The 2024 Republican presidential race has started early.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis astutely retraced his roots back to Pennsylvania last month, delivering a high-profile speech in Pittsburgh and assessing the strength of the blue wall he must smash, as President Donald Trump did in 2016, if he is to reach the White House. He’s probably the early GOP pack leader, and this, as our magazine cover story proclaims, is “DeSantis’s Moment.”
DeSantis doesn’t have the field to himself, far from it. Our last magazine cover featured Sen. Tim Scott, who rocketed into obvious contention when he declared, in his official response to President Joe Biden’s first address to Congress, that “America is not a racist country.” On the heels of that triumph, the Republican National Committee featured Scott in a seven-figure advertising buy to attack Biden’s divisive agenda. The RNC wouldn’t have picked Scott if he were not already a nationally recognized figure and a serious contender for higher office.
But it isn’t a two-horse race either. Former Vice President Mike Pence, with his eye the next step up, executed a deliberate communications strategy early this year, avoiding all publicity for months to allow the overheated election atmosphere to cool, then stepping into the spotlight in April with a speech on family values in South Carolina.
The field is yet broader. As we report, Rep. Jim Banks, chairman of the Republican Study Committee on Capitol Hill, is bringing 2024 contenders such as former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Sen. Marco Rubio to his meetings so Republican lawmakers can vet speakers and messages for electoral viability. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has also been using social media aggressively to raise her profile and criticize the Biden administration’s early moves.
Why has the unofficial primary started already? As so often, the answer is “Trump.” Each would-be Republican president is positioning himself or herself as the leading non-Trump contender. They want to claim his populist themes — tough on China, tough on illegal immigration, and tough on woke BS — as their own but present themselves also as sunny, Reaganesque advocates of American global leadership.
The contenders are out of the gate early, too, because there is a strong possibility that they won’t face an incumbent in 2024, for Biden will by then be going on 82 years old. GOP aspirants calculate that he will have lost several more physical and mental steps, and they’ll perhaps face the deeply unappealing Vice President Kamala Harris. (One would say uniquely unappealing, but then one remembers Hillary Clinton.)
Finally, “Trump” is again the reason why we’re off to the races so soon, for he set the precedent. Almost his first act after being sworn in in January 2017 was to file for reelection. His term was always going to be mainly a battle for and against reelection of the incumbent. He appears to have made sure the current presidency will be, too.
