An Outsider's Guide to the 2024 Republican Primary

The essentials you need to know to give the self-conceited poli-sci major in your next social event a run for their money.

Indictments Don

"average US president has 2 indictments" factoid actualy [sic] just statistical error. average president has 0 indictments total. Indictments Don, who lives in resort & has 91 indictments, is an outlier adn [sic] should not have been counted."

Miles ahead of the other candidates, the race is his to lose. Conventional pundits claim that his numerous indictments and the media coverage of them are sure to hurt him in the general election. What is undeniable is that a significant portion of the Republican Party (also called the GOP, which stands for Grand Old Party) have rallied to his defense against what is seen among many Republican voters as a witch-hunt.

Trump isn't extreme on any particular policy, yet draws his highest levels of support from self-professed "very conservative" voters. It may be because some of those voters believe he is The One. Matrix style. As in he is going to either deliver America to salvation or become a martyr.

The problem all of the other candidates have is quite simply that they aren't Donald Trump. This is still very much Trump's party. You don't stand a chance against The Donald anyways, and you especially don't stand a chance if you can't make a coherent argument as to why the GOP should abandon Trump for you.

TLDR: Trump holds a massive and growing lead. A lot will have to go wrong for him to not win.

... Meatball Ron?

I honestly don't understand why Trump didn't end up using the Meatball Ron nickname, as it is far more devastating than Ron DeSanctimonious. Ron DeSantis was a rocket ship that shot up in the GOP when he became governor. The perennial swing state (meaning it's been always competitive) became something like a Republican stronghold during DeSantis' governorship. He was widely praised on the right for being very combative on culture war issues like covid restrictions, gender, and race issues.

That carry over good feeling seems to be the main thing keeping him up in the polls right now. He's been on the constant decline. It seems to be that people simply don't find him to be an approachable person. Being a clear second place doesn't help, as the Trump campaign has concentrated fire against him. DeSantis' strategy appears to be to poach voters who self-identify as "very conservative" by taking the most undeniably extreme right wing position on all the culture war issues. The problem he runs into with this strategy is that in the eyes of the very voters he is trying to win, he becomes a false prophet-esque figure who is extreme right because of greed for power, not because he believes in it.

TLDR: voters don't see DeSantis as authentic

"Skinny Guy with a Funny Last Name"

The wise guy at the function probably won't shut up about Vivek Ramaswamy, so it's good to be prepared. Do you remember Andrew Yang? No? Me neither. If you know who Andrew Yang was back in the 2020 Democratic Primaries, Ramaswamy is the Andrew Yang of this Republican primary. Confident beyond his status in the polls. They're both a racial minority who brings it up to prove a point. Yang brought it up to flex the Asians-are-good-at-math stereotype, Ramaswamy brings it up for the hard-working-immigrant-who-lived-the-American-Dream narrative. They both propose outrageous policy once in a while to grab headlines, and they both double-down on one particular proposal to set them apart. Yang promised to give everyone $1000 a month no questions asked. Ramaswamy promised to pardon Trump if Trump goes to jail.

And therein lies Ramaswamy's strategy. Look up some clips of him during the debate. Look at his gestures and rhetoric. The finger pointing, the hand spreading, the vicious language about the establishment, all that, right out of the Trump 2016 playbook. That, and reminding voters that he's the sole candidate to promise to pardon Trump? This is a clear trade offer to the Trump base. Vote Vivek if Trump isn't on the ballot in exchange for the pardon.

TLDR: Ramaswamy is the Trump Train's backup.

Ah Yes. The Negotiator

Nikki Haley rose back up recently to reclaim 4th place after faltering for a bit. She wavers on policy, but a clear argument as to why her not Trump is starting to emerge. Trump picked her for UN Ambassador. Unlike the three candidates in front of her, she has foreign policy cred. She does not want to axe NATO like they do, and will in all likelihood have a fairly mainstream, if *slight* isolationist foreign policy.

Like DeSantis, she can boast about being an effective governor. Like Ramaswamy, she can make the American Dream argument about her racial background. But unlike those two, she's pivoting to the center, not the right fringe. A key moment during the first debate was when she called total abortion bans unpragmatic and proposes forming a national consensus around a third trimester abortion ban. This moderate stance on abortion is an immensely potent weapon in a general election. "Abortion should be legal in most cases, with a few exceptions" is where most Americans stand. Democrats rallied around the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey in the Dobbs v Jackson case to rail against Republicans for being radical extremists. A third trimester (and third trimester only) ban grinds the Democrats' crusade to a halt. 

Nikki Haley has the moderate policy proposals, competent record, and respectful personality to win back the Bush era Republican voters who left the party of Trump for the Democrats. Haley's rise in the polls is possibly the start of a consolidation of establishment, highly-educated, upper-class, and suburban anti-Trump Republicans behind Haley. Also important is the fact that she as not drawn Trump's ire, which gives her valuable time to make such a consolidation. Should she overcome sexism and slay the Trump goliath, her youth also contrasts very favorably with Biden. A 2024 Republican ticket led by Nikki Haley, with no blunder in the vice president pick, would be a nightmare for Biden and the Democrats.

TLDR: Nikki Haley is the suburban Bush era Republican candidate and poses the greatest threat to Biden if she wins the primaries.

Are You There God?

Mike Pence has the obvious problem of explaining why he's running against his former boss. Unlike everyone else in the race, he can't bash Trump's presidential record because he stood behind him for all four years of it... until January 6th, that is. Mike Pence's messaging is actually surprisingly concise. The Insurrection made him reflect on his choices. He chose his democratic duty over personal loyalty to Trump. He returns to the debate stage after making his choice guided by a religious conviction. He drew applause for his defense of refusing to overturn the election, and he drew applause for his religious conviction. Former Vice President Pence is not to be underestimated.

Pence is hedging his bets on all the people who say they are religious actually being religious. He is running on a fundamentalist Christian sense of decency. His policy proposals, especially going hardline on abortion just as Nikki Haley tacks the other way, demonstrates a newfound commitment to principle which even if you disagree with, you ought to begrudgingly respect. His strategy runs into the apparent issue of Evangelical Christians willing to trade principles and decency in exchange for Supreme Court justices that we saw in 2016.

TLDR: Pence is running a fundamentalist Christian campaign and contrasts himself with Trump with his decency.

Honorable (?) Mentions

 He came in like a ...  wrecking ball?

Chris Christie, former governor of New Jersey, terminator of Marco Rubio's 2016 campaign. He denies that he's in this race just to take down Trump, but that seems to be precisely what he is trying to do. He is a competent debater, I'll give him that, but he really has not put out a coherent argument as to why him for president. The Trump takedown hasn't happened either, as Trump refuses to share a debate stage when he's so far ahead.

The Generic Republican

He's sunk far below the polls, but Governor Asa Hutchinson left me very impressed with his debate performance. He's got a record as governor that he's proud of, and concisely called for the Republican party to abandon the more populist direction Trump has taken the party in and return to a more traditional small government conservatism. A candidate like him could have easily polled second and maybe first in primaries in 2008 and 2012, but this is not Reagan's Republican party anymore.