Growing list of Trump challengers revive fears of 2016 repeat
Memories of the tumultuous 2016 Republican primary hung over the Las Vegas ballroom this weekend during the first major gathering of the party’s potential contenders for the 2024 nomination.
No fewer than 10 White House prospects stepped onto the stage to pitch their plans to fix the nation — and their party. The details varied, but within most speeches was an extraordinary sense of defiance rarely seen since former President Donald Trump seized control of the Republican Party six years ago.
Their central message: Trump can and should be beaten.
Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations under Trump, pledged in April that she wouldn’t challenge the former president if he ran again. But on Sunday, facing hundreds of cheering Republicans, she vowed to give “1000 per cent” to a White House bid if she decided to get in.
“I’ve never lost an election, and I’m not going to start now,” she said as the crowd roared.
But as the donors and activists who gathered for the Republican Jewish Coalition’s two-day leadership conference applauded, perhaps no one was cheering louder than Trump himself from his Florida estate.
Trump’s team believes, as do a growing number of anxious donors and Republican operatives, that the GOP’S emboldened 2024 class may already be unintentionally recreating the conditions that enabled Trump’s success in 2016. That year, a crowded Republican field splintered the primary electorate and allowed Trump to become the party’s presidential nominee despite winning just 35 per cent or less of the vote.
In the earliest days of the 2024
season, the 2016 parallels are eerie.
As then, Trump is viewed with suspicion within his party, his standing weakened after several loyalists lost winnable races in this month’s Midterm elections. And most of all, a parade of ambitious Republicans is lining up to take him on.
A small, but growing group of Republican operatives is warning Trump’s critics that the only way to defeat him is to rally behind a much smaller group of alternatives.
Eric Levine, a New York-based donor who attended the weekend gathering, called on his party to embrace no more than two or three candidates — and to move with real urgency.
“I don’t think we have the luxury of waiting,” said Levine, who has raised millions of dollars for Republicans in recent years and began speaking out against Trump only after the Midterms. “If he becomes the Republican brand, the party is going to be destroyed.”
For now, at least, Trump’s rivals don’t appear to be heeding his warning.
The most popular alternative to Trump, Florida Governor Ron Desantis, isn’t likely to enter the race until the next month, his allies say. But in his keynote address on Sunday, he left little doubt that 2024 was on his mind.
“In times like these, there is no substitute for victory,” Desantis said, citing over and over his overwhelming Midterm success in Florida. “We’ve got a lot more to do, and I have only begun to fight.”
And in a series of interviews, several other would-be Republican candidates and their aides indicated they would likely wait until the middle of next year to enter the race should they decide to run. That’s even after Trump formally launched his 2024 campaign this past week.
—AP