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?

 

[fooferdoggie]

DeSantis worked very hard in Iowa. He visited all 99 counties in that state. It is so easy for you to tap out a post on this forum thread passing judgment. WHO are YOU to say that?

did he stand up to trump? nope he was praising and supporting trump while running against him. If you don't have the backbone to standup against your opponent in an election race your are not presidential material.

 

[Optimus Prime]

For what it’s worth

I didn’t know he wasn’t married

And don’t think it matters if he isn’t
==============
In June, as Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) began to get a little momentum in the presidential primary, a person working on behalf of one of Scott’s Republican opponents messaged me, asking to chat.

“Have you seen the video,” he asked over the phone, conspiratorially, “where he says he has a girlfriend?”

The video in question was from a May event organized by the news website Axios, where the interviewer asked the South Carolina senator about the possibility of becoming the first bachelor president since the 19th century.

“I probably have more time, more energy and more latitude to do the job,” he replies. And then the senator adds — quickly, as an aside: “My girlfriend wants to see me when I come home.”

The Republican operative who called me wasn’t sure said girlfriend existed. He suggested I look into it. He followed up on our conversation with an email that included a dossier of Scott’s known personal relationships. “No fingerprints,” he said.

Scott’s romantic endeavors aren’t a scandal so much as they are a mystery. At 57, he’s never been married and rarely talks about girlfriends past or present.

Late last year, as Scott was ramping up his run for president, I asked Jennifer DeCasper, his close friend and campaign manager, about the status of his dating life. “It’s nonexistent,” she said.

Now, Scott was suggesting otherwise. And the timing of that revelation seemed a bit convenient.
“He has staked so much on his personal story, character and faith,” said the operative, who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity because, well, that’s how people kick dirt around in this business.

“He’s running as America’s pastor, so to speak, as he courts evangelicals in Iowa, and I think a lot of folks may wonder about his lack of a family.”…….

……And although there have been unmarried candidates for president over the years — including the other Republican senator from South Carolina, Lindsey O. Graham, in 2015 — you would have to go all the way back to Grover Cleveland, in 1884, to find a bachelor who won. (Cleveland married two years later.) Before that, there was James Buchanan, who stayed single after winning in 1856. And yeah, it was a thing.

“An Old Bachelor is at most but a half man,” wrote the New York Evening Post in an editorial about Buchanan. “How can such a person make more than a half-President?”

Fast-forward to two-thousand-whatever. Despite an evolving understanding of gender — or, more likely, because of it — Republicans have made defining “masculinity” a part of their political playbook. This includes promoting some pretty old-school ideas about marriage.

“Men are meant to be husbands, to form the virtues of a husband in their souls,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) wrote in his book “Manhood.”

Before Trump, when Tim Miller was working in opposition research on the Republican side, finding a sex scandal used to be an effective way to topple an opponent. It may say something about our current political moment that Scott’s opponents might see an opportunity to damage him with a sexless scandal.

“What might be salient with Republican voters is not that he isn’t a perfect family man,” Miller told me, “but that he might not have the macho womanizing strength of the MAGA god-king.”

Scott’s current mission is to impress a particular subset of Republicans: the ones who will be participating in the Iowa caucuses early next year.

What do they think of the idea of an unmarried, childless commander in chief?

“I think 10 or 20 years ago, people had a kind of romance with the first family,” said Bob Vander Plaats, the head of the Family Leader, a social conservative organization in Iowa. “But I think our country is at the point where being married isn’t the top qualifier. It probably doesn’t make the Top 50.”……….

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2023/09/12/tim-scott-girlfriend-republican-presidential-candidate/

Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), a former presidential candidate and possible Republican vice-presidential nominee, proposed to his girlfriend, Mindy Noce, Saturday evening at the beach in Kiawah Island in South Carolina.


She said yes.


“As a guy who is mostly an introvert and on the quiet side, having to have a conversation about the engagement is a little, you know, uncomfortable in a way, but it’s the most exciting thing I’ll do with my life besides making Jesus my Lord,” Scott said in an interview Sunday.


“I’ve been very patient and prayerful, and I’m really excited and somewhat nervous, and I couldn’t be more thankful for having found a soul mate and someone who shares a lot of the same interests, passions and goals that I do,” he said.


