A handful of ambitious Republican politicians are taking a stand against President Joe Biden and building political operations that will allow them to travel and campaign with other Republicans.
Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and ambassador to the United Nations, launched a political action committee called “Stand for America” last week, which she told her supporters by email that she is focused on the semiannual evidence of 2022. “There is nothing ‘normal’ about an agenda focused on socialism, depriving the police, the Green New Deal and Medicare for All,” Haley wrote, characterizing the agenda of some progressive Democrats, which Biden does not share.
“Not having a Republican in the White House opens the door for others to feel they have an opportunity for 2024,” said Jeff Kaufmann, the Republican president in Iowa, traditionally the first state to vote in the presidential nomination process.
Kaufmann pointed out that, with a race for governor and a Senate race vote in Iowa at next year’s exams, “there will be opportunities for people to come to the state before 2022 to help some of our candidates, and these disputes will heat up very, very soon. “
It is too early to assess the forces that will drive the 2024 Republican presidential primaries, with Biden’s presidency in his childhood and Trump’s future obscured. Presidential primaries do not normally start until mid-term elections. Still, potential candidates typically spend the previous two years building political infrastructure and campaigning for potential allies.
And on the Democratic side, Delaware Senator Chris Coons, a close ally of Biden, insisted over the weekend that the president will run for re-election in 2024.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Wednesday that Biden is not focused on politics at the moment and “will wait until sometime in his first term to talk more about his political plans for the future”.
For the Republican Party camp, the Senate’s impeachment trial is the first major milestone. If enough Republicans join the Democrats to condemn Trump, they could prevent him from running for federal office again – avoiding years of speculation about whether Trump would try another term. But if Trump is not condemned by the Senate, he will appear in 2024.
This could force Republicans who worked in his government – former Vice President Mike Pence, Pompeo and Haley among them – as well as Trump’s allies on Capitol Hill, who plan 2024 – to proceed with caution.
“The last thing they need to do is look like they’re trying to cut the president’s way, if you want to. They need to be seen as useful and productive,” said Drew McKissick of the South Carolina Republican Party president.
Trump “really got into trouble” in Iowa, said Kaufmann, and any Republican who considers a run in 2024 faces “a lot of waiting to see” as Trump makes decisions about his own political future.
Kaufmann said that any Republican senator who voted to condemn Trump in the Senate’s impeachment trial, however, “would be DOA if he actually voted in favor.”
Linked to questions about Trump’s future is whether Republican voters will look for someone who has been a close ally for the past four years, or will seek a new direction after Trump became only the fifth president in the last 100 years to lose his candidacy for another term. .
Trump’s group of close allies could include Cruz and Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, the two Republicans who led the effort to reject Electoral College votes that made Biden president, as well as Pompeo and potentially even Trump’s children.
Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton and Florida Sen. Rick Scott made quite unusual moves in 2020, paying for their own ads in undecided states that supported Trump. These senators signaled that they will do a kind of “no caucus”, along with Cruz and Hawley, taking a stand against almost everything that Biden proposes.
“Your actions since election day will be judged harshly by history,” she said then.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, one of the Republican Party’s fiercest critics of Trump’s actions, including his treatment of the coronavirus pandemic, also did not rule out a 2024 offer.
“I want to participate in the discussion about where we are going as a party and where we are going as a country, so I will try and continue to get involved and talk and tell people what I think we should do,” said Hogan in a broadcast interview in December by Bloomberg.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a longtime ally of Trump, ferociously broke with Trump last year. He ran ads on television urging Americans to wear masks and referred to Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results as “absurd”.
“Republicans now need to say, thank you, Mr. President, for your service. Thank you for the good things you did while in office that we agreed on, and now we need to move on to make sure that ‘restating the Republican principles that matter for people in this country … and the fundamental challenge for Republicans is to move forward, “said Christie at ABC in December. “Move on.”