Who Will Run For President As A Republican If Trump Is Removed?

The public phase of impeachment began yesterday. Meanwhile, the Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson ran an hilarious speculative piece about which GOPer might run in 2020 if Trump is removed by the Senate or cops a plea deal and resigns. He offers 16 hideous alternatives, although it could easily have been double or triple that. I mean when you're scraping the toilet bowl for contenders like Gym Jordan and Liz Cheney, anything goes, right? These were Dickinson's 16:

1) Mike Pence
Faction: Trump Loyalist

It’s hard to judge Pence’s own precariousness. The vice president has done a remarkable job of participating in the administration’s awfulness while projecting himself as out of the loop. In the current Ukraine scandal, Pence appears to have carried water for Trump but done so in coded language, demanding that the new leader of Ukraine investigate “corruption,” but perhaps stopping short of demanding an investigation of the Bidens. But any scandal big enough to topple Trump is likely to permanently tarnish Pence, if not dislodge him from office as well. Apart from his connection to scandal, Pence holds sway with the religious conservatives in the party. And he recently distanced himself from Trump’s chumminess with authoritarian regimes by calling on China to respect the “rights and liberties” of Hong Kong and its protesters. But Pence seems to lack the charisma to guarantee himself a place at the top of any ticket-- even if he emerges from Trump’s exit as the incumbent.

2) Nikki Haley
Faction: Collaborationist Critic

Haley achieved the nearly impossible in the age of Trump, serving in the 45th president’s administration while burnishing her political star. The former governor of South Carolina acted as Trump’s first U.N. ambassador, leaving at the end of 2018, and she succeeded in bringing ballast to the administration-- including standing up to Russia over its annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. Now on a book tour, Haley is alternately critiquing and boosting Trump. She’s called out Trump’s behavior toward Ukraine as “not good practice”  but argued it was not impeachable. And she revealed that other top Trump deputies worked to foil the president’s worst impulses, but insisted she “didn’t want any part” of these efforts to “undermine” Trump. As an experienced politician with a presidential temperament, as well as a woman and a daughter of immigrants, Haley would offer the party a polar flip from Trump. The question is whether a politician who has taken pains to soar above the fray would be eager for a 2020 knife fight, or might instead bide her time until 2024.

3) Ted Cruz
Faction: “True” Conservative

Let’s face it, with a power vacuum like this, Cruz wouldn’t be able to help himself from taking another grab at the brass ring. The Texas senator is also fresh off a very expensive and competitive victory over Beto O’Rourke in 2018, which has kept the national organization from his 2016 presidential bid in operational shape. Cruz, who won the Iowa caucuses that cycle, also has links to big GOP money, including the Mercer family, as well as a 96 percent rating from Heritage Action.

4) Mitt Romney
Faction: Collaborationist Critic

The once and future nominee? Romney has been in the Haley camp — seeking collaboration with the president but occasionally offering sharp critiques. (Romney quietly lofted other criticisms from an pseudonymous Twitter handle, Pierre Delecto.) But, Romney, the former private-equity titan, also represents the same GOP establishment that Trump’s 2016 nomination marked a repudiation of. Does Mitt have any appeal to today’s GOP base, let alone enough to propel himself to the nomination? 

5) Mike Pompeo
Faction: Trump Loyalist

Like Pence, Pompeo is crosswise to the Ukraine scandal. Rudy Giuliani has claimed his actions to seek interference in the 2020 election were blessed by Pompeo’s State Department. And Pompeo reacted with stunned, sweaty silence when asked about Trump’s alleged quid pro quo with Ukraine on a recent Sunday news show. If Pompeo were to weather the storm that triggered Trump’s departure, however, the Kansan has a prodigious résumé-- member of Congress, CIA director, and secretary of state-- as well as connections to Koch money.

