There is no anti-Trump lane in 2024
On Larry Hogan
Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan bowed to the reality of the current state of the Republican party recently, removing his name from the 2024 GOP presidential race.
Wrote Hogan in a New York Times op-ed explaining his decision:
“While I’m optimistic about the future of the Republican Party, I am deeply concerned about this next election. We cannot afford to have Mr. Trump as our nominee and suffer defeat for the fourth consecutive election cycle. To once again be a successful governing party, we must move on from Mr. Trump. There are several competent Republican leaders who have the potential to step up and lead. But the stakes are too high for me to risk being part of another multicar pileup that could potentially help Mr. Trump recapture the nomination.”
Which, fine. But certainly not the whole story.
Hogan is right when he concludes that the more candidates that run against Trump — or, more accurately, who stay in the race for the duration against Trump — the better chance the former president has of winning the Republican nomination again.
But, the political realities facing Hogan suggest that the real conclusion we should draw from his decision not to run is this: There is simply NO lane for a candidate running expressly against Trump and his attempts to transform the Republican party.
In a recent Quinnipiac University poll of the 2024 Republican race, Trump took 42% of the vote. Hogan took 0%. In a Reuters national poll, Trump took 43%. Hogan had 1%.
This isn’t to pick on Hogan! Consider where some of the other most ardent anti-Trump voices within the party stood in those same polls:
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: 0% in Q poll; 1% in Reuters poll
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson: 0% in Q poll; not included in Reuters poll
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu: 0% in Q poll; .5% in Reuters poll
So, yeah. The four most prominent anti-Trump voices in the Republican party took a total of 0% of the vote in the Q poll. COMBINED.
What it is to say is that there is zero demonstrated appetite for a candidate who is expressly running to reverse Trumpism and/or erase the former president from the records of the Republican party.
Consider the scene that played out at the Conservative Political Action Conference over the weekend in Maryland.
Here’s how Politico summed it up:
At the four-day conference of conservative activists, Trump’s loyal fan base heckled his Republican opponents, overwhelmingly backed him in a straw poll and quickly booed what appeared to be a rogue audience member who started to play music over his speech. As they did throughout his presidency and the two years since, the MAGA movement showed up sporting buttons with Trump’s face, red hats and an eagerness to see the man the conference now orbits around completely.
Even Fox News, a network that has kept Trump at arm’s length in recent months, ended up airing some of his speech live on television following complaints from the CPAC mainstage a day earlier about a lack of Trump coverage.
In his one-hour, 45-minute CPAC finale speech, Trump boasted that the crowd here was firmly with him while bashing Republicans who were once stars of the annual confab.
All of the other reports out of the conference struck a similar tone. It was the Trump show from beginning to end — even more so than past CPAC gatherings.
Now. CPAC is not the entirety of the Republican base. And the Politico story — as well as others coming out of the conference — noted that Trump is in a less strong position that he was a few years ago.
The New York Times put it this way:
Inside the MAGA-clad corridors of this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, the politics of the Republican Party seemed almost unchanged from the pinnacle of Donald J. Trump’s presidency. Sequin-wearing superfans jostled for selfies with whichever member of the Trump family happened to be nearby. Chants of “We love Trump!” rang out in the halls.
But outside the confines of the friendly gathering, Mr. Trump and his campaign have begun adjusting to the new reality of 2024: The former president may be the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, but he is no longer the singular leader of his party.
But, consider who is challenging Trump for supremacy in the party. It’s not the Hogans, Christies and Sununus of the world.
Instead it’s Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who made a name for himself politically in the state by running in 2018 as a Trump clone —literally! — and who has since risen to national prominence by touting many of the same anti-PC and anti-media messaging that Trump leaned on in his past runs for president.
What DeSantis is promising is not a rejection of Trump and Trumpism but a polishing of it. Where Trump is all rough edges, lewd jokes and off-script messaging, DeSantis is careful, plotting and strategic.
DeSantis is Trump — without the stuff Republicans don’t like about Trump. As The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last put it so succinctly:
The DeSantis challenge to Trump isn’t that Meatball Ron is “Not Trump”—it’s that he’s “Trump Plus.” The DeSantis electoral proposition is that he will give you everything Trump does—all of the fighting, the illiberalism, the culture war, the lib owning, the news cycle domination, the mean tweets.
DeSantis’ rise then is proof positive not that Republicans are ready to move on from Trump but that Trumpism seeped deep into the GOP’s bones.
And, even if you look beyond the top two in the race what do you find? A trio of Republicans — Nikki Haley, Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo — who rose to prominence thanks to the former president (all three served in his administration) and who have, generally speaking, shown very little willingness to criticize Trump on the campaign trail.
The Hogan decision has to be seen in this context. EVERY available piece of data suggests that the Republican party has no interest in candidates who are positioning themselves as anti-Trump. NONE.
There is no anti-Trump lane in the 2024 race then. Just Trump and his imitators.
“While I’m optimistic about the future of the Republican Party”
I subscribe to Washington Post, not NYTimes so can’t read the article.
Does Hogan explain his “optimism” anywhere because I’m not seeing where that’s warranted? To me, the Republican Party looks like a clear and present danger and the sooner it’s put down, the better.
I currently see no optimism for the Republican Party, not one iota. While I don’t think the Democratic Party is faultless, blameless, or sometimes just plain wrong, they seem to be a bit more cohesive. Yes, you have “the squad”, the fringe, there seems to be a lot less crazies and leadership, at least under Pelosi, was better at keeping things together. Schumer seems to be able to keep the Senate fairly well (get rid of the flip phone, Chuck!). The GOP is so far gone, leadership doesn’t do any sort of leading and they are all spineless cowards. When I turned 18 I registered as an independent. My feeling was that I wanted to look at all the candidates, study the issues and vote for whom I thought would do a better job for the country for what I believed in. I knew as I was growing and learning more about the world around me, my thoughts may evolve and wanted to be open to changing my stance on things. I tended to vote for democrats more often than not, never changing from being an independent. After 2016, I vowed to never vote for a republican ever again and registered as a Democrat. There are/were several Republicans that I did like but even if they were to run and get elected, having to deal with the nut jobs in congress would make things darn near impossible. As far as DeSantis over Trump, the only positive would be the crassness, that comes out of Trumps mouth. I do not see any other advantage and I believe you are correct, Chris, no lane for anyone else in 2024.