, and built on his handling (however debatable) of the coronavirus pandemic and Hurricane Ian.

Over the course of this year, in some polls, DeSantis pulled ahead of Donald Trump as Republican voters’ preferred presidential nominee for 2024; Trump in turn bestowed him with a trademark childish nickname (“Ron DeSanctimonious”), a sure sign of the governor’s rise in popularity.

Four days before the midterms his wife, Casey DeSantis, a former TV anchor, tweeted a campaign video that implied God Himself not only endorses Ron but molded him into “a fighter” who will save America from “hysteria,” among other perils.


And so the governor’s inevitability becomes all the more inevitable, as the Republican Party falters outside of Florida, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire falls in line, and the winds of punditry shift and strengthen — sometimes at the candidate’s own summoning.


“While our country flounders due to failed leadership in Washington,” DeSantis said in his victory speech, “Florida is on the right track.”
“If the Florida governor ever intends to wrest control of the GOP from Trump, now is his moment,” read the headline on an Atlantic article by David Frum last week.

If he runs “he will be a formidable candidate,” Jeb Bush told Neil Cavuto in October.


Jeb Bush was also an Inevitable. Hillary Clinton was an Inevitable (twice!). Neither’s inevitability yielded the presidency. That’s the tricky thing about being an Inevitable.


“What voters will be looking for a year from now, or two years, is very unpredictable,” says Alex Conant, who was communications director for the presidential campaigns of Marco Rubio (once an Inevitable) and Tim Pawlenty (never an Inevitable).

“So that candidate who looks perfect for the current moment might not be what they want later. Jeb and Trump are the perfect examples.”

Upon his 2010 election to the Senate, Rubio, at age 39, became an Inevitable. When Conant was considering whether to work for the new senator, “a lot of people I respected said flat out: ‘This guy’s going to be president someday,’ ” Conant says now.

“But there’s a difference between saying ‘that guy will be president someday’ and saying somebody is going to be president in 24 months. It’s more of a compliment than a prediction.”


Two years into his first term, Rubio was on the cover of Time magazine with the neon-yellow headline “THE REPUBLICAN SAVIOR.”

That very week, he awkwardly lunged for history’s tiniest bottle of water during a live response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. Is this visual gaffe when Rubio’s inevitability began to wane?

Or was it in 2016, when Chris Christie — himself briefly an Inevitable — called out Rubio’s robotic repetition of rote talking points … moments before Rubio robotically repeated a rote talking point……..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/15/ron-desantis-inevitable-candidate/

 

[Optimus Prime]

Donald Trump’s decision to run yet again for president has saddled Republicans with a huge problem.

Trump was a key reason the midterms shaped up as a debacle for the GOP, yet he has no intention of going anywhere, and he apparently continues to command an untold degree of devotion among a large minority of GOP voters.

This conundrum is giving rise to a variety of responses, all of which cope with that vast and complicated underlying state of affairs in a different way. Here are five leading ones:

Call Trump a “loser” without implicating their own party.

Some Republicans willingly blame Trump for the outcome of the midterm elections, but without acknowledging that their own party’s willing and even eager embrace of the pathologies of Trumpism was also a major culprit.

Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), for instance, declaredthat the 2024 nominee must not be “the loser Donald Trump has proven himself to be.”

Brooks played a big role in the former president’s effort to overturn his 2020 loss, along with other House Republicans loyal to Trump.

What Brooks can’t say is that many prominent GOP candidates lost this year in no small part because they actively sought to keep that insurrectionist spirit alive.

Trump’s mystique with his voters has long been rooted in their feeling that he’s winning on their behalf. Casting Trump as a “loser” is about breaking that mystique, by making his voters associate their losing feeling about this year with Trump.

But the trick is to do this without admitting to why he proved to be a “loser” for their party, or the party’s own role in making that happen…..,

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/17/trump-2024-run-mike-pence-jan-6-elise-stefanik/

 

[Optimus Prime]

Good read about how Trump could become the nominee
===========

It is heartening to see some important Republican figures come out against Donald Trump.

But it’s worth noting that many embraced him when he proposed a Muslim ban, tried to extort Ukraine’s president, was impeached and tried to overturn an election.

His real sin, in their eyes, is that he is losing popularity.


However, Trump’s slump among Republicans could change. Imagine that during the 2024 campaign, the Republican Party runs a large and varied field: Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, Larry Hogan and Liz Cheney (among other possible candidates).

Trump starts with a shrunken base but generates enormous publicity and wins the single-largest vote share in the early primaries. He doesn’t get past 50 percent of the vote in any state — but most Republican state primary systems favor the front-runner, and, in state after state, he just does better than anyone else.

As Ronald Brownstein reminds us, that’s how Trump became the presumptive nominee in 2016 while garnering only about 40 percent of total votes.


Voters did deliver a powerful rebuke to the Republicans in the midterm elections, and clearly it was centered around two issues, election denial and abortion.

But those who shifted appear to have been independents and a sliver of moderate Republicans. These are not the voters who will determine the results of Republican primaries.

The results also don’t tell us enough about a possible matchup between Trump and DeSantis. DeSantis’s victory in the Florida gubernatorial race was impressive.

But in the early stages of a presidential campaign, DeSantis would not be facing Trump mano a mano but rather as one choice among many.