6) Donald Trump Jr.
Faction: Trump Kid

Irrespective of the facts of his removal/departure, President Trump will have created a durable coalition of diehard supporters who will see his leaving office as the end result of a coup by Democrats and the Deep State. The man most likely to ride this wave of militant, always-Trump fervor is none other than the president’s son Don Jr., who is a fixture on the Trump campaign circuit and perhaps his dad’s most effective surrogate on the stump. He’s now on a book tour, rallying the base with a stop at the Reagan library. The trouble with Don Jr.-- beyond his total lack of experience in government-- is that the heir apparent adopted his father’s habit of hobnobbing and doing business with plenty of shady characters. To wit: Don Jr. appears to have been in the thick of his father’s connections to Ukraine. He was photographed having a “power breakfast” with Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, the Giuliani cronies who pushed to dig up dirt on the Bidens and who have been indicted for money laundering and channeling Russian cash into U.S. elections.

7) John Kasich
Faction: Never-Trumper

The former governor of Ohio was the last candidate standing in the race against Trump in 2016. Kasich openly weighed a rematch against Trump for 2020, but opted against it in May, saying he had “no path.” But Trump’s acting chief of staff admitted on camera to a quid pro quo-- withholding military aid to Ukraine to pressure that country to participate in a politically motivated investigation-- Kasich called on Trump to be impeached. If Trump were in fact removed from office, Kasich’s ambition to stand as a moral counterweight against Trumpism could draw him off the sidelines for 2020. Staunchly anti-abortion, Kasich has religious-right bona fides, but he angered small-government conservatives by leading expansion of Medicaid in Ohio under Obamacare.

8) Liz Cheney
Faction: Neocon Revivalist

If there were a neoconservative uprising, Rep. Cheney (R-WY), the elder daughter of the former VP, would be an obvious leader.

9) Gym Jordan
Faction: Trump Loyalist

Jordan lives to center himself in chaotic situations, most recently getting himself appointed to the House Intelligence committee to take on a staring role in impeachment-hearing questioning. While some politicians might pale at a mad scramble to replace a scandal-ridden ex-president, Jordan is likelier to see an opportunity to leverage the GOP’s conspiratorial war-cry against the Deep State into political power. The Ohio congressman has street cred with the GOP base for being a Hillary inquisitor and top Fox News defender of the president, but he could be weighed down by the molestation scandal at Ohio State University, where he was an assistant wrestling coach in a gym where athletes were allegedly preyed on by the team doctor.

10) Ivanka Trump
Faction: Trump Kid

Ivanka has the social graces to compete as a different kind of Trump. She also has White House experience, having served in the West Wing as a senior adviser to her father. But Ivanka brings little fire to the stump, and her forays on the international stage have been awkward at best.

11) John Bolton
Faction: Neocon Revivalist

The former national security adviser and U.N. ambassador got the hell out of Dodge just before the Ukraine shit hit the fan, and could yet be a key impeachment witness, although he wants the courts to give him permission to testify against his old boss first. Bolton has reportedly inked a $2 million book deal, to be out next year. Beloved by hawks, Bolton could run as the mustache of neoconservative restoration.

12) Kevin McCarthy
Faction: Trump Loyalist

The blow-dried California representative and House minority leader is another Trump loyalist who might seek to fill his shoes on the national stage. McCarthy, however, has his own baggage, which kept him from a speaker run in 2015. He also had to return a tainted donation from indicted Giuliani pal Parnas.

13) William Weld
Faction: Never-Trumper

The former Massachusetts governor and Justice Department prosecutor has positioned himself as the antithesis of a president whose actions he sees as “calculated to destroy the interest of the United States.” Weld has been running against Trump for the 2020 nomination since April, but has only polled in the low single digits. The latest survey has him trailing Trump by 86 points.

14) Justin Amash
Faction: “True” Conservative

The Michigan congressman grew so fed up with the GOP that he left the party entirely-- but not before Amash publicly called for Trump’s impeachment on the basis of the Mueller report’s voluminous evidence of this president’s obstruction of justice. Would a principled libertarian like Amash rejoin the party to seek its nomination-- or run for president in 2020 as an independent? Amash hasn’t ruled it out.

