What if it wasn’t him? What if Donald Trump, the big favorite of the Republicans for the 2024 presidential election, was beaten by one of his competitors? The idea seems absurd: since he launched his campaign, and even more so since his indictment by a New York prosecutor woke up his troops like an electric shock, Trump has dominated the GOP (Grand Old Party , nickname of the Republican Party). Just recently, an Emerson College poll on Republican primary voting intentions gave him a 56-point lead over his closest rival, Ron Desantis. But in the political circus that America has become, no one can predict what turn these primaries will take.
Trump will face a slew of competitors. The most dangerous, by far, is DeSantis. The governor of Florida, comfortably re-elected last November, will announce his candidacy in the coming days. In the polls on the score he would obtain against Joe Biden, he is the only one, with Trump, to be on par with the current president.
Its strengths? He has made himself the standard bearer for the “anti-woke” measures that delight the Republican base. In mid-May, in a careful staging, he thus signed a series of laws of this kind for three days in a row, prohibiting gender transition care for minors, preventing children from attending “shows for adults and restricting the use of pronouns other than “he” or “she” in schools. It has also just enacted a law prohibiting abortion six weeks after conception.
Trump’s Republican rivals without serious luck
His weaknesses can be summed up in two words: personality, Trump. DeSantis lacks charisma, empathy, he tends to play personal. This could prove fatal during the general campaign, it is less of a problem with the militant base of the primaries. But the other obstacle is colossal: Donald Trump remains the hero of the Republicans, and he relentlessly hits on this “very disloyal” ex-protégé who “has no personality”. DeSantis’ real hope remains the mounting lawsuits against Trump…assuming they end up worrying the base rather than bolstering his support for the ex-president.
Behind these two favourites, a skewer of appetizers. Mike Pence, the ex-vice president, wants to embody a “Reagan coalition” made up of the Christian right, fiscal conservatives and foreign policy hawks. Only problem, the party has changed and Pence is hated by the majority of Trumpists for having validated the result of the presidential election of 2020. Nikki Haley, ex-ambassador to the UN, wants to campaign on a more modern line, moderate. But moderation has long since deserted the Republican Party.
Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, takes up the mantle of anti-Trumpism. Good luck! And a few other extras, potential or declared, complete the picture. None have a serious chance. The only one who could create the surprise, in the event of disqualification or shipwreck of Trump or DeSantis, is called Vivek Ramaswamy. Multimillionaire, founder of a biotech startup, this 37-year-old son of Indian immigrants is more Trumpist than the original, saying for example that activism against global warming is one of the “secular religions” that ” are suffocating America!
Source: Challenges en temps réel : accueil by www.challenges.fr.
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