It seems as if the beginning of a challenge to Donald Trump for renomination by the Republican Party has arrived.
Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld (1991-1997) , also the Libertarian nominee for Vice President in 2016 with Presidential nominee Gary Johnson, has indicated he is planning to challenge Trump. He would be 75 at the time of the inauguration in 2021.
Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, who just won reelection last year by a 12 point margin, has also indicated he plans to compete for the Republican Presidential nomination in 2020. He would be 64 at the time of the next election.
Both are moderate Republicans, seen as centrist and pragmatic, and both won office in heavily Democratic states.
Weld has a distinguished aristocratic background starting with ancestors coming over on the Mayflower with the Pilgrims in 1620. He was a counsel with the House Judiciary Committee during the Watergate Impeachment inquiry, and with one of his colleagues being Hillary Rodham, before she married Bill Clinton.
Hogan has the heritage of being the son of a Congressman, with the same name, who, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974, voted to bring impeachment charges against President Richard Nixon.
Can either of them seriously overcome the advantages of being an incumbent President?
History tells us when incumbent Presidents are challenged for renomination, invariably, the President defeats his opponent, but then loses the election.
So even if Weld or Hogan cannot defeat Trump, hopefully, they can weaken him enough that he will follow in the tradition of William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush, who overcame, respectively, Theodore Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Ted Kennedy, and Pat Buchanan, and yet lost the second term as President.
Typically an incumbent U.S. president receives a primary challenger for an election cycle in which that president is likely to not win re-election and/or the party will lose the White House. It is really the unseating of an unpopular incumbent president. The last U.S. president who opted to not seek a second full term, since the 1960s, was Lyndon Johnson. The challenger, even if more than one, is viable to some extent; meaning he can win somewhere on the primaries map. I don’t think this is case with William Weld of Massachusetts or Larry Hogan of Maryland. Donald Trump is really popular with his Republican voters. In 2018, they delivered him, and his party, Republican U.S. Senate pickups in Indiana (Mike Braun unseated Democrat Joe Donnelly), Missouri (Josh Hawley unseated Democrat Claire McCaskill), North Dakota (Kevin Cramer unseated Democrat Heidi Heitkamp), and in bellwether Florida (Rick Scott unseated Democrat Bill Nelson) in a midterm election wave for the Democrats which included that party flipping the U.S. House. By the way: Those unseated Democrats were “centrists.†Republican voters, who voted in the 2000 and 2016 primaries and succeeded with getting elected to the presidency both George W. Bush and Donald Trump, did not concern themselves with looking for a centrist or a moderate (or any other term describing a candidate who plays to the middle). Democratic voters, who operate on fear, and who buy into the party establishment’s “electoral strategy,†do that. Not Republicans. So, this “challenge†is good for William Weld or Larry Hogan to get their names out. There is no harm in person running for president of the United States. But, here in February 2019, I wouldn’t be surprised to see both opt out.
I tend to agree with you, D, but I also think John Kasich or Jeff Flake might challenge Trump, and have more opportunity to weaken, if not stop, Donald Trump, from the GOP nomination.
Ronald,
Given the fact that all states have not been participating in presidential primaries before 1976, I decided to look at past records of the last four decades of the 1980s to 2010s.
I am referring to past incumbent U.S. presidents who received a viable primary challenge followed by those who did not.
I want to start with two examples covering both major parties.
* * * 1980: DEMOCRATIC * * *
Jimmy Carter, incumbent, re-nominated, 51.1%
Ted Kennedy, 37.6%
* * * 1992: REPUBLICAN * * *
George Bush, incumbent, re-nominated, 72.8%
Pat Buchanan, 23.0%
Those two years were ones in which the White House party failed to retain the presidency as those incumbent presidents became unseated by their opposition-party challengers, Republican Ronald Reagan and Democrat Bill Clinton.
_____________________________________________________
In covering the following election cycles, in which an incumbent U.S. president won the general election for a second full term:
* * * 1984: REPUBLICAN * * *
Ronald Reagan, 98.8%
* * * 1996: DEMOCRATIC * * *
Bill Clinton, 89.0%
* * * 2004: REPUBLICAN * * *
George W. Bush, 98.1%
* * * 2012: DEMOCRATIC * * *
Barack Obama, 88.9%
____________________________________________________
I think the differences are obvious.
To hope a 2020 Donald Trump receives a primary challenger, because he would end up not winning a second term, and his Republican Party would lose the White House, one would have to see Trump’s party support drop at least 20 percent.
All of those re-elected incumbents received a good 9-to-1 party support for their re-nominations.
Election 2020 will be dealing with an incumbent year. It is not an open year (as were those term-limited years of 1988, 2000, 2008, and 2016).
If you want to see Trump become primaried like Carter and Bush, there would be bigger guns coming out than William Weld, Larry Hogan, John Kasich, and Jeff Flake. And none of them are big.
D, who would you think would be “Big”—Mitt Romney? or Jeb Bush? Nikki Haley?
Ronald,
There isn’t anyone in the Republican Party, right now, who is bigger than Donald Trump.
D, that is a major tragedy for the Republican Party and the nation at large, and when history is written, the GOP will be condemned for NOT standing up to authoritarianism, and the tradition of Lincoln, TR, and Ike!
Democratic voters do not operate on fear.
It’s not about running the most progressive candidate. It’s about running the most electable progressive candidates. The most electable liberal in a Red state or House district is going to be either a moderate or even a conservative.
https://cendax.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/a-lesson-for-liberals/
Why moderates are important in our party.
https://www.thepeoplesview.net/main/2016/2/4/in-defense-of-moderates
Howard Dean was just on CNN talking about the 2020 election. He mentioned that most of the House districts that won 2018 were moderate Democrats.
Info about moderates winning the mid terms. https://www.vox.com/2018/11/7/18071700/progressive-democrats-house-midterm-elections-2018
Ideologies of Democrats. Millenials are more liberal than older generations. Whites are more liberal than blacks and Hispanics.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/09/07/democratic-voters-are-increasingly-likely-to-call-their-views-liberal/
Here’s the conversation with Howard Dean that I mentioned about.
Correction. That’s only part of the video. The video cuts off before Howard Dean’s part comes on. Maybe they’ll post a full version later.
Someone else posted part of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s07sPWOXv2I
Ronald writes,
“D, that is a major tragedy for the Republican Party and the nation at large, and when history is written, the GOP will be condemned for NOT standing up to authoritarianism, and the tradition of Lincoln, TR, and Ike!â€
While you are touching on this period being a part of the entire history of the Republican Party…I don’t think this current Republican Party is thinking about their entire history. That it is not a concern to them.
The Republicans we know vote Republican because of abortion and gays and guns.
That’s because the Republicans we know are social conservatives and Religious Right.
Transcript of the interview with Howard Dean that I mentioned about.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/1902/23/SECU.01.html