While Biden prepared his IGJAM speech (I’m Great, Just Ask Me), the GOP was looking toward 2024. From the Koch network and Heritage Foundation to Peggy Noonan and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Republicans are thinking about how to win in 2024, and hit the ground running in 2025. Enjoy your senior year, Mr. President, because Republicans will go younger and be less Trumpian in 2024.
It Won’t Be About Trump
Americans for Prosperity, the Koch network’s key advocacy group, is all in on Any Republican But Trump. Its CEO, Emily Seidel, just stated AFP’s position: “The Republican Party is nominating bad candidates the American people are rejecting. We need a presidential candidate that represents a new chapter – turn the page on the past.” New, like Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) in 2021 – not like Donald Trump in 2020.
Libertarian Charles Koch never liked Trump, but admitted in 2018 the GOP had “made more progress in the past five years than I’ve made in the previous fifty.” Still, he regrets backing the Tea Party (“what a mess”) that hurt the GOP’s likability factor. He sees a libertarian-populist synthesis of free (but fair) trade, continued (but controlled) immigration, fewer regulations, fiscal restraint, and protections for individual liberties.
Above all, the AFP wants a candidate who can win the general election. How can that be Trump – without Koch and Murdoch, Fox and the New York Post, or the Wall Street Journal? It can’t, which is why the AFP will zero in on one candidate this summer (a tactical move to deny Trump a repeat of the crowded 2016 field).
It Will Be About “Troubled” Democrats
It spoke volumes last week when Peggy Noonan’s op-ed in the Wall Street Journal defined Democrats as “troubled” because they have “aligned with the deeply agitating identity politics-wokeness regime America will never accept because Americans see it as a threat to their children and an insult to their sense of reality and fairness.” Finally, the queen of GOP moderation and normalcy fears wokeness more than populism – going so far as to label three “projects” of far-left madness.
The “Androgyny Project” wants to make sex and gender “a matter of subjective self-definition.” The “Quota Project” pursues “social reconstruction” through the guise of anti-racism. The “Green Project” makes advanced economies “radically restructure” to prevent climate change. By pushing these, Democrats are alienating voters over the age of 30, who aren’t ready to create a country their parents and grandparents wouldn’t even recognize. Leave the MAGA hat. Bring the common sense.
Here Comes a New Generation of Republicans
In a 1-2 punch, Noonan hit the “troubled” party’s worst ideas and Sarah Huckabee Sanders hit Joe Biden: “At 40, I’m the youngest governor in the country. At 80, he’s the oldest president in American history. I’m the first woman to lead my state. He’s the first man to surrender his presidency to a woke mob that can’t even tell you what a woman is.” Ouch!
Her state of the union rebuttal had a clear message: “It’s time for a new generation to lead. This is our moment. This is our opportunity.” By the way, that old and in the way theme has already been used by Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis – and works against Donald Trump, who was tacitly disqualified by the new governor of Arkansas.
It’s not good when Trump’s former employee says, “The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left. The choice is between normal or crazy. It is time for a new generation of Republican leadership.” New – which is why Sanders attended a June GOP conference in Florida with DeSantis donors and conservative media bigwigs, after which an insider told American Media, “Sarah has turned against Trump (and) told confidants that she’ll back DeSantis.”
Govern Better This Time
Trump unquestionably failed in one area; assembling experience and expertise in his administration’s first year. Seriously, who hires Anthony Scaramucci (Director of Communications for 10 days)? It’s clear the Heritage Foundation thinks the GOP will probably nominate a governor, and wants to avoid a rerun of Trump’s first year. So, they’ve organized 45 conservative groups into a never-again advance team called Project 2025.
Their mission is to identify “well-trained personnel” and develop a “detailed policy agenda” for a Republican president. The American Conservative reports Project 2025 has four components:
- A “conservative” LinkedIn to recruit conservatives for government roles
- A “Presidential Administration Academy” to train political appointees to be effective bureaucrats
- An “implementation plan for each agency” to effectively solve problems.
- A policy book detailing the “vision of conservative success at each federal agency” under a Republican
The over-arching goal is to neuter the “permanent political class” and stop career bureaucrats from “tripping up” a duly-elected Republican president. This would be especially beneficial to a small-state governor like Chris Sununu or political newbie like Glenn Youngkin.
The Pieces of the Puzzle Begin to Click
The political reality is that a string of election flops created lessons learned for the GOP and its advocacy groups; none greater than don’t give Democrats what they want in 2024. Don’t give them Trump, who absolves Biden’s character issues. Make them defend the “Androgyny Project” and “Quota Project” and “Green Project” to millennial parents. Expose Biden’s worsening frailty and senility by nominating a “new generation of Republican leadership.”
And, if a Republican is elected, don’t let the “permanent political class” neuter that duly-elected president on day one. Forewarned is forearmed. Finally, it’s clear that Republicans – from MAGA to Moderates – have learned what it takes to avoid repeating the past. And that’s a good thing.