Politics is one fickle fellow, I’ll tell you what. And Rupert Murdoch is another. It was not all that long ago that Ron DeSantis won reelection as Florida’s governor and Murdoch’s New York Post was touting him as “DeFuture.” Well, DeFuture never happened and is now not only DePast but DeDream that never came true. Like so many dreams, alas.
But Murdoch is not a man to let the grass grow under his feet. So he has selected — and courted — another champion. That man is Glenn Youngkin. Washington Post:
The two men have spoken on at least two occasions in person about a possible Youngkin run, according to two people familiar with the ongoing discussion between them. The more recent of the two discussions took place in the spring and the timing of the first was unclear, according to a third person familiar with their interactions who, like the others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. […]
The New York Times reported in July, in a story on how Fox News coverage of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis turned tougher as his presidential campaign began struggling, that Murdoch had privately told people that he would like Youngkin to enter the race.
It was not publicly known until now that the New York billionaire, whose family owns a controlling stake in News Corporation and Fox Corporation, had personally encouraged Youngkin to jump in, although the Virginia governor is thought to be waiting to see if his party prevails in the November state election before making a decision on whether to run.
Youngkin is waiting to see what happens in November and then, if victorious, parlay that achievement into an announcement of running for president. Here’s the lay of the land: for that to happen, the GOP would have to be desperately seeking a Trump replacement. It could be like the momentary spike that Michael Bloomberg got with Democrats because it was beginning to look like Bernie Sanders could possibly get the Democratic nomination. This was before Joe Biden rallied in South Carolina in 2020 and enough Bernie-wary Democrats began to look at Bloomberg with different eyes. But Bloomberg crashed after he was brutally dismantled by Elizabeth Warren in a Las Vegas debate in February 2020 and then the Biden Sanders competition eventually sorted itself out as it did.
So where is the GOP right now? Fox News, the GOP mouth organ doesn’t like Trump. It also doesn’t like DeSantis. That love affair fizzled and fast. (And that’s how it goes with Ron, to know him is to loathe him.) So is Youngkin the great white hope now? New York Magazine:
Indeed, as Media Matters noted at about the same time [as DeSantis started circling the drain] Fox News had taken up the banner of promoting Youngkin as a dark horse candidate for president:
Youngkin has been featured in at least 6 live interviews on Fox in the past month — one each on Fox & Friends, Fox & Friends Weekend, America’s Newsroom, and Fox News Tonight, and twice on Hannity.
Fox & Friends co-hosts Kayleigh McEnany and Steve Doocy pushed Youngkin to run in 2024, with Doocy noting that “powerful Republican donors … are encouraging you to jump into the race …”
The narrative seems to be emerging on Fox News that if Youngkin can flip control of the Virginia Senate to his party in November, he could roll right into a late presidential bid on the wings of this fresh demonstration of his blue state viability. […]
But this account leads me to the one slim possibility of something Youngkin ’24 might have in common with Bloomberg ’20 that’s an asset instead of a liability. Until he crashed and Biden made his famous comeback, Bloomberg was made momentarily viable by the palpable fear among Democratic centrists that Bernie Sanders was going to win the nomination and hand Donald Trump a second term. Could electability-minded Republicans panic enough about Trump’s 2024 viability to need a sudden savior like Youngkin right before voters start voting early next year?
Anything’s possible, but the entire reason Murdoch and Devine and others are yearning for Youngkin is that Trump is crushing the current Republican field. Yes, he’s in ever-increasing legal peril, and sure, Trump could say or do anything at any moment. But at this point, the odds are much higher that Trump will have effectively nailed down the GOP nomination by late this fall than that an aggrieved Republican majority will be searching for an alternative having rejected DeSantis, Scott, Pence, Haley, Ramaswamy, Christie, Hutchinson, Suarez, and Hurd. Politicians tend to look for late-entry saviors precisely because they’ve already lost. If you hear more and more cries for Glenn Youngkin as the weeks go by, you can probably bet they are being voiced by losers as well.
This makes perfect sense. The GOP got in bed with Trump in 2015. Like any disastrous alliance, it has wreaked havoc with both parties, but in this case, the GOP is the one that’s going to walk away the most damaged and for the longest. Trump is 77-years-old and obese. His longevity, on those minor facts alone, is not something to bank on. And his longevity in politics is on the wane. It is more than probable that he’ll agree to some kind of a plea deal and that deal will include him never running for office again.