15) Mark Sanford
Faction: “True” Conservative

Sanford’s personal peccadilloes-- carrying on an affair with an Argentine woman while married and presiding as governor of South Carolina-- now seem tame in comparison with Trump’s admitted genital-grabbing and his paying hush money to a porn star with whom he allegedly had an affair. Sanford still stands as an avatar of the stalwart economic conservatism Trump has abandoned in ballooning the debt by nearly $1 trillion in the last fiscal year. Sanford ended a short-lived 2020 presidential campaign in November, lamenting that there was “no appetite on the right for a nuanced conversation on the fiscal deficit.”

16) Joe Walsh
Faction: Trumpy Non-Trump

Walsh is running for president against Trump, while acknowledging that his past inflammatory language as a member of the House of Representatives-- Walsh promoted birtherism and several of his tweets have been read as calls to violence-- helped pave the way for Trump’s rise. What possible Republican constituency is there for a guy who shares Trump’s bigotry but backs Nancy Pelosi’s assessment of Trump’s captivation by Vladimir Putin? The polls have an answer: damn near none.

What about Matt Bevin and Roy Moore? They both need jobs now. And doesn't Steve King (R-IA) represent the Republican Party better than anyone else in Congress? If not him-- let's not forget former-Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona and ex-speaker Paul Ryan. Anyone remember John Boehner or Sarah Palin? What about Louis Gohmert (R-TX)? What about Brett Kavanaugh? What about hate talk radio host and far right propagandist Mark Levin? What about senators Moscow Mitch (R-KY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC)? And even if Arthur Jones is technically a Nazi, he's been running for office as a Republican. And why not a Bush... or Chris Christie? And if Giuliani isn't in prison yet, he could be available, no?

Hillary Wants Democratic Party Unity? Let Her Prove It

In 2008 Doug Schoen and his equally despicable partner, Mark Penn, were forced out of the Clinton campaign

Doug Schoen is a Fox Democrat who seems to consider himself a Democrat in a tribal sense but whose policy affinity is conservative. When Thomas Frank writes about how the Democratic Party changed from the party representing the interests of working families to the party representing the interests of the top 10%, he's talking about conservaDems like Schoen, now even a Clinton-wing reject. Schooner opposed Obamacare and hated Obama. Fox News is his ideological home. His column for Forbes Thursday puts forward a Republican delusion that Trump is taking "voters under 29 years old, independents, moderates and even liberals" away from Hillary, although the Republican/Schoen perspective that "just because she’s mathematically cinched the nomination doesn’t mean [Bernie's] devotees will go willingly over to Clinton’s camp" is more or less correct. What the GOP-- and Schoen-- don't understand is that what he calls "Bernie devotees" are not supporting Bernie because of his personality but because of his policies and worldview and may not vote for Hillary-- either by staying home or by voting for Jill Stein (or even Gary Johnson)-- but that they are not going to vote for a repulsive proto-fascist who is daily proving himself to be both misogynistic and racist. Schooner can twist the facts all he likes; he may well have never met a "Bernie devotee," even if he claims that "a colleague of mine spoke to Sanders supporters waiting in line at Sanders’s recent speech in Santa Monica" and found that "their distaste for Clinton was nearly unanimous and fundamentally rooted in a strong distrust of her and her policies... There was a tremendous emphasis on the importance of changing the system. Indeed, they support changing the system and opposing the status quo more than they support the Democratic Party. To this end, many of them said they would write in for Sanders or vote for Trump in the general election if Sanders were not the Democratic nominee." Write in... some will. Voting for Trump... only in the minds of Republicans and Republican-like creatures like Doug Schoen. He marvels that Bernie supporters who are realistically saying they'd vote for Hillary over Trump as the "lesser of two evils," but of course Doug Schoen wouldn't understand that, his entire career been immersed in lesser-of-two-evils politics without even understanding that that's what it always was.

