Talking Points Memo also mentions Hogan as a possibility, along with a few other names:Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan's name has come up repeatedly — and unprompted — in discussions with Republican National Committee members and operatives in New Mexico about who else, besides President Trump, could join the 2020 presidential race on the GOP side https://t.co/b8qBEuys3L pic.twitter.com/PDsviCgaOG— CNN (@CNN) January 26, 2019
According to a Saturday New York Times report, Trump’s recent failures and dismal polling is piquing the interest of some possible 2020 Republican challengers.
A name frequently tossed around is Larry Hogan, the popular governor of Maryland. Hogan is reportedly setting up meetings with prominent never-Trumpers, like William Kristol, and reaching out to Iowa-based strategists.
Per the Times, also in the mix is William Weld, the former Republican governor of Massachusetts with a Libertarian bent.
Other less likely potential challengers are former Ohio governor John Kasich, former Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and Sen. Ben Sasse (R-NE). (Read it here).
One name not mentioned is newly-elected Senator Mitt Romney of Utah. I don't for one minute believe that Romney, at the age of 71, has any real interest in being the 97th-most senior member of the U.S. Senate, which is what he currently is. I've thought from the moment he announced his run that his real reason for getting himself elected to the senate is strategic, based on the belief that Donald may not last his full term: Mittens wants to be in position to raise his hand and humbly offer to serve. (To be clear, and obviously, if Donald leaves office for any reason, the VP automatically becomes president. I'm talking about Senator Romney offering to be the 2020 nominee.)
Update on Tuesday, January 29. In a column published yesterday, Jonathan Bernstein says Trump could very well get primaried, although possibly not successfully:
On one hand, no eligible president has been denied renomination since the system changed after the 1968 election. The closest was in 1976, when Ronald Reagan challenged Gerald Ford, but that comes with the asterisk that Ford had inherited the presidency when Richard Nixon resigned, and had only become vice president because Nixon needed someone who could be approved under the 25th Amendment by a Democratic Congress. Senator Ted Kennedy issued the other serious challenge when he tried and failed to unseat Jimmy Carter in 1980. Since then, the only significant contest was when Pat Buchanan ran against George H.W. Bush in 1992; Buchanan didn’t win a single state and really didn’t come close, peaking at 37 percent in New Hampshire.
On the other hand, Donald Trump has, over his first two years, been the least popular president during the polling era, and right now his approval rating is slightly under 40 percent. With numbers like that, party actors are surely concerned that he’s in huge reelection trouble – and must at least be thinking about how to move on without him.
To be sure: Trump is still very popular among Republican voters. And some of the names that have been floated as challengers are less than promising; even if voters are fed up with Trump, it’s extremely unlikely they would jump to former Ohio Governor John Kasich or Maryland Governor Larry Hogan or any of the other moderates who have been talking about running. If Trump slumps further, it’s possible that even one of those could wind up running a Buchanan-like campaign, competing in the primaries and getting a third of the votes or so in many of them.
But the candidates who could actually give Trump a serious fight are those with orthodox Republican positions. For them, the big question is whether trying and losing would be, as my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru recently argued, political suicide. The historical examples Ponnuru cites don’t help his case. It’s true that Kennedy’s run may have marginally hurt his reputation. But Reagan surely helped himself in 1976. Buchanan entered the 1992 campaign as a conservative pundit; he did well enough that he wound up a semi-serious contender for the 1996 nomination. In none of these cases, including Kennedy’s, did the party wind up blaming the challenger for its loss in November. Democrats didn’t blame Gene McCarthy or Robert Kennedy for their party’s defeat in 1968 either.
It could be different this time, of course. And it’s still early: If Trump’s approval ratings quickly recover from the government shutdown and he spends this year about as popular as he was in 2018, he’s not going to look like a hopeless loser and any serious challenge will likely evaporate. But it’s also possible that he won’t recover, leaving him solidly below that 40 percent mark. Events (a recession, for example) could push his popularity even lower.
History shows that unpopular incumbents usually wind up with nomination challenges, even if those challenges tend to fail. That’s the most likely scenario for Trump right now – and if he slumps badly enough, the nomination could well be closely contested.
Read the column here.
Update on Tuesday, January 29. In a column published yesterday, Jonathan Bernstein says Trump could very well get primaried, although possibly not successfully:
On one hand, no eligible president has been denied renomination since the system changed after the 1968 election. The closest was in 1976, when Ronald Reagan challenged Gerald Ford, but that comes with the asterisk that Ford had inherited the presidency when Richard Nixon resigned, and had only become vice president because Nixon needed someone who could be approved under the 25th Amendment by a Democratic Congress. Senator Ted Kennedy issued the other serious challenge when he tried and failed to unseat Jimmy Carter in 1980. Since then, the only significant contest was when Pat Buchanan ran against George H.W. Bush in 1992; Buchanan didn’t win a single state and really didn’t come close, peaking at 37 percent in New Hampshire.
On the other hand, Donald Trump has, over his first two years, been the least popular president during the polling era, and right now his approval rating is slightly under 40 percent. With numbers like that, party actors are surely concerned that he’s in huge reelection trouble – and must at least be thinking about how to move on without him.
To be sure: Trump is still very popular among Republican voters. And some of the names that have been floated as challengers are less than promising; even if voters are fed up with Trump, it’s extremely unlikely they would jump to former Ohio Governor John Kasich or Maryland Governor Larry Hogan or any of the other moderates who have been talking about running. If Trump slumps further, it’s possible that even one of those could wind up running a Buchanan-like campaign, competing in the primaries and getting a third of the votes or so in many of them.
But the candidates who could actually give Trump a serious fight are those with orthodox Republican positions. For them, the big question is whether trying and losing would be, as my colleague Ramesh Ponnuru recently argued, political suicide. The historical examples Ponnuru cites don’t help his case. It’s true that Kennedy’s run may have marginally hurt his reputation. But Reagan surely helped himself in 1976. Buchanan entered the 1992 campaign as a conservative pundit; he did well enough that he wound up a semi-serious contender for the 1996 nomination. In none of these cases, including Kennedy’s, did the party wind up blaming the challenger for its loss in November. Democrats didn’t blame Gene McCarthy or Robert Kennedy for their party’s defeat in 1968 either.
It could be different this time, of course. And it’s still early: If Trump’s approval ratings quickly recover from the government shutdown and he spends this year about as popular as he was in 2018, he’s not going to look like a hopeless loser and any serious challenge will likely evaporate. But it’s also possible that he won’t recover, leaving him solidly below that 40 percent mark. Events (a recession, for example) could push his popularity even lower.
History shows that unpopular incumbents usually wind up with nomination challenges, even if those challenges tend to fail. That’s the most likely scenario for Trump right now – and if he slumps badly enough, the nomination could well be closely contested.
Read the column here.
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