A New York Times-Siena poll from October found that almost half of likely primary voters still preferred Trump, with about one-quarter favoring DeSantis and only 6 percent favoring Pence.

DeSantis’s popularity will probably have increased in recent weeks, but in a possible 2024 presidential campaign he will be fighting for “Not Trump” voters, and the Not Trump Lane of the Republican Party is going to get very crowded.

Were Trump to have a revival of his fortunes, many would jump back on his bandwagon. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) has already reserved a spot there, promising that if Trump were to get the nomination he would “enthusiastically support him.”

Republican officials seem to be hoping that their voters will do their dirty work for them and deliver them from Trump — reversing the usual roles of leaders and followers. But it won’t work.

The party must put an end to its moral cowardice and finally and frontally confront the cancer within. Republican leaders need to explain to their voters that Trump is a demagogue who tried to undermine American democracy, which should make him an unacceptable nominee for Republicans………

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/17/republican-leaders-must-purge-trump-extremism/

 

[Nolaswede]

Ronald Dion DeSantis is an Inevitable. He is 44 years old, a graduate of Yale and Harvard Law, a Navy Reserve officer with a telegenic, accomplished wife and three adorable children.

In 2018 he squeaked into the governorship of Florida by about 32,400 votes, but he was reelected last week by a margin of about 1.5 million.

He reddened traditional Democratic counties, drafted large shares of the youth, independent and Hispanic votes, and built on his handling (however debatable) of the coronavirus pandemic and Hurricane Ian.

Over the course of this year, in some polls, DeSantis pulled ahead of Donald Trump as Republican voters’ preferred presidential nominee for 2024; Trump in turn bestowed him with a trademark childish nickname (“Ron DeSanctimonious”), a sure sign of the governor’s rise in popularity.

Four days before the midterms his wife, Casey DeSantis, a former TV anchor, tweeted a campaign video that implied God Himself not only endorses Ron but molded him into “a fighter” who will save America from “hysteria,” among other perils.


And so the governor’s inevitability becomes all the more inevitable, as the Republican Party falters outside of Florida, Rupert Murdoch’s media empire falls in line, and the winds of punditry shift and strengthen — sometimes at the candidate’s own summoning.


“While our country flounders due to failed leadership in Washington,” DeSantis said in his victory speech, “Florida is on the right track.”
“If the Florida governor ever intends to wrest control of the GOP from Trump, now is his moment,” read the headline on an Atlantic article by David Frum last week.

If he runs “he will be a formidable candidate,” Jeb Bush told Neil Cavuto in October.


Jeb Bush was also an Inevitable. Hillary Clinton was an Inevitable (twice!). Neither’s inevitability yielded the presidency. That’s the tricky thing about being an Inevitable.


“What voters will be looking for a year from now, or two years, is very unpredictable,” says Alex Conant, who was communications director for the presidential campaigns of Marco Rubio (once an Inevitable) and Tim Pawlenty (never an Inevitable).

“So that candidate who looks perfect for the current moment might not be what they want later. Jeb and Trump are the perfect examples.”

Upon his 2010 election to the Senate, Rubio, at age 39, became an Inevitable. When Conant was considering whether to work for the new senator, “a lot of people I respected said flat out: ‘This guy’s going to be president someday,’ ” Conant says now.

“But there’s a difference between saying ‘that guy will be president someday’ and saying somebody is going to be president in 24 months. It’s more of a compliment than a prediction.”


Two years into his first term, Rubio was on the cover of Time magazine with the neon-yellow headline “THE REPUBLICAN SAVIOR.”

That very week, he awkwardly lunged for history’s tiniest bottle of water during a live response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. Is this visual gaffe when Rubio’s inevitability began to wane?

Or was it in 2016, when Chris Christie — himself briefly an Inevitable — called out Rubio’s robotic repetition of rote talking points … moments before Rubio robotically repeated a rote talking point……..

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/11/15/ron-desantis-inevitable-candidate/

Yeah, I’m not overly worried about Trump, but DeSantis kind of scares me. If Trump is the nominee, a lot of people will go out and vote against him just because it is Trump! However, if it’s Desantis vs Biden, the turnout for the Dems will probably drop and Republicans will still vote(because be was appointed by God - like his wife told the press ).

 

[faceman]

Yeah, I’m not overly worried about Trump, but DeSantis kind of scares me. If Trump is the nominee, a lot of people will go out and vote against him just because it is Trump! However, if it’s Desantis vs Biden, the turnout for the Dems will probably drop and Republicans will still vote(because be was appointed by God - like his wife told the press ).

We can survive Desantis. He's an old school right winger. Trump is far more dangerous.

 

[efil4]

We can survive Desantis. He's an old school right winger. Trump is far more dangerous.

DeSantis doesnt have the "charisma" or following to whip things into a fervor, country-wide. I totally agree Trump is more dangerous.

 

[coldseat]

We can survive Desantis. He's an old school right winger. Trump is far more dangerous.

Disagree. Why would America even elect a president that it has to "survive"?

I wish people would stop saying this because it turns DeSantis into some maligned actor. Many Americans said the same exact thing about Trump before he was elected, I was like "Y'all are crazy".

 

[GrandAdmiral]

We can survive Desantis. He's an old school right winger. Trump is far more dangerous.

DeSantis is Donald Trump with common sense. He might be more dangerous in that sense.