But the GOP will be here for a long time to come, unless it goes the ways of the Whig party that preceded it, totally collapses and then some new party emerges Phoenix-like from the ashes and rechristians itself. And that may happen. There’s a high probability in fact.
But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. The issue is whether Glenn Youngkin will sally forth as the knight errant of the GOP and save the day as a late-entry saviour — and get the nomination away from Trump. Or inherit it, because Trump will be unable to perform and DeSantis doesn’t pull enough votes to get it and Youngkin does.
Maybe he will. And maybe, just maybe, because we live in the Trump Era, where the laws of political physics don’t work normally, Youngkin could get the nomination. But from right here and now, where we are, it would be a situation never before seen and therefore difficult if not impossible to predict.
If history is our guide, it won’t happen, Trump will get the nomination and will lead the GOP on to even greater defeat than before, and then the party will be forced to split and regroup and find some way forward under a new banner. That is my prediction.
Donald Trump was the poison pill that the GOP decided to swallow, the orange pill, let’s call it. Trump was the poison that killed an already ailing GOP, after taking it for one hell of a ride. They’re not going to survive Trump, not in their current form. What’s left of the Republican party will regroup and become something else.
Another lying racist…what’s changed? Absolutely nothing.what
As DeSantis flames out over culture wars, that should be a warning to the GOP not to coronation Youngkin as their late savior. Youngkin was elected on anti-CRT, anti-vax policy. Maybe not as extreme as DeSantis (or Ramaswamy, for that matter), but culture wars are tiresome for swing, independent voters. The abortion issue and MAGA overreach could also deny the GOP in Youngkin’s state.
A new party of Conservatism is required,
noun: conservatism
1.
commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change or innovation.
“proponents of theological conservatism”
2.
the holding of political views that favor free enterprise, private ownership, and socially traditional ideas.
“a party that espoused conservatism”
the doctrines of the Conservative Party of Great Britain or a similar party elsewhere.
“the thrust of post-war Conservatism”
But, of course it’s very hard for such a party to escape being subverted into the definition proposed by John Kenneth Galbraith.
“The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
As we see clearly with the GOP.
Whatever their replacement is, they have to base their policies on facts, not fantasies.
“The GOP got in bed with Trump in 2015. Like any disastrous alliance, it has wreaked havoc with both parties, but in this case, the GOP is the one that’s going to walk away the most damaged and for the longest.”
No argument that the GOP’s alliance with Trump absolutely wreaked havoc for the GOP as a whole but I’m not seeing how it wreaked havoc for Trump. If anything–putting it in divorce terms–Trump came out the absolute winner, getting not only the house and all the property, plus full custody of the kids but also getting so much alimony and child support, that the GOP has to take on two extra jobs just to keep their own leased-by-the-week rat-trap apartment where they dine on their one-meal-a-day of discount ramen and whatever they can scrounge from dumpster diving and get that all-so-important 67 minutes of daily sleep.
All of Trump’s post-alliance disasters were of his own making, but the GOP enabled every single of them at every single turn. Not to switch the marital metaphors but, in this case, it’d be like the GOP was the abused spouse who never once reported the abuse to authorities and, whenever the neighbors called the cops to stop the abuse they witnessed, the abused spouse declares that they were solely responsible for their bruises and the neighbors are just jealous of the couple’s great relationship and love for each other and even though the cops are suspicious (and even think the abused spouse is lying out of fear for their own safety), they can’t do anything as long as the spouse refuses to complain.
We have the best economy in the world right now. They just did a show on that. They are all hoping that we keep going because our decisions are driving down inflation everywhere. All be it it might be negligible in some countries and a couple of countries showed upticks but the people explained it was temporary crap. Joe has been around for fifty years. He knows what works and what doesn’t. That’s why the people on the right are hammering him. They know with another four years with him we will be a force to be reckoned with. And that scares the hell out of the republicans because as it’s already started. It will show what outright losers you have on the right. They are nothing but a pack of clowns all trying to squeeze into the little car so they can get the hell out of Dodge. In this coming election you will see a lot of republicans announce their retirement. Some of them will be one step ahead of indictments.