2024: Possible Presidential Election Candidates

[Becky]

16 hours ago, Xan said:

Nikki's full name is Nimarata Nikki Randhawa Haley.  She was born in SC after her parents immigrated.  There's nothing wrong with that but she ought to be mindful that, if she's courting the racist contingent of her party, they're not too thrilled about her either.  Also, she's female and they didn't even allow us to vote in the USA until 1920.  If the Republicans had their way, women and non-whites would still not be allowed to vote.

Agreed.  Nikki doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell.  Of course, I thought that about Trump, too, so take my opinion with a grain of salt!

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

10 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

Haley, dear, I hate to break it to you, but that’s precisely why you won’t be the nominee.

[47of74]

Larry Hogan decided not to run in 2024.

Quote

Former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, a fierce critic of Donald Trump, said Sunday he will not run for the White House in 2024, after long positioning himself as a possible alternative to the former president.

Hogan, 66, wrote in The New York Times that while he appreciated “all those around the nation who have for many years encouraged me to run for president, after eight years of pouring my heart and soul into serving the people of Maryland, I have no desire to put my family through another grueling campaign just for the experience.”

Hogan wrapped up his second term in January, serving for eight years in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2-to-1 margin. He was Maryland’s second Republican governor ever to be reelected.

Some Republicans had hoped that Hogan, emerging as the new best hope of a small group of “Never Trump Republicans,” would challenge Trump in 2020. But a year after Hogan’s reelection in 2018, he said that while he appreciated “all of the encouragement” he had received to run for president, he would not. Hogan told The Associated Press he had no interest in a “kamikaze mission.”

 

[47of74]

Oh, joy.  More Bund Meetings in Iowa for 2024.

Quote

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was in Iowa Friday to introduce himself to an expectant audience of Republicans, making a long-awaited visit ahead of a likely 2024 presidential bid.

DeSantis’ spoke in Davenport and then was heading to Des Moines in his first trip to the leadoff voting state as anticipation over his expected White House campaign has been building. With the Iowa caucuses less than a year away, Republicans in the state are ready to take a harder look at DeSantis, a top-tier presidential prospect viewed as a rival to former President Donald Trump.

“A lot of people are excited with DeSantis — people that I talk to. There has been so much talk. The expectations are really high for him,” said Emma Aquino-Nemecek, an eastern Iowa county Republican committee member who is curious about DeSantis but feels deep loyalty to Trump.

DeSantis was appearing with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds on Friday morning in Davenport and that evening in Des Moines to promote his new book, “The Courage to be Free,” which was released last week.

I'd love to tell the Iowa Republicans to go fuck themselves over their willingness to stab their fellow human beings in the back and support Ron DeShitpile.

Edited March 11, 2023 by 47of74

[GreyhoundFan]

I don’t know anyone who cares one way or the other. 

 

[Xan]

56 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I don’t know anyone who cares one way or the other.

He does remember, doesn't he, that we nominated and elected a black guy for president twice?  Honestly, it's as if they aren't able to think things through so they just assume no one else can either.

[GreyhoundFan]

Scott is off to a less-than-stellar start:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I can’t say that I’m disappointed 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[Becky]

Can Tucker Carlson make any face other than "confused golden retriever?" I swear, he looks like this in every. single. stillframe I have ever seen of him.  

[GreyhoundFan]

1 hour ago, Becky said:

Can Tucker Carlson make any face other than "confused golden retriever?" I swear, he looks like this in every. single. stillframe I have ever seen of him.  

Golden Retrievers are cute and intelligent. Tucker is neither. 

[GreyhoundFan]

Ronnie is not happy that Nikki asked Disney to move to SC.

 

[SPHASH]

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/nikki-haley-biden-will-likely-die-five-years-rcna81740

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Wednesday that President Joe Biden, 80, will likely die within five years and that his supporters would have to count on Vice President Kamala Harris if he were to win re-election next year.

Hey twatwaffle you could end up like JFK who was assassinated at 46. For presidents that died of natural causes William Harrison died at 68 only a month in office, Zachary Taylor at 65 a year and a half into office, Warren Harding at 57 two and a half years into office, FDR at 63 12 years in office plus he had polio.  So I think Joe is doing pretty good there.

[Becky]

13 hours ago, SPHASH said:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/nikki-haley-biden-will-likely-die-five-years-rcna81740

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley said Wednesday that President Joe Biden, 80, will likely die within five years and that his supporters would have to count on Vice President Kamala Harris if he were to win re-election next year.

