The 2028 Republican Presidential Main Race: JD Vance’s Race to Lose?
Part 2
The Wall Street Journal is reporting on the 2028 Republican presidential nomination:
Less than a day after the U.S. began bombing Iran, President Trump met with two dozen donors at his Mar-a-Lago club…Trump asked the crowd: What do you think of JD Vance and Marco Rubio? The guests applauded louder for Rubio, according to people in the room.
Which brings me right back to my earlier column on the subject.
Last month, we began our discussion of potential 2028 Republican challengers to Vice President JD Vance, and we also compared the 2028 race to the 1988 Republican presidential primary race, the last time the sitting vice president faced a contested primary. Although it is unlikely that Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to challenge his friend, Vice President Vance, it is almost certain that someone will step up to the plate.
In fact, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has all but declared his intention to do so.
And there is an opening. Vice President Vance faces several potential political obstacles in 2028 that (then) Vice President George H. W. Bush didn’t face in 1988.
The first is that the factional divisions in the 2028 party complicate Vance’s path to the nomination. The current GOP coalition is made up of: 1) the (Bush) establishment; 2) the (Reagan) conservatives; 3) the MAGA voters; and 4) the restrainers. The establishment tends to be centrist on economics and social issues and hawkish internationalists on foreign affairs. The conservatives are the old Reaganites, who want a smaller government and less spending, and are strongly conservative on social issues. They are also hawks, but not internationalists. (Sen. Cruz is part of this faction.) The MAGA faction is centrist on economics and social issues, and hawkish on foreign affairs, but not internationalist. And finally, the restrainers are all doves on foreign policy but otherwise have no common ideology. The Rand Paul supporters are libertarians who want smaller government and less spending, but are social conservatives. Others are libertarians who are more liberal on social issues. And still other restrainers are both economic and social centrists.
Vice President Vance is part of the restrainer faction, which is probably the smallest and weakest faction of the coalition. Even worse, many of the big donors to the GOP come from the establishment or the conservative groupings, factions that have major differences with Vance.
In 1988, Bush was a member of the establishment faction who also appealed to Reagan conservatives from his eight years as the understudy for Reagan. In 1988, the GOP coalition was made up of those two factions plus the Religious Right, and smaller groups of Liberal Republicans and Libertarians.
The second problem is that the GOP of 2028 seems to have abandoned its old “rule” of the Republican Party presidential race favoring the politician “whose turn it was.” In 1960, it was Vice President Nixon’s turn to run as the loyal vice president to President Eisenhower. In 1968, it was his turn again. In 1976, the appointed vice president and president, Gerald Ford, was the candidate. In 1980, Gov. Ronald Reagan, who had been Ford’s strongest challenger in 1976, was the nominee. In 1988, the GOP went with Vice President Bush. Bush had been the main GOP opponent to Ronald Reagan in 1980 before being chosen as part of a unity ticket as the vice president.
This “rule” continued in 1996, 2000, 2008, and 2012; until 2016, when Jeb Bush, the son and brother of U.S. presidents, and several other strong candidates with extensive political resumes, were defeated by a brash outsider named Donald Trump.
The third hurdle is that, unlike Vice President Bush, Vice President Vance hasn’t had much political experience. In 2028, he will have served only one term as vice president and just two years in the U.S. Senate. Meanwhile, Bush had an extensive national career even before his eight years as vice president, serving as the U.N. Ambassador, the CIA Director, the Chair of the Republican National Committee, and a two-term U.S. House member. He had also run for president in 1980. This gave Bush decades to court potential donors and party allies, grant favors, and publicize his own name, ahead of the 1988 race.
The fourth obstacle is that Vice President Vance’s ally Tucker Carlson has stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy, which is threatening to enmesh Vance. Carlson, after decades as a traditional conservative journalist (albeit one having a constantly shifting ideology), has settled into a role of “setting fire to the GOP” coalition by flirting with antisemitic conspiracies and trashing President Donald Trump’s foreign policy. Carlson, of course, was largely responsible for Vance being selected vice president, and his (Carlson’s) son is a highly placed aide to Vance.
Already, Sen. Cruz has zeroed in on Carlson in his shadow campaign for the 2028 GOP nomination — which is a good way for Cruz to appeal to establishment voters and donors.
In 1988, Vice President Bush faced no such similar controversy.
For 2028, Vice President Vance’s presidential strategy seems obvious. He must hug President Trump tightly, so as not to jeopardize the president’s support, which should keep Vance in good favor with the MAGA faction. Then he must find a way to appeal to establishment types and/or conservatives in the GOP coalition, especially to their big donors. If no establishment type announces for president – a big if – then the “kindler, gentler” Vance might be able to charm them over Sen. Cruz, who has his own weaknesses with that faction. While doing all this, Vance must keep the loyalty of the ideologically diverse restrainers and somehow extricate himself from the Tucker Carlson situation.
Will Vice President Vance be able to do all this?
“We’ll (Just Have to) See What Happens.”
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