By the end of this week, the GOP’s dozen or so presidential candidates will include everything a window-shopping conservative could want: a literal ex-president, someone with no electoral experience, veterans, millionaire businessmen, people who want to be like Donald Trump, people who don’t want to be like Trump, and candidates who still pledge allegiance to Ronald Reagan and those who think the GOP should end all of that.
What they have no choice: senators.
Only one senator, Tim Scott of South Carolina, entered the 2024 Republican presidential field eight years after the senators defined the non-Trump presidential field, with Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham. from South. Carolina standing out as the main candidates. None of them seem interested in giving him another chance.
Other Republican senators who have been talked about as potential candidates are also staying on the sidelines this year, including Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rick Scott of Florida. Both men love to make headlines, but are instead focusing on their Senate re-election bids.
“It always comes down to individual choice. I know I’m running for the Senate,” said Rick Scott, who launched a failed bid to unseat Mitch McConnell as Senate GOP leader, when asked if he regretted not running in the race.
The senatorial marginalization is a reversal of recent years. Although governors dominated the presidential scene from the 1970s until 2008, the election of US Senator Barack Obama to the White House ushered in an era in which big, federally-built names dominated presidential politics, and governors scrambled to get the attention and money necessary to mount serious offers. In 2020, not a single governor ended up as a serious contender for the Democratic nomination.
Charlie Neibergall/Associated Press
The race among governors to join the race only highlights the lack of senators: This week, three current or former governors, former Vice President Mike Pence of Indiana, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, They will join the ex-governor. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson vying to lead their party in the 2024 general election. The free-for-all contest is a completely different race than it was just a few months ago, when Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seemed poised for a head-to-head showdown.
“Usually the crowds grow when people see weakness,” Graham, who has endorsed Trump, said of the expanding field. “Like some people who run just to position themselves as something else. It seems that no one is being deterred from entering.”
When asked why more senators aren’t coming in, Graham quipped, “The Senate is a better job.” (Graham himself ran for president in 2016, ending his campaign before the Iowa caucuses.)
DeSantis’ shares have fallen since he began flirting with a run for president. The Florida governor, who once caught up with Trump or sometimes beat him in early state polls, has fallen behind under a barrage of attacks from Trump. He is now trying to catch up with the campaign by taking underhanded jabs at the former president, his leadership style and his ability to win.
Republican senators don’t have a unified theory about why so many members of the upper house are opting out of the 2024 Republican race this year. Some posited that governors are simply better suited for the job of president and that they benefit on the campaign trail by being able to point to tangible achievements.
“I remember George W. Bush saying to me, ‘The best job in America is to be governor.’ And then he said, ‘Oh, just about the best job in America,’” said Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the 2012 Republican presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor. “So I think governors naturally look to the next position.”
Other senators suggested that Trump and his popularity within the Republican Party prevent potential contenders from joining the fray.
“Everyone else who wants to be president has already tried, and it wasn’t worth it,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (RN.D.). “I think the fact that Donald Trump is in the race has left out a lot of people, including some senator-president hopefuls.”
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) agreed with that assessment, suggesting with a heavy dose of sarcasm that no more senators are running for president because “this job is so good.”
“You get to do things that change the world, like keep paying the bills,” he added, referring to the months-long struggle to raise the debt limit.
Meanwhile, Sen. Mike Rounds (RS.D.) said it’s because there are “a lot of members of the Senate who have decided that Tim Scott would be a good fit” for president. Rounds, who is also a former governor, is one of only two Republican senators who endorsed Scott’s 2024 candidacy.
Running an explicitly optimistic campaign aimed at breaking away from the doomsday rhetoric deployed by Trump and DeSantis, Scott is the kind of old-school conservative Senate Republican who’s a little less enamored with the “Make America Great Again” movement than he is. their House counterparts could, in theory, line up behind. But his still slim chances of victory mean many will keep his root interest private rather than explicit.
Another reason may be that presidential hopefuls in the Senate are simply biding their time for a better opportunity. Hawley and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, another senator many thought could run in 2024, are downright kids by presidential standards: Hawley is 43 and Cotton is 46.
“Do you want to be someone who ran twice and lost twice? Some of them are young enough to think about future cycles,” said Grant Reeher, a professor of political science at Syracuse University.
A person not running for president? New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu. After hurling much criticism at Trump in recent years, Sununu made the final decision on him on Monday. The moderate Republican governor warned that a packed field would only help Trump win the nomination again.
“The stakes are too high for a packed field to hand the nomination to a candidate who gets just 35 percent of the vote, and I will help ensure that doesn’t happen,” Sununu wrote in a opinion piece published by The Washington Post.
Sununu also included a dig into the unnamed candidates who are running. “Too many other candidates who have entered this race are just running to be vice president for Trump,” he said.
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