Republicans jockey for 2024 at convention
Say this for Vice President Mike Pence: He doesn’t care in the least if his critics say that he’s turned sycophancy into high art. He’s got a strategy, and he’s sticking to it.
Pence has decided that saying and doing whatever President Donald Trump needs him to say and do is the only way he might get to the White House himself someday. And if he can help Trump get reelected against the odds, Pence’s own 2024 chances will look even better.
This strange online convention, dominated by Trump family members and administration retainers, has just one old-fashioned aspect: the jockeying for position among Republicans who would succeed Trump. Pence’s competition included former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Sens. Tim Scott (S.C.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.).
And true Trumpists might put the president’s adult sons, Eric and Don Jr., on that list, too.
Yet even the normal convention jostling for future standing is not what it usually is. Already the 2024 GOP field is divided between those who are addressing this mostly virtual gathering and those who aren’t. Among the missing notables are Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Ted Cruz of Texas, as well as Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming.
Those who skipped the chance to heap praise on Trump, particularly Rubio and Sasse, may end up being the best positioned in four years if this election ends in catastrophe for the party. Suddenly, lots of Republicans who acquiesced to Trump will begin claiming that they knew all along how flawed and ill-equipped he was.
Those who declined to be flatterers this week will be more credible as champions of a new path.
The beauty of Pence’s position, however unlovely kowtowing to Trump may seem day-to-day, is that he has absolute clarity about where his interests lie. He really does embody the bargain so many conservatives have made with Trump. If Pence makes lapdog parodies easy, he’s just acting out more starkly and overtly what so many others in his party are doing.
With precious few exceptions — Utah’s Sen. Mitt Romney comes to mind — Republican officeholders have ignored all of Trump’s abuses and outrages in exchange for four things: tax cuts, judges, deregulation and lots of hate-theliberals red meat for the party’s socially conservative wing.
Pence acts as a broker for all this. He’s a devout social conservative and as publicly pious as the leader of the church vestry. He’s been a behind-the-scenes leader of Trump’s effort to tear apart environmental and business regulations. He’s never met a pro-business tax cut he didn’t like. And he has long attacked liberal jurisprudence.
This has allowed him to be a bridge to Republican constituencies, especially White evangelicals, and a quiet explainer to more traditional Republicans of what Trump is up to — no easy job.
What should make Pence nervous is the competition he’s run into this week in the who-can-glorify-Trump-the-most sweepstakes. For a while, Haley seemed to be cultivating an image of some independence from Trump. But she’s clearly decided that her future lies with winning over the president’s loyalists.
So while she presented herself attractively as a unifier of Americans across racial lines and “the proud daughter of Indian immigrants,” she was happy to wield a hatchet for Trump against Joe Biden and “Joe’s boss,” former President Barack Obama. She tried to be as loyal as Pence but also her own person.
Scott’s speech was even more of a high-wire act. The GOP’s only
Black senator spent a lot of time telling his own story, rather movingly. His introduction to himself fed the notion that he, too, wants to be president. But Scott also went on the attack against Biden, pointedly on issues that affect Black Americans, particularly the Democrat’s support of the tough 1994 crime bill.
It is a service pro-Trump Republicans won’t forget.
And if you wonder why Secretary of State Mike Pompeo violated all sorts of rules and norms connected with his job by appearing before the convention from Jerusalem, think 2024. He had to be in the mix. But since his brief comments barely moved the needle, offering them seemed, in the end, hardly worth all the trouble.
No such controversy surrounded Pence’s engagement. If the test for 2024 turns out to be which Republican was most willing to venerate and exalt Donald Trump under any and all circumstances, the race is already over.