Noce, a Charleston-area interior designer and mother of three who was previously married, was spotted Sunday at a church in Mt. Pleasant, S.C., wearing an engagement ring, Scott said.


They began dating about a year ago, Scott said, after being introduced at church and bonding over Bible study……

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2024/01/21/tim-scott-engaged-vp-trump/

 

[LA - L.A.]

WHO are YOU....

Someone who woke up in a Soho doorway?

 

[SFIDC3]

DeSantis worked very hard in Iowa. He visited all 99 counties in that state. It is so easy for you to tap out a post on this forum thread passing judgment. WHO are YOU to say that?

Save the sanctimonious BS for folks who give a rat's arse.....DeSantis is a christian fascist wackjob of the worst kind....he was never a serious candidate and will now bend the knee for the guy you claim you can't stand......

 

[efil4]

Save the sanctimonious BS for folks who give a rat's arse.....DeSantis is a christian fascist wackjob of the worst kind....he was never a serious candidate and will now bend the knee for the guy you claim you can't stand......

 

[MT15]

She is basically clowning herself for a chance to be VP. Just embarrassingly so.

 

[LA - L.A.]

She is basically clowning herself for a chance to be VP. Just embarrassingly so.

I have to click on twitter links to see them. Based on your comment, I expected the link to be about Haley. A lot of people are clowning themselves hoping to get Trump to pick them as his VP.

 

[Optimus Prime]

……The argument seemed compelling: DeSantis could offer the former president’s Maga (“Make America great again”) politics in purer, perfected form, unencumbered by Trump’s age, chaos or court cases.

Some said he was therefore more dangerous than Trump.

The comedian Trevor Noah suggested that, if Trump was the original Terminator, DeSantis was the T-1000, a smarter and slicker upgrade.

DeSantis was billed as Trump without the baggage. He turned out to be Trump without the votes.

The governor made a series of bad gambles. He bet big on May and Twitter Spaces as the right time and place to start. He bet big on a moral crusade against wokeness. He bet big on outsourcing central parts of his campaign to a Super Pac (whose boss spent significant time during the last days in Iowa working on a jigsaw puzzle). He bet big on Trump’s candidacy imploding under legal pressures. He bet big on the Iowa caucuses. None of them paid off.

Longtime political observers in Florida had doubts from the start. They knew that DeSantis had conquered the heavily populated Sunshine state with heavy TV advertising and an unusually weak Democratic opponent. They suspected that the retail politics of Iowa – shaking hands, kissing babies, holding long conversations in diners about ethanol – would expose his lack of people skills.

They were right……

Ron DeSantis put nearly all his eggs in the basket of a ‘war on woke’

The Florida governor, once billed as Trump without the baggage, ended up making a series of bad gambles

www.theguardian.com

 

[MT15]

I have to click on twitter links to see them. Based on your comment, I expected the link to be about Haley. A lot of people are clowning themselves hoping to get Trump to pick them as his VP.

I might be misremembering, but I thought Haley ruled out being VP the other day.

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

DeSantis is not bending the knee. He dropped out because in spite of his best effort it was clear he could not win. I can't picture Trump asking Haley to be VP and I could not see her accepting it even if he did ask her.

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

DeSantis is not bending the knee. He dropped out because in spite of his best effort it was clear he could not win. I can't picture Trump asking Haley to be VP and I could not see her accepting it even if he did ask her.

I do not accept any criticism tossed my way in the posts above. Long long long ago I abandoned DeSantis and from a field of 9 and I said that Nikki Haley is the best of the 9. Hmmm...I guess even though one poster on here told me that a brown skinned woman would not get any Republican votes....hmm...she is the only one of the 9 still standing. Additionally I said that DeSantis worked hard in Iowa and he did. MONTHS of time visiting all 99 counties. IF you watched him in interviews last week you would have discovered that he grew alot as a candidate and as a person.

