2024 GOP Primary Thread

This is gonna be entertaining/scary/absurd enough on its own to merit a thread I figure & if not the thread will die a natural death. Announced candidates so far are:

*Ron DeSantis
--gov. of FL
--fuck this asshole

*Larry Elder
--talk radio host
--former CA gubernatorial candidate
--Trump supporter & election denier, who knows how he squares running against Trump

*Nikki Haley
--former UN Ambassador and Gov. of SC
--Trump admin defector; imo he'll roll over anybody he's worked with personally

*Asa Hutchinson
--former Gov. of AR
--effectively middle-of-the-road, given the extremity of the other candidates
--old man who sounds like disgraced televangelist Robert Tilton on a lower setting

*Vivek Ramaswamy
--"entrepreneur and political commentator"
--very much on the anti-woke train
--seems like a complete asshole

*Tim Scott
--U.S. Senator from SC
--endorsed buy Mike Rounds & John Thune
--foregrounds anti-teachers'-union & border stuff

*Corey Stapleton
--former Sec. of State for Montana
--"pay it forward" is his campaign slogan, trying to frame self as getting back to older values
--hybrid Reaganite & Heritage Foundation sludge creature

*Donald Trump
--hires only the best people
--stares into the sun during an eclipse because he's not going to be intimidated like you losers
--pest

Hard to choose!

An embarrassment of riches

only DeSantis and Elder are likely to try to frame themselves as "like Trump, but even harsher & without the baggage." Trump will announce early on that there are "really only three candidates" or something like that and say out loud that the others can't be serious. He'll zero in on DeSantis, who he considers a threat. He will then eat DeSantis for breakfast. The GOP establishment will be looking for good alternatives between Haley & Hutchinson and would probably love it if Stephenson could get a little steam but I don't see the broader public giving much of a shit about Corey Stephenson so they'll get in line behind Trump or DeSantis and will fear DeSantis's incompetence on the national stage. I left out Chris Christie and Mike Pence who are both expected to announce. Mike Pence will be the most heavily protected candidate ever to give public speeches. Chris Christie will not be President.

"they'll" is bad grammatically there, I mean the GOP establishment will get in line.

Scott seems to be in just to raise his profile for a Veep pick

Not that it matters in the least, but Chris Christie is amazing--is he hoping to reel in amnesiacs who will have completely forgotten his lapdog subservience to Trump after he dropped out in 2016? Who in this ungodly circus is he counting on to vote for him? I would think all sides hate him.

Voted for "trolley problem where all of these candidates are all on one track and throwing the switch just sends the train into Fox's headquarters"

For a split second I thought "Did Ron formally announce?" before I remembered his colossal twitter clusterfuck. lmao

i believe a "good luck USA!" is customary in the circumstances

Pence in!

pencil pence in

Pence in for a pound

"Last time I saw a crowd this big, they were trying to lynch me! But seriously, folks ..."

🥁

probably best not to give them any ideas eh

As a rule, I am very against lynching jokes but I will make all kinds of exceptions when directed at the modern Republican Party

This is gonna sound rude, but I mean it 100% sincerely: Christie needs to lean into the one thing that he has that nobody else in that field has — being a Loudmouth Fat Guy. He needs to go full Jackie Gleason/John Goodman-on-Roseanne and be the braying asshole he's always been, but stop dressing like a bank vice president or a TV news commentator and start showing up places in, like, a Devils jersey and jorts. The loudmouth fat guy bloc is not being *explicitly* catered to in Republican primaries, but there are a fucking lot of them. Put out some photos and video of Christie standing by a grill with three or four other fat guys all in sports jerseys and long Kevin Smith-style denim shorts, laughing and talking shit with bottles of beer in their hands, and I guarantee his numbers would rise.

Not saying you're wrong about Christie, but don't they already have a LFG running?

Trump is fat, objectively, but he's not perceived as fat in the "lookit that fat fuck over there" sense. Being a Loudmouth Fat Guy (specifically, a Loudmouth Fat Guy From Fuckin' Jersey) is Christie's brand, and he needs to embrace it if he wants to get anywhere.

*Doug Burgum
--gov. of ND
--... who?! where?!

xp i don't think he actually wants to get anywhere, in fact i cannot fathom why he is even running. tbh it can only be a severe masochistic streak at this point

hey, it worked for Fetterman. not that he's loud or obnoxious but he is very much a Philly dude in a way that feels authentic. I trust him. idk I feel that sort of thing goes a long way, Trump's strength is that he's such an authentic asshole who can't moderate his message at all. people really hate the focus grouped shit. Christie definitely has that sort of appeal but for whatever reason he never uses it, and will wind up getting like 0.3% of the vote as a result. I have no clue what the hell he's after, for that matter I have no clue why Pence is running either

I'm pretty sure God told him to.

I think running for Pres is a marketing tool to be able to shill and shakedown conservative media sheep with various products and/or raise your profile in tv turdland.

It's tricky, though. If you piss Trump off too much you might end up like Jeff Sessions.

That dude was dumb enough to think he could grift more as Trumps AG than drinking lemonade on the porch as a Senator on the Crimson Tide. But hey it was like Pence, Trumpkins was dredging the near the bottom and guys were getting job offers that NO usual GOP Prez would have offered these clowns.

The kinda legit (in their creepy way) GOP either have retired or gone into making stacks mode on the side waiting and hoping for this s51t show to subside like Ryan or Gowdy.

the fact that DeSantis is doing "let's all rally around Trump" thing during the best opening he's ever gonna get shows me he simply does not want to be president

I'm sure I'm not the first one to think or say this, but what if for DeSantis this is mostly a way of establishing frontrunner status for 2028, when either way there would be no incumbent? His best play then would be to kind of string it along without ever really directly challenging Trump and then eventually — before he has to suffer the indignity of losing primaries — withdraw "for the good of the country" and get behind Trump? Then whatever happens, nobody can blame him. He gets the benefit of the high profile from the run, good will from Trump supporters, and implicitly or explicitly promises to be back in '28.

If that were his plan then why is he running deepfake ads with Trump hugging Fauci?

Because it reinforces his brand as the guy who stood up to COVID nannies etc. Or maybe at this point he's not fully committed either way? Sticking around to see if Trump implodes sufficiently on his own? It's hard to say. Maybe he's just keeping his options open.

Unperson, you’re killing me here

think he's just doing what everyone in the GOP is, waiting for him to die

tbh I don't know how you run against Trump after spending 7 years treating him like he's infallible and insisting every investigation into him is some Deep State plot but hey, not my problem

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/13FMYzbaTeM/maxresdefault.jpg

never forget

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1YP_zZJFXs

Christie: He flew the boxes up to new Jersey for summer vacation. What is this, like, they're a family member? Seriously, I've got to have my boxes with me. Let me ask you a question. What exactly was he doing with them? Did someone remind him he's not the president anymore? pic.twitter.com/IKhR5UBb3s

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 13, 2023

I’m in.
Join me at https://t.co/UoYuhkf2zJ pic.twitter.com/M19lU9GzDh

— Will Hurd (@WillHurd) June 22, 2023

Ya Hurd?!!!

Edgier David Brooks