Retired Marine Corps Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis has closed the door on a potential third-party presidential bid in the event that Donald Trump secured the Republican presidential nomination, sources belonging to the movement to draft him confirmed on Friday.
The former four-star general, who is affectionately known as the “Warrior Monk” by those who served with him in the Marines, made headlines this month when news broke of a behind-the-scenes effort to coax him into launching an independent bid.
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But memos sent Friday by two individuals closely involved with the “Draft Mattis” movement suggest they were unable to sway him into running.
Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol wrote in a memo obtained by the Washington Examiner that “after much consideration” Mattis had decided against a White House bid.
“The thoughtfulness and patriotism — and for that matter, the modesty — Jim showed as he reflected on this decision make me more convinced than ever that he would have made a truly admirable president, and also a good candidate,” Kristol wrote. “But it’s not to be. So we won’t have a President Mattis.”
The Weekly Standard and Washington Examiner are owned by the same parent company.
In a separate memo, Republican political consultant Joel Searby reportedly wrote that Mattis had “decided definitively not to pursue a run for president” in his own email to the general’s supporters.
Mattis’ decision not to run comes two weeks after he told the Examiner that he preferred “to stay silent” when asked if he is considering launching a third-party candidacy, and less than a week after he told reporters during an event in Washington, D.C., he had not “given any thought” to the possibility of running.
Had he decided to enter the race, Mattis would have immediately had to work toward ballot access in all 50 states.
Instead of winning enough Electoral College votes to secure the presidency, a nearly impossible feat for a third-party candidate with such little name recognition as Mattis, those who sought to draft him hoped his presence in the race would have been enough to toss the election to Congress, who they believed would’ve elected the general over Hillary Clinton or Trump, the likely nominees of both major parties.
Despite Mattis’ decision against a presidential run, Kristol wrote in his memo on Friday that he plans to continue searching for a potential third-party alternative in the event that Trump and Clinton go head-to-head in the general election.
“The fight to help the country do better than a choice between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton goes on,” he wrote.
