2024 GOP Presidential Race (15 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

www.scotsman.com

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

 

[Optimus Prime]

Guess this can go here
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From the country that gave the world Hollywood movies, Broadway musicals, and TV soaps, sitcoms and talk shows such as Dallas, Friendsand Oprah comes more sensational mass entertainment: real-time political farce. The Donald J Trump Show, a tragicomedy-cum-courtroom drama, opened in Manhattan last week. This one will run and run.

Trump plays himself: sulky, entitled, vindictive. Other cast members include Stormy Daniels, his leading lady, a former porn star who teasingly refers to her breasts as Thunder and Lightning; an ex-Playboy model; a doorman in the know; a publisher rejoicing in the name of Pecker; and a shady, turncoat lawyer.

The plot is gripping too, though unoriginal. The villain, as scripted by Trump, is Alvin Bragg, prosecutor and demonic tormentor. Bragg is secretly egged on from the wings by President Joe Biden and liberal co-conspirators bent on preventing the much-traduced hero winning re-election. You couldn’t make it up – except “stable genius” Trump did.

While Americans may cringe or fume, the first instalment of the Trump Show, which saw him indicted on 34 charges of fraud, left international audiences open-mouthed. Some laughed, some sneered, some calculated. Once again, the US has proved its exceptionalism, but not in a good way. Amid the vitriol and hoopla, friends and foes are asking questions.

Has the trial inadvertently provided a potent platform for Trump’s staged comeback? Is the once-exemplary American republic, that beacon of democracy and justice, that shining city upon a hill, imploding under the weight of internal rancour, self-loathing and division? Should the US still be taken seriously by the world at large?

Collateral damage is already mounting. The presidency, constitution and democratic governance risk permanent reputational harm. US global influence and moral authority may not survive sustained mockery. Enemies look on with glee. It boosts their storyline of inexorable American decline. For them, it’s the end of empire show.

Take Russia and its paranoid, delusional, Trump-like president, Vladimir Putin. His Ukraine invasion is a total bust, yet hermetically-sealed Putin may be the last person to realise, insiders say. He got more, not less Nato last week when Finland joined the alliance. His thinking, like his army, is stuck in Donbas mud.

Yet Trump’s shenanigans offer Putin a lifeline. The Russian simply has to stick it out until, as he hopes, his American admirer beats the rap and he, or someone very like him, ousts Biden next year. As in 2016, Putin will do all he can to help with disinformation, cyber-attacks and dirty tricks. Meanwhile, he takes a US reporter hostage to make Biden look weak.

“Putin’s narrative of international politics has three broad themes: democratic decay in the west, the failures of western foreign policy, and the decline of the liberal international order,” analysts Erin Baggott Carter, Brett Carter and Larry Diamond noted recently. The demeaning Trump spectacle reinforces all three of these supposed trends.

Xi Jinping, China’s leader, will be keen, too, to exploit any Trump revival to advance his plans for global hegemony and an authoritarian new world order. Beijing’s propaganda feeds off US domestic dysfunction, Washington gridlock, corruption, racial tensions and gun crime – to which Trump and his Maga minions contribute hugely.

Internationally, Trump’s antics give Xi a window to derail a distracted Biden’s democracy agenda and out-manoeuvre the US. “Trump’s foreign policy was shortsighted, transactional, mercurial, untrustworthy, boorish, personalist, and profoundly illiberal,” analyst Jonathan Kirshner wrote after Biden’s victory in 2020.

As Xi might say, what’s not to like? He would heartily applaud a repeat performance. For the Chinese Communist party, Trump’s return to the limelight is a gift from the geopolitical and theatrical gods……..

It’s the Donald J Trump Show … and the world’s tyrants are its biggest fans | Simon Tisdall

High farce in a Manhattan courtroom has left America’s friends and foes wondering if the US has lost the plot

www.theguardian.com

 

[SystemShock]

I suppose Sarah Rumpf has a point as presented by @MT15 just above.
Yet I remember hearing DeSantis say:
(I'll paraphrase)
Why should Disney receive preferential governmental treatment when compared to Orlando's Universal Studios, Tampa Bay's Busch Gardens and Orlando's Sea World? Florida is now treating all these Florida businesses equally.
Isn't that fair?
(That's the gist of it...not an exact quote)

Well, there wouldn't be a Universal Studios or a Sea World in Orlando if it weren't for Disney opening a park there. Busch Gardens is in Tampa Bay, and while they opened in the late 50's, they can only dream of having anything remotely close to the economic impact that Disney has had in the entire State of Florida. Same goes for both Sea World and Universal Studios. Disney is still the anchor store, by way far.

