Why Republicans are worried about the wrong thing in the 2024 race

It's not the number of candidates...

(Image created by Dall E)

Nikki Haley’s entrance into the presidential race (officially officially) on Wednesday occasions a question that elicits a whole lot of hand-wringing among Republicans: Just how many candidates are going to run?

So, Haley and Trump are in. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis might not announce for months but he’s running. Former Vice President Mike Pence is going to be in. And former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan sounds like a candidate. So does former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott is making the sort of moves that suggest a run. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin is still regularly mentioned. Former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu is clearly flirting with a bid.

There’s more. CNN, for one, listed 16 potential candidates in a recent piece on the race.

I’m very skeptical that the number of candidates in 2024 will rival the 17 major candidates who ran for the Republican nomination in 2016 — read this from Jonathan Martin on why — but I wouldn’t be surprised if, at some point, there were between 8-10 active candidates in the race.

And speaking of the 2016 race, it’s the memories of it that haunt Republicans who are desperate to move on from Donald Trump.

In that contest, a dynamic became clear relatively early on as Trump surged to the top of polls: The real race was to be the Trump alternative. And no one could agree on who that should be.

There were those that believed Jeb Bush was the guy. Or Marco Rubio. Or Ted Cruz. Or Scott Walker (remember him?) Or even John Kasich.

The problem was that a bunch of these candidates dithered while Trump racked up delegates, building a lead that none of his opponents could overcome. By the time the race narrowed to Trump vs Cruz, it wasn’t a race at all.

Many people looked at 2016 and concluded that the problem was that there were too many candidates in the race. That, in fact, was not the issue. It was that the candidates didn’t get out of the race soon enough.

Consider these drop out dates:

Kasich: May 4, 2016

Cruz: May 3, 2016

Rubio: March 15, 2016

Ben Carson: March 4, 2016

Jeb(!) Bush: February 20, 2016

Scott Walker: September 21, 2015

The only two who got out at the right time were Walker and, maybe, Jeb(!). Everyone else stayed in too long — fooled (whether by consultants or themselves) into believing that now was their moment.

(By the way, this sort of thing happened in 2012 as well. Conservative Republicans spent months trying to united behind an alternative to Mitt Romney and could never agree who that person should be. Romney won the primary.)

The key then when considering how the 2024 GOP race plays out is not how many candidates get in but when those candidates pull the ripcord and get out.

Romney, who has said he believes Trump to be the prohibitive frontrunner in the race, hit on that reality in a recent conversation with HuffPo.

“The only way that [Trump winning scenario] could be prevented is if it narrowed down to a two-person race eventually,” Romney said. “That means donors and influencers say to their candidate ― if they’re weakening: ‘Hey, time to get out.’”

Which, well, easier said than done.

Running for president takes a certain amount of delusion and ego: You have to believe that you, alone among more than 330 million Americans, are best suited to lead the country. And, guided by that belief, you have to run an excruciating gauntlet that is our modern primary (and general election) system.

To convince yourself to get out of bed at 5 am in Iowa when it’s 4 degrees out and you are at 3% in the polls is a feat of massive willpower — driven by an at-times inexplicable belief that you can and will somehow wind up on top.

Giving up that belief is very, very hard — no matter how many donors or influencers tell you it’s time to go. You have spent, usually, the better part of two years being driven by a vision of you on top of the heap. You are, usually, the sort of person who is used to winning. Accepting that you have lost is, usually, a process for most people — and a process that takes too long in terms of the raw calculus of when you really should get out.

The best case scenario for those Republicans who want Trump out is that DeSantis is the real deal — and that the race, from the time the Florida governor gets in onwards — is a two-man contest.

Such a dynamic would squeeze most of the energy — and, more importantly, money — out of the party for any of those running as alternatives to the top two. And when the money dries up, that’s usually a leading indicator of a campaign dying.

The worst case scenario is that DeSantis is something short of what he is being billed as right now, which, by the way, I think is a definite possibility. In that world, the fight to be the Trump alternative is long, nasty and expensive — all accruing (as it did in 2016) to the former president’s benefit.

George Santayana said that those who can’t remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Republicans had better hope their 2024 candidates are mindful of the lessons of 2016 — or you can basically guarantee the nomination for Trump. Again.