GOP Establishment Starts ‘Shadow Campaign’ To Bump Trump In 2020
Patrick Howley
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President Donald Trump is likely to face another determined primary effort in 2020 to prevent him from winning the Republican nomination.
Trump, who fought all the way to the convention in Cleveland to stave off NeverTrump delegate-stealing efforts in 2016, is still a target from members of his own party. As Big League Politics reported, John McCain voted to save Obamacare so that Trump could not score a legislative win, setting up a potential “President Pence” to win on Obamacare if Trump gets impeached.
Now, dwindling neoconservative operative Bill Kristol is plotting a “Committee Not To Renominate The President,” and establishment conservatives like Ben Sasse are scurrying to the early-primary states to begin preparations for a run. Sasse has alienated agricultural base voters in Nebraska, but he’s the darling of establishment NeverTrump Republicans in Washington, D.C. John Kasich and Tom Cotton are also being discussed as Trump primary challengers.
“But in interviews with more than 75 Republicans at every level of the party, elected officials, donors, and strategists expressed widespread uncertainty about whether Mr. Trump would be on the ballot in 2020 and little doubt that others in the party are engaged in barely veiled contingency planning.
‘They see weakness in this president,’ said Senator John McCain of Arizona. ‘Look, it’s not a nice business we’re in.'”
Those of us who fought for Trump in 2016 always knew that NeverTrump wasn’t going away, but perhaps we did not expect the effort to remain so organized, so committed, and so vitriolic toward a Republican president who has delivered Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch and is fighting to repeal Obamacare and cut taxes. The pettiness of Washington Republicans knows no bounds.
Vice President Mike Pence, who is giving a keynote address at a Koch Brothers summit this month, is positioned to take over the presidency if Robert Mueller’s witch hunt investigation leads to an impeachment of Trump, which many Washington Republicans would likely support.
For President Donald Trump, he will never be able to relax. He will never be a traditional president in the sense that he can rally support inside the Swamp. He will always be Public Enemy Number One.
Now, the question is: Can Trump’s Deplorable movement become organized enough to save him?
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