Hey twatwaffle you could end up like JFK who was assassinated at 46. For presidents that died of natural causes William Harrison died at 68 only a month in office, Zachary Taylor at 65 a year and a half into office, Warren Harding at 57 two and a half years into office, FDR at 63 12 years in office plus he had polio.  So I think Joe is doing pretty good there.

Also - Joe's health habits are light years ahead of Trump's.  Trump already looks one Big Mac short of a heart attack.  

[GreyhoundFan]

She doesn’t even pose well. 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Another one joins the field:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Yeah, that will fly. /s

 

[zeebaneighba]

How about we make the candidates pass a citizenship test?

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why the Republican presidential field is so weak"

Quote

If you watched Donald Trump’s grotesque CNN town hall on Wednesday, you might have marveled at his shameless dishonesty, cringed at the audience cheering his every repugnant utterance and reviled the network’s decision to create such a spectacle in the first place. But you probably didn’t given much thought to any of Trump’s GOP rivals for the 2024 presidential nomination.

Which highlights this fact: While there is no shortage of ambitious Republicans who dream of becoming president, the field of candidates opposing Trump is incredibly weak.

During the last open Republican presidential nomination contest in 2016, no fewer than 17 major candidates ran, including nine governors and five senators (current and former). When Democrats last faced an incumbent president from the other party, more than two dozen major candidates ran. Yet today, you could fit all the announced (or soon-to-be announced) Republican candidates other than the former president into a compact car. It consists of two former governors, one senator, one businessman and a radio talk show host.

A few more might enter the race, most notably Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. But it’s hard to recall a more feeble group of GOP presidential candidates.

The list of those who clearly would like to be president but appear to have decided against running is long. It includes Sens. Josh Hawley (Mo.), Ted Cruz (Tex.), Tom Cotton (Ark.), Rick Scott (Fla.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), along with Govs. Glenn Youngkin (Va.), Brian Kemp (Ga.), Greg Abbott (Tex.) and former governor Larry Hogan (Md.). That’s not even all of them.

Almost any of them would have a greater claim to electability than Trump, who lost in 2020 and helped bring about disastrous elections for his party in 2018 and 2022. But Trump changed the worldview of the Republican electorate, convincing them that considering electability at all is a kind of betrayal.

After all, worrying about electability means you take the world as it is and ask how you might convince those not already on your side to join you. But Trump taught Republicans to thrill to the creation of their own alternate reality. When he insists that election losses are rigged or that he almost completed a wall along the entire southern border, the statements themselves are not the point. The very act of lying, then shouting down those who would correct you, is what creates the excitement the party’s voters crave.

Even the smarmiest of mainstream Republicans can’t muster that kind of performance. They may have charisma of one form or another — Hawley, for instance, is part-debate champion and part-non-denominational evangelical pastor when he’s in front of an audience — but they aren’t hot in the way Trump is. And heat is what Republican voters now expect.

Yet most of the GOP’s leaders are essentially the same people they were before. Some may have debased themselves in particularly colorful ways groveling before Trump, but they’re still mostly traditional politicians who are putting their ambitions on hold while waiting for the party to revert to its pre-Trump state. The few in the race simply believe that time will come sooner rather than later.

When they decline to criticize Trump for his latest indictment or jury verdict, it’s not just because they’re cowards; it’s also because they understand that anything that earns Trump criticism from Democrats or the media enhances his credibility among the primary electorate. That electorate’s reaction to any new development is built around loathing for their enemies, so if Trump is under attack for something, he must either be innocent, or the thing for which he’s being criticized is actually something to be admired.

That means that for Trump’s opponents, even saying it’s bad to sexually abuse women would drive a wedge between them and the voters, rather than driving a wedge between the voters and the guy who a jury just ruled is liable for sexually assaulting a woman. So they keep quiet.

If those are the rules of the game, it becomes extraordinarily difficult for a Republican to find a way to distinguish themselves from Trump. So it isn’t surprising that candidates such as Hawley and Cruz would decide to wait until the game changes.

There’s no telling when that might be. The CNN town hall will surely intensify fears among Republicans about how weak Trump would be in the general election. Yet at the same time, it underscored his strength with the party’s core voters, who will continue to look askance at competitors who can’t bring them to the same heights of emotional fervor.

His competitors’ weakness is becoming a self-reinforcing dynamic, and it’s not clear the party has any answer to it.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

It would be funny if it weren't the future of our country on the line:

[GreyhoundFan]

[Xan]

I, for one, hope Christie runs.  He doesn't stand a chance and no one likes him but he's one of the few people who will verbally attack Trump.