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

I do not accept any criticism tossed my way in the posts above. Long long long ago I abandoned DeSantis and from a field of 9 I said Nikki Haley is the best of the 9. Hmmm...I guess even though one poster on here told me that a brown skinned woman would not get any Republican votes....hmm...she is the only one of the 9 still standing. Additionally I said that DeSantis worked hard in Iowa and he did. MONTHS of time visiting all 99 counties. IF you watched him in interviews last week you would have discovered that he grew alot as a candidate and as a person.

If only a couple of YOU would grow as a person as well. I fear Trump will indeed be our next President. If that appears to be the case then I see no point in posting here. There is nothing to say in such a dismal reality as that.

 

[fooferdoggie]

I do not accept any criticism tossed my way in the posts above. Long long long ago I abandoned DeSantis and from a field of 9 I said Nikki Haley is the best of the 9. Hmmm...I guess even though one poster on here told me that a brown skinned woman would not get any Republican votes....hmm...she is the only one of the 9 still standing. Additionally I said that DeSantis worked hard in Iowa and he did. MONTHS of time visiting all 99 counties. IF you watched him in interviews last week you would have discovered that he grew alot as a candidate and as a person.

well that did not t make up for the lack of effort and the suck up he did with trump. I very much doubt he has grown as a person and I bet we se a ton more hate legislation going on in Florida now.

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

well that did not t make up for the lack of effort and the suck up he did with trump. I very much doubt he has grown as a person and I bet we se a ton more hate legislation going on in Florida now.

I certainly expect DeSantis to do whatever he can to position himself for a Presidential run in 2028. For that reason DeSantis should DEFINITELY NOT be the VP.

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

If only a couple of YOU would grow as a person as well. I fear Trump will indeed be our next President. If that appears to be the case then I see no point in posting here. There is nothing to say in such a dismal reality as that.

If Haley loses in NH by more than 10 percentage points then she'll lose equally as big in SC. At that point it's all over...and so will be my time here as well.

 

[brandon]

If Haley loses in NH by more than 10 percentage points then she'll lose equally as big in SC. At that point it's all over...and so will be my time here as well.

Wait, you’re gonna leave here if Nikki Haley drops out?

Why?

 

[Optimus Prime]

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis first took office in 2019, he surprised many with actions indicating he’d be a much more moderate leader than anticipated: He corrected a decades-old racial injustice, took the side of medical marijuana supporters over GOP leaders and hired a liberal Democrat for a key state position.

But then he set his eyes on the White House and veered far to the right as he rolled to a 2022 reelection blowout and entered the presidential race. His message was loud and relentless and focused on how he had beaten down the “woke mob” with policies that upset Black and LGBTQ+ Floridians. Not even Republicans dared stand up to his iron-fisted governing style for fear of being punished.

Now that he’s dropped out of the presidential raceand is returning to govern Florida for another two-plus years, which DeSantis will Floridians see? It’s a question Tallahassee insiders are speculating about, but one that likely won’t be answered immediately.

“When you go through a life-changing event like running and losing a presidential primary, it gives you an opportunity to look at who is it that I really want to be and how do I get there,” said Jamie Miller, a Florida-based Republican political strategist. “And if that answer is still, ‘I want to be president,’ I think the one thing he may have learned is what worked for you in 2022 didn’t work for you in 2024.”

In the last three years, DeSantis built his national reputation through a well-publicized fight with Disney World over anti-LGBTQ+ legislation; his effort to limit discussions on race and inclusion; and his work with conservatives to keep the themes of gender identity and sexual orientation out of classrooms and school libraries.


The Florida Legislature is already in the third week of its annual 60-day session, and unlike most years, DeSantis has done little to set out a roadmap for the Republican supermajority to follow. Of course, as everyone else in the process was preparing for session, he was traipsing across Iowa.


“I thought that it was good that he was preoccupied and let us do our job,” said Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book. “It was very clear we were a distant afterthought. ... Hopefully they’ve learned a lesson that maybe you just don’t pile on on culture wars.”…….

Floridians wait to see which version of Ron DeSantis returns from the presidential campaign trail

It’s a question Tallahassee insiders are speculating about, but one that likely won’t be answered immediately.

apnews.com

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

Wait, you’re gonna leave here if Nikki Haley drops out?

Why?

If the next election is between Trump and Biden....and I hate both.....then there is nothing for me to say.
I'd be done.