I have written about the cases for and against Donald Trump and for and against Ron DeSantis in 2024, and last Monday, I wrote Part 1 about the case against everybody else in the GOP who might run but who is not a total clown show. Part 2 is about the clown shows.
You may wonder why sexy bo-hunk Larry Hogan feels the need to throw his fat into the ring, or why Chris Christie feels he must literally weigh in, or what deep-seated psychotic urges compel Liz Cheney to embark on another epic fail, or why any of these other total losers want to run. They are doomed. There is no lane for them. There is no potential for them. There is no hope for them. Do they not understand that? Did someone lie to them and tell them they had a chance to enter the White House in a context other than a tour?
Are they dumb? Delusional? Or do they just want to destroy the Republican Party and realize that only they suck enough that their presence on stage might do so?
Yes.
Oh, and there's shameless ambition too. A quixotic run might temporarily raise their profiles and get a few extra media hits, at the price of muddying the waters for the GOP. But the 2024 election is too important for this kind of selfish self-promotion. Their only contribution would be to make it harder for us to win, and for some of them, that is probably the point.
But before we move on, I left out one actual candidate from Part 1 – Senator Tim Scott. He's conservative, and people like him, and he is a nice guy, and that last one is the problem. We tried nice, and people like Candy Crowley held the leash and made nice crawl on the floor like a dog while flicking her riding crop. I would eagerly vote for Tim Scott as next-door neighbor, but he has not displayed the killer instinct we need in a fight for freedom's very survival. In other circumstances, he would be great, but just as Michael Corleone needed a wartime consigliere, we need a cultural wartime nominee. I hope we are in a situation down the road, after the left has been broken, where we can safely support a guy of the quality and character of Tim Scott. He should wait until then to run.
Now let's review the total loser candidates. Note one thing we will see a lot – selfishness. They babble about "Country before party," but it's always them above party. Always. Several could have run for Senate and locked up more GOP seats. They chose to serve themselves instead – the guys talking about principles never actually have any.
Hey, how about Asa Hutchinson, who is apparently the governor of someplace? I love how a guy whose name is "Asa" thinks he can be president instead of the grizzled weirdo driving the chuckwagon. And yet his ridiculous name is the least ridiculous thing about him. He's Fredo with a southern twang, a doofy loser with delusions of mediocrity. And he's a sap stuck in 2005, blithely unaware that the Tea Party and Trump ever happened – or why they happened. If this guy was owned any more completely by the pearl-clutching Establishment, he would be wearing a dog collar with a tag reading "Property of the GOPe." And, of course, if he ever wore a dog collar, that would make him about 100,000 times more interesting than he is.
A big “No” to Kristi Noem, too. The South Dakota governor rolled over for the Chamber of Commerce wing when she had a chance to protect against woke, trans weirdness. That was disqualifying. Yeah, she later put her finger to the wind and came around, but when your first instinct is surrender, my first instinct is to never, ever support you for anything ever.
People, we need to be ruthless and unforgiving about those who refuse to take the battle to the enemy. If you are soft once, you're going to be soft again and again and again. Oh, and her clichés – her stories about her dad the farmer make you yearn for the edgy iconoclasm of Nikki Haley. "Here, rubes, eat up this homespun goo!" I love stories of hardworking, plucky Americans – I could tell them about my dad, and I bet most of you could about yours. But when Noem does it (she has a recent book, and it's got a flag on the cover, of course), it comes out as phony and tiresome. Remember, when they talk to you like you're an idiot and a sucker, it's because they think you're an idiot and a sucker.
And, of course, Chris Christie thinks he can run, which is hilarious in every possible context. Another of the MSNBC-curious quasi-conservatives, Christie is still milking a moderately interesting beginning to his upset governorship in New Jersey a dozen years ago. He's one of those Republicans who thinks he's smarter than you because you don't support him. Let's try a thought experiment. Think of all the conservatives you know, and now imagine yourself asking them, "Hey, what about Chris Christie?" In your mind, do you see your friends nodding their heads saying, "What a good idea," or bursting into laughter and making jokes about hot dog eating contests? Chris Christie is whatever has-beens become when they are not even has-beens anymore.
Chris Sununu, the governor of New Hampshire, did not run for senator because he thinks he could be president. If he had run for the New Hampshire Senate seat, he probably would have won, but that would have meant placing his ambitions second to the needs of the party, so, of course, he would not do that. For reasons no one understands, Sununu – can you smell the Bush heritage in the air? – refused to divide up his tiny state such that a Republican might have a chance of winning one of its House seats. He's also a reliable source of criticism of conservatives who are actually conservative. So, we got a guy who's selfish, does the Democrats' bidding, and does nothing but bitch about other Republicans. Gee, sign me up. This guy should just stay out in maple syrup land and leave the conserving to the conservatives.
Larry Hogan has stopped being the governor of Maryland and, like Sununu, he refused to run for Senate, where he might have won a Republican seat, and instead decided to follow his own ego. He's pretty much a chunkier Chris Sununu, always there to undermine other Republicans and please our enemies. When he finds out that he's a Nazi the minute he wins the nomination, something that will never happen in a zillion years, he's going to be really upset and confused. It's kind of bizarre how non-players like this buffoon get the impression that they should play in the Big Game. He should go join a bunch of corporate boards and do the occasional MSNBC hit about how Republicans are mean because they won't let drag queens groom kids.
And then there's Liz Cheney. She's like a dyslexic cockroach, always scurrying into the light. This column has to stay FCC compliant, so the precise terminology describing a potential Liz Cheney campaign is unavailable. Let's just say she is a garbage person who would love nothing better than to get a bunch of people who are not named Cheney to go off and fight wars for people who are named Cheney – you know, keeping up the family tradition.
Her enemy is now the GOP itself. This is a revenge run by a no-talent who gives nepotism a bad name. I'm still trying to figure out whether she's really stupid enough to think that she could cobble together a coalition of people who don't hate her sufficiently to get her past, say, 2% of the vote. Probably it's stupidity; she's not even bright enough to be humiliated by her total rejection in the Wyoming primary. Her whole patriot pose is such transparent crap. "Country first?" Yeah, for us and our kids. The Beltway Cowgirl had better things to do than fight in her daddy's wars, and the Cheney children will be safe in their actual home state of Virginia.
What's funny is that the Democrats hate this shrill harridan just as much as we do, and she's either too blind or too stupid to realize it. I guess though if you do want to build bridges with the Democrats, unity through despising Liz Cheney is a great way to start.
The 2024 election is going to be between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, and these no-chance hacks have either deluded themselves into thinking they have a shot or actively want to burn down the party. The GOP needs to stand firm on excluding these clowns – no kamikaze candidates. Let them go debate themselves – their candidacies are political onanism anyway.
Get Inferno, the seventh book in the Kelly Turnbull series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce! Catch up with all my action-packed novels, including People's Republic, Indian Country, Wildfire, Collapse, Crisis, and The Split, as well as the non-fiction book We'll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America.
Conservatives Must Fight Back Against the Radical Left. Join Townhall VIP, Support Our Reporting, And Check Out Last Week's Stream of Kurtiousness, It's Time to Escalate, and my podcast, Unredacted. Use Promo Code SAVEAMERICA to Receive a 40% Discount on Your Membership!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member