What do you do when your worst salesman tells you it is not fair to give the top salesman more money?

 

[SystemShock]

Yet 20 years ago, would "the squad" have been elected and then in the next election would they have been re-elected?

Funny question. Squads don't run for election, individual candidates do. The better question would be: 20 years ago, 4 non-white women elected to Congress, would they have been vilified the way these 4 women have been vilified?

The question also completely ignores any work these women did for their constituents... they didn't get elected or re-elected merely because they are gun-toting racists.

 

[Taurus]

Funny question. Squads don't run for election, individual candidates do. The better question would be: 20 years ago, 4 non-white women elected to Congress, would they have been vilified the way these 4 women have been vilified?

The question also completely ignores any work these women did for their constituents... they didn't get elected or re-elected merely because they are gun-toting racists.

20 years ago was 2003. At least one of The Squad wouldn't have run because she'd have been in fear for her life. The rest would indeed have been vilified, complete with death threats, no doubt.

The far Right has been this way for a long time.

 

[SystemShock]

20 years ago was 2003. At least one of The Squad wouldn't have run because she'd have been in fear for her life. The rest would indeed have been vilified, complete with death threats, no doubt.

The far Right has been this way for a long time.

I get what you are saying about Muslims, man or woman, that close to 9/11, but Islam aside, I don't think they would have been vilified the same way in 2003 as these 4 women have been. The far right has been this way for a long time, but in 2003 the far right was fringe, now it is the core.

 

[superchuck500]

I’ll never understand why the Evangelicals love this guy.

 

[Taurus]

I’ll never understand why the Evangelicals love this guy.

Abortion. Guns. Oppressing the "other".

Evangelicals are all about these things, the message of Christ is just noise to them.

What I'd love is for the non-religious to start voting as a bloc and to do so loudly. We outnumber Evangelicals, after all. Wouldn't it be great to have our boots licked for a change?

 

[Optimus Prime]

I’ll never understand why the Evangelicals love this guy.

Donald J Trump - A Walking "What Would Jesus Do?" bumper sticker

 

[Optimus Prime]

What I'd love is for the non-religious to start voting as a bloc and to do so loudly. We outnumber Evangelicals, after all. Wouldn't it be great to have our boots licked for a change?

nsfw

 

[SystemShock]

I’ll never understand why the Evangelicals love this guy.

Prophesy.
They truly believe Trump is the stubborn king of the west prophesized by Daniel. Evangelicals cannot wait for the end of times, they want them and they want them now.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Telling that the comments aren't that the indictments themselves disqualifies Trump, but that they'd be too much of a distraction (or too much baggage)

And, the headline doesn't match the tone of the article at all (but that's a media issue)
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A growing number of voters who previously supported former President Donald Trump are looking at other options after his indictment last week.

Randy Marquardt, the chairman of Wisconsin's Washington County, where Trump garnered his largest 2020 vote, told The Wall Street Journal that a fierce debate broke out at a recent get-together between two members of the local GOP.

"It got ugly and people eventually went their separate ways to head home," he told the outlet. "The other guy argued that Trump came with too much baggage. But there are still quite a few people who are all in with Trump."

Marquardt, who voted for Trump in the last two presidential elections, said he thinks it is time for the party to move on.

"I appreciate what he did and was pleasantly surprised by how conservative he was and how he kept his promises," Marquardt said. "But there is just something about him that ignites the other side. It can't be overcome."

Despite Trump's belief that his indictment may have stoked a fire of support for his most fervent allies, a CNN poll released last week showed that 62% of independent voters approved of the indictment.

The WSJ's John McCormick interviewed numerous voters and found opinions sharply divided ahead of the 2024 Republican primary.

"The party should avoid Trump and find a younger and fresher candidate," 73-year-old Dallas lawyer David Sherwood, who voted for Trump two elections in a row, told the outlet. "I don't think Trump can win because he has too much baggage. He has good policies, but an abrasive personality."

Sherwood feels Trump's felony charges have shifted his opinions "a little bit" because he considers it to be a distraction to the former president's campaign.

Cyndi Tendick, a 30-year-old self-described moderate Republican from Phoenix, Arizona, said she is "looking for someone who can come in and work the middle." She feels Trump is "more drama than necessary, and he would not be able to get anything done."