Convinced of their candidate’s righteousness as ever, Sanders supporters continue to cite his better-than-Clinton’s lead over Trump in national general election polls. In the last few weeks, polls have shown Clinton and Trump to be within two or three points of each other. Trump, however, consistently trails Sanders in a general election matchup: five polls in May found Sanders leading Trump by upwards of 10 points on average. And Sanders is the only one of the three candidates with a positive approval rating.

It has become abundantly clear that to defeat Trump in an election that seems to be breaking his way with each day that passes, Clinton must woo Sanders supporters and independents.

No, the election-- outside of the Fox cocoon he's so firmly ensconced in-- does not seem to be breaking Trump's way. In fact, Americans seem to be more and more revolted by who and what Trump is.

In terms of winning over Bernie supporters, there are probably several routes Clinton could take: naming Elizabeth Warren, or perhaps Jeff Merkley, as her running mate would be the easiest (and most superficial). Persuading Bernie voters that the policies he pressured her into adopting during the campaign-- like opposition to the TPP for example-- are real and heartfelt. This is the least easy (and least superficial)... and the most unlikely approach (since her adherence to these policies is neither real nor heartfelt).

I suspect she may try to woo Bernie supporters with something about process, that won't trouble her inevitable shift towards the right for the general election. Last week, Tim Dickinson, interviewed Bernie for Rolling Stone and Bernie brought up "changing the rules that govern the Democratic Party."

[T]he American people, more and more people, are looking at their politics as outside the Democratic and Republican parties-- for a variety of reasons. Some of them think the Democratic Party is too conservative. But whatever, they are independents. Three million people in New York state could not cast a vote in the Democratic or Republican primary for the president of the United States. On the surface, that's absurd. You really could almost raise legal issues. You're an independent in New York, you're paying for that election, it's conducted by the state. But you can't vote? Think about it. And from a political point of view, it is absurd, because independents do vote in the general election. So what you're saying is, "You can't vote now, and we don't want you to come into our party. But you can vote later on." I think that's dumb. Given that so many young people are independent, we ought to welcome them in.

Issue number two is the whole issue of superdelegates. The deck is stacked in favor of the establishment candidate... I think 450 superdelegates committed to Hillary Clinton before the process began. You need less than 2,400 delegates to win. You have an establishment candidate who goes to the governors and the senators and the Congress people and the money people. It would be very, very hard for the best insurgent candidate-- a candidate who did really well among the people-- to take that on. Does that make any sense?

Furthermore, we have to deal with the way that the party raises money. It really is quite amazing. And I feel sorry for her in a sense. Hillary Clinton spends an enormous amount of time-- look at her schedule-- running all over the country. You know what she does? She goes to wealthy people's homes-- and she raises money! Here you are in the middle of a campaign, and she's out raising money. I'm talking to 10,000 people. She's out raising money. We have got to figure out a way in which the Democratic Party has the ideology and the positions that excite ordinary people who are prepared to contribute to the Democratic Party or the candidate.

I think to some degree, we have proven in this campaign, having received 7.6 million individual campaign contributions, more than any candidate in history at this point, it can be done. Last night, we were in Sacramento. We had 16,000 people, OK? How many Democrats are out there talking to thousands of people as opposed to being at some rich guy's house talking to 10 people and walking out with $30,000? This has got to be the goal: to communicate with people, bring people into a political movement. Not just spend your whole life hustling money.

...Let me just give you an example: We were in Denver. We had a rally at 5:00 in the afternoon. We had 18,000 people. People who are passionate about wanting to change America, wanting to be involved in the political process. My guess is that 95 percent of those people had never gone to a Democratic Party meeting-- or ever dreamed of going to a Democratic Party meeting. Two hours later, I walk into a [Democratic Party Jefferson-Jackson fundraising] dinner where there are 1,000, maybe 2,000 Democrats, who are contributors to the party, who are lawyers and whatever, local politicians. Older people, upper-middle-class and professional people-- who are active in the Democratic Party.

There are two different worlds. So the question is: What happens when that 18,000 marches into that room with 2,000 people? Will they be welcomed? Will the door be open? Will the party hierarchy say, "Thank you for coming in. We need your energy. We need your idealism. C'mon in!"? Or will they say, "Hey, we've got a pretty good thing going right now. We don't need you. We don't want you"? That's the challenge that the Democratic Party faces. And I don't know what the answer is.

