Former Vice President Mike Pence made it official: He’s going to try to erase the memory of being routinely and completely humiliated for four years in the former guy’s administration, and run for president against the former guy. He filed papers Monday, and will make a public statement with a video and kickoff rally in Iowa on Wednesday.
Pence has to decide whether he’s going to really take on Donald Trump, who he insists on referring to as “my former running mate” as opposed to the guy who tried to get him killed on Jan. 6. Pence is convinced that all those evangelicals who happily embraced Trump will abandon that ship this time around and will turn instead to “leadership that reflects more of the character of the American people.” His definition of leadership includes a national abortion ban, discrimination against trans people, and cutting Social Security and Medicare, so he has a fairly constricted reading of the character of the American people.
He’s joining an absolutely scintillating group of also-rans in the race, including the two newest entrants, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and current North Dakota Gov. Doug Burnam, who will also announce on Wednesday because why not? Oh, you’ve never heard of Doug Burnam? He’s not worried about that. He’s a billionaire. He’s got to do something with all that money; might as well make it the biggest ego trip of them all.
Christie is jumping back in to focus on “mixing it up in the news cycle and engaging Trump.” He’s made it clear that stopping a second Trump term is his primary goal: “You’re not going to beat someone by closing your eyes, clicking your heels together three times and saying, ‘There’s no place like home.’ That’s not going to work,” he said in an April event in New Hampshire. “In American politics you want to beat somebody? You have to go get them.” Christie is great at playing the bully; just ask Sen. Marco Rubio, who was Christie’s hapless victim in 2016.
The three will join an already lackluster crowd that includes Asa Hutchinson, a former governor of Arkansas. Hutchinson has tried to paint himself as the anti-Trump, saying he’s running to “appeal to the best of America and not simply appeal to our worst instincts” and that “the office is more important than any individual person.” All the same, he won’t say he wouldn’t vote for Trump in 2024.
Yeah, if that’s the level of anti-Trump we can expect from the field, Christie is going to need to be on that debate stage.
The rest of the group includes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose campaign thus far has been hampered by … Ron DeSantis being the candidate. There’s also Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, whose campaign so far seems to be about being the lone Black Republican in the Senate and picking fights about it (and don’t forget a national abortion ban).
Then there’s former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who also was governor of South Carolina. Her campaign thus far has been about representing a “new generation” and flip-flopping over whether or not she supports Trump. Oh, and being a horrible anti-trans bigot spewing hateful filth on national television about how transgender children are making teenage girls suicidal.
There are also a few other very rich guys and/or cranks who apparently can’t think of anything better to spend their money on than a presidential run. Vivek Ramaswamy is one of those rich guys, a former pharmaceutical company executive and self-proclaimed “nationalist.” Then there is Larry Elder, a right-wing radio show crank who has a “long history of disparaging remarks about women, and he has been accused of domestic violence and of brandishing a gun in 2015 by his then-fiancée and former employee Alexandra Datig.” Finally, there’s Perry Johnson, another rich guy who most recently tried to run for Michigan governor but failed to get on the ballot because thousands of the signatures on his filing petition were fraudulent.
There’s a handful of others still in the speculative mix, dreaming of being the one to take down Trump. One of them, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, is out as of Monday. He’s doing it for the good of the party, he implies, saying, “The stakes are too high for a crowded field to hand the nomination to a candidate who earns just 35 percent of the vote.” Read that as: “2028 might be a better year for me.”
And that’s a wrap (for now) on the current field of Republicans vying for a second-place finish. Look for this field to expand if or when Donald Trump faces more federal indictments.
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We have Rural Organizing’s Aftyn Behn. Markos and Aftyn talk about what has been happening in rural communities across the country and progressives’ efforts to engage those voters. Behn also gives the podcast a breakdown of which issues will make the difference in the coming elections.