However, Tendick also thinks the indictment is "a bunch of B.S." and feels Manhattan prosecutors should look to more relevant and serious crimes. "There is so much other stuff going on, way worse than he did," she said............

MSN

 

[Optimus Prime]

The title of Governor Ron DeSantis’s book, which he is zealously promoting across the nation, is less important than the subtitle. The Courage to Be Free is a forgettable title shared by a volume by actor and gun rights activist Charlton Heston. But the subtitle, Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival, unlocks DeSantis’s national ambitions.

While former US president Donald Trump labours under the frayed slogan of “Make America great again”, DeSantis is building a case to “Make America Florida” – a phrase that appears on caps, flags and other merchandise.

The governor argues that he has made glorious summer in the Sunshine state. If and when he announces a run for US president in 2024, he will claim that he can repeat the formula in state after state across the US. Florida, his theory goes, is an incubator of conservative ideas that work.

He dangles a carrot to Republicans who, weary of Trump’s losing streak, are seeking a saviour. DeSantis writes that when he was elected in 2018, there were nearly 300,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in Florida; by October 2022, there were more than 300,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats.

“What Florida has done is establish a blueprint for governance that has produced tangible results while serving as a rebuke to the entrenched elites who have driven our nation into the ground,” DeSantis writes in The Courage to Be Free.

But the governor’s critics question whether his fixationon culture wars (“Florida is where woke goes to die!”) is quite as popular as it seems. They also contend that, with numerous climatic, economic and social problems, Florida is not quite the paradise that DeSantis likes to portray.

“What it is is a blueprint for is people who want to abuse their power in order to target people who disagree with them politically,” said Maxwell Frost, the youngest member of Congress, who represents a Florida district. “That’s what we’ve seen from someone like Governor DeSantis.

“What we’re exporting out of Florida is fascism. For him to sit there and say, ‘Oh, yeah, my bill on banning trans kids from talking about who they are is now equated to a top education system,’ it’s just a bunch of bullshirt, to be honest. Most Floridians hopefully will see through that.”…….

Fewer pronouns, more guns: Ron DeSantis’s plan to turn the US into Florida

Florida governor sees state as ‘blueprint’ for America, but his policies may not be as popular – or successful – as they seem

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

In February, Ron DeSantis led Donald Trump 45% to 41% in the Yahoo/YouGov poll. But Trump’s indictment has reversed the race.

Just after Trump said he would be arrested, he moved into the lead – 47% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters preferred him, compared with 39% for DeSantis. Now, after his arraignment, Trump’s lead has widened – 57% to 31%.

What’s going on? Trump’s high-decibel howls of anger and grievance and his vitriolic charges of a “deep state” aligned against him are rallying Republicans to his side.

He has raged against his indictment in language evoking racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories. He has whipped up a fury of threatsagainst the judge, the prosecutor and their families. And of course he continues to repeat his lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

But the commotion isn’t increasing Trump’s odds of being elected president in November 2024. To the contrary, it’s reducing those odds.

Only about 28% of American voters identify as Republican. And as Republicans move back to Trump, another group of voters that will probably determine the outcome of the 2024 election is turned off by his vitriol.

I’m talking about independents.

Those who describe themselves as independent compose over 40% of American voters – a larger percentage than either self-described Republicans or Democrats.

This independent share of the voting population is on the rise, as young people decline to identify with either party.

You wouldn’t know any of this from media coverage of politics, which focuses almost entirely on the deepening, bitter conflict between red and blue America. Hey, conflict sells.

Not that independents are moderates. They simply dislike angry partisanship.

Independents also oppose the Republican party’s stances on abortion, transgender rights, gun controls and the climate……..

Trump thinks his arrest helped his presidential chances. He’s wrong | Robert Reich

Trump is rocketing toward a Republican nomination – and alienating independent voters crucial in the general election

www.theguardian.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

This could have gone in the voting thread also
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Al Lawson felt the weight of his victory the night he was elected to Congress in 2016.

He was born in Midway, a small town that’s part of a stretch of land in northern Florida dotted with tobacco fields once home to plantations. A former basketball star, he was once reprimanded for drinking out of a whites-only water fountain. In some of his early campaigns for the state legislature, he ran into the Ku Klux Klan.

There was jubilation when he was elected.

“Everywhere I would go, it was like a celebration,” Lawson said one morning last month in his office in downtown Tallahassee. “People saying: ‘Boy, I wish my daddy, my granddaddy – I really wish they could see this.’”

In Congress, Lawson was a low-key member known for delivering federal money for things like new storm shelters to help his northern Florida communities. He was easily re-elected to the House in 2018 and 2020. But when he ran for re-election in 2022, he lost to a white Republican by nearly 20 points.

Lawson’s loss was nearly entirely attributable to Governor Ron DeSantis.

The governor went out of his way to redraw the boundaries of Lawson’s district to ensure that a Republican could win it. It was a brazen scheme to weaken the political power of Black voters and a striking example of how DeSantis has waged one of the most aggressive – and successful – efforts to curtail voting rights in Florida.

In addition to reducing Black representation in Congress, the governor has tightened election rules, created a first-of-its-kind state agency, funded by more than $1m to prosecute election fraud and gutted one of the biggest expansions of modern-era voting rights.

“Governor DeSantis has really targeted Black folks in his efforts to strip, restrict and suppress our vote in the state of Florida. That has been his number one mission,” said Jasmine Burney-Clark, the founder of Equal Ground, a nonprofit that works to register voters……..

How Ron DeSantis waged a targeted assault on Black voters: ‘I fear for what’s to come’

In gerrymandering voting maps and gutting one of the biggest expansions of voting rights, the Florida governor seeks to dilute Black political power

www.theguardian.com

 

[Taurus]

This could have gone in the voting thread also
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Al Lawson felt the weight of his victory the night he was elected to Congress in 2016.

He was born in Midway, a small town that’s part of a stretch of land in northern Florida dotted with tobacco fields once home to plantations. A former basketball star, he was once reprimanded for drinking out of a whites-only water fountain. In some of his early campaigns for the state legislature, he ran into the Ku Klux Klan.

There was jubilation when he was elected.

“Everywhere I would go, it was like a celebration,” Lawson said one morning last month in his office in downtown Tallahassee. “People saying: ‘Boy, I wish my daddy, my granddaddy – I really wish they could see this.’”

In Congress, Lawson was a low-key member known for delivering federal money for things like new storm shelters to help his northern Florida communities. He was easily re-elected to the House in 2018 and 2020. But when he ran for re-election in 2022, he lost to a white Republican by nearly 20 points.

Lawson’s loss was nearly entirely attributable to Governor Ron DeSantis.

The governor went out of his way to redraw the boundaries of Lawson’s district to ensure that a Republican could win it. It was a brazen scheme to weaken the political power of Black voters and a striking example of how DeSantis has waged one of the most aggressive – and successful – efforts to curtail voting rights in Florida.

In addition to reducing Black representation in Congress, the governor has tightened election rules, created a first-of-its-kind state agency, funded by more than $1m to prosecute election fraud and gutted one of the biggest expansions of modern-era voting rights.

“Governor DeSantis has really targeted Black folks in his efforts to strip, restrict and suppress our vote in the state of Florida. That has been his number one mission,” said Jasmine Burney-Clark, the founder of Equal Ground, a nonprofit that works to register voters……..

How Ron DeSantis waged a targeted assault on Black voters: ‘I fear for what’s to come’

In gerrymandering voting maps and gutting one of the biggest expansions of voting rights, the Florida governor seeks to dilute Black political power

www.theguardian.com

But it worked. It worked and nobody stopped him.
This is what's meant when pundits and analysts say that Republicans know how to gain and most importantly, wield power.
We could have had 51, maybe 52 states in 2021, with 3 or four more Dem Congress members, 4 more Dem Senators and at least six more Dem Electors.
The ERA could have been ratified (and let the legal wrangling commence) with abortion rights codified into the Constitution.
But no. Democrats were too timid, too bound to norms and traditions the GOP has been ignoring for years.
And now it's too late. Republicans are taking every scrap of power they possess and working it. While Democrats do nothing but wring their hands and whine.

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

Governor Ron DeSantis was speaking this morning at Liberty University in Lynchburg VA.
Naturally the readers of this post are welcome to experience the entire Youtube video.
Yet if you want to pick it up where Gov. DeSantis comes in...fast forward to minute mark 28:15
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[MT15]

Thanks, but I know everything I need to know about Ron. You should too, by now.

 

[SteveSBrickNJ]

Thanks, but I know everything I need to know about Ron. You should too, by now.

My daughter attends that University and she was in the audience, so I wanted to watch for that reason.
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I came back to this post to add this: @MT15
"Liberty University's Convocation is the world's largest gathering of Christian students. With over 15,000 in attendance and thousands more watching online and on television"