The danger is, when you bring people in, the whole composition of the Democratic Party begins to change. It becomes much younger. It becomes more working-class. Its emphasis will be less on raising money from Wall Street and big-money interests than on transforming America. That is the dynamic that we're lookin' at.

...Many working-class people in this country no longer have faith in establishment politics. And, of course, that's what Trump has seized upon. He's a phony and an opportunist. But he has seized upon that and said, "I am not part of the establishment." He's only a multibillionaire who has worked with Wall Street and everybody else. But he claims not to be part of the establishment, right? That has created a certain amount of support for him.

Why won't Pelosi back Democratic candidate Mary Ellen Balchunis in PA-07?

That's relatively easy for Hillary to "give in" on without jeopardizing her inevitable rightward lurch. I'd like to add another suggestion for how Clinton could woo progressives. As I mentioned before, the DCCC has steadfastly refused to back progressives who win Democratic Party congressional primaries. When Mary Ellen Balchunis beat the DCCC's lame Red-to-Blue candidate-- in a 74-26% landslide-- the DCCC removed PA-07 from their Red-to-Blue list, wrote off the district and continued trying to sabotage progressive candidates across the country-- CA-25 being a perfect example, where DCCC demands on California congressmen to back their hackish corrupt candidate so offended Adam Schiff that yesterday he gave the progressive in the race, Lou Vince, use of his office for a day of phone banking with California's State Controller, Betty Yee. Even though the state Democratic Party endorsed Lou Vince in a hotly contested contest-- Vince won with over 80% at the state convention-- the DCCC and corrupt establishment Democrats like Gavin Newsom, Zoe Lofgren, Pete Aguilar, Tony Cárdenas and Scott Peters have continued trying to impose Bryan Caforio on the district's Democrats. The DCCC has helped make sure Caforio spent $292,126 on the primary while sabotaging Vince's fundraising efforts-- he's raised $88,674 (you can help him here). Tuesday, will the DCCC abandon the district if Vince wins, the same way they abandoned PA-07 when Balchunis won?

Hillary wants party unity? She should start by ending this kind of anti-progressive wing behavior by the party organs. This cycle, Schumer and Tester have made sure the DSCC has spent more money and resources fighting progressives and nominating corrupt party hacks than they have on fighting Republicans. The DCCC is even worse-- much worse. When Bernie-supporter Tom Wakely won the TX-21 primary against self-described conservative Democrat, the DCCC made the decision that they'd rather have Trump backing, science denier Lamar Smith (chair of the House Science Committee) than help a progressive win. If Hillary wants to prove she's a unifier, let her call Pelosi and tell her to stop sabotaging progressives and to get behind Balchunis, Vince and Wakely. (Balchunis, by the way, has a policy agenda virtually identical with Bernie's-- she defines herself as being from the Warren-wing of the party-- but is an old friend of Hillary's and endorsed her and campaigned for her during the Pennsylvania primary.) And what's with the DCCC's refusal to back Zephyr Teachout right in Hillary's neighborhood?

DuWayne Gregory is the presiding officer of the Suffolk County legislature,and he's running for the blue-leaning South Shore Long Island district Peter King occupies. Hillary won this area when she ran for the Senate and both Nassau and Suffolk counties were Hillary territory in the recent primary; she won Nassau County with 62.6% and Suffolk with 54.7%. Gregory is an admirer of hers and he endorsed her. But the DCCC has refused to get behind DuWayne's run against Peter King, largely because of Steve Israel's loyalty to his Trump-supporting Republican crony, who he has helped keep in office for years. Hillary can put a stop to this kind of bullshit by having one of her assistant's assistants call Pelosi and tell her to "cut it out." If the Democratic Party establishment wants party unity, they better start realizing that it is not a one-way street.

If you'd like to support some of the progressives the DCCC is opposing and undercutting, you can do it here: