WTH is the Republican Primary Forecast? Josh Kraushaar on the Growing Field
What the Hell Is Going On
AEI Podcasts
4.4 • 633 Ratings
🗓️ 31 May 2023
⏱️ 53 minutes
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Summary
Last week saw two more entrants into what is already a crowded Republican primary field: Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) are officially in the running. Polling suggests that DeSantis is the only real challenger to Donald Trump, but the party base can only hope that his glitchy Twitter announcement doesn’t belie a deeper weakness in the candidate’s campaign. Tim Scott, by contrast, has embraced a more traditional roll out and uplifting Reaganite rhetoric, but enjoys far less popularity right now. There is a fine line to toe in the Republican primaries – too few challengers may cede the field to Trump; but too many entrants could fracture the non-MAGA voting bloc into ineffective camps, also handing the primaries to Trump. Meanwhile, the Democrats are hedging their bets with a “known known” and sticking with Biden… so is a Trump-Biden rematch inevitable? If not, does the GOP have the political dexterity to capitalize on this unique election cycle and an increasingly diverse voter base?
Josh Kraushaar is the editor-in-chief of Jewish Insider. He is also a Senior Political correspondent at Axios, Fox correspondent, and host of the Against the Grain podcast. Previously, he was Editor in Chief of the Hotline, and a co-author at the Almanac of American Politics.
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| 0:00.0 | This podcast is brought to you by the American Enterprise Institute. |
| 0:03.0 | If you like what you hear, please subscribe, rate, review, and share. Thanks for listening. Here's our show. What the hell's going on? What the hell is going on? What the hell is going on? I don't know what the hell is talking about. You don't have to know what the hell is on it. What hell's the matter with these guys? We don't know what's going on. What hell's going on? |
| 0:01.1 | Who in God's name knows what it's all about. |
| 0:37.0 | Hi, I'm Danielle Pletka. Welcome to our podcast. What the hell is going on? Mark, what the hell now? |
| 0:42.0 | What the hell is going on? |
| 0:43.6 | I need to be more chipper here. |
| 0:45.4 | Well, what the hell is going on is we've got two new entrants into the Republican primary, |
| 0:49.3 | officially. We've got Senator Tim Scott, who announced his candidacy last week, and Ron DeSantis, |
| 0:53.9 | the governor of Florida, also throwing his candidacy last week, and Ron DeSantis, the governor of |
| 0:54.9 | Florida, also throwing his hat in the ring. There's a pretty decent size field shaping up in |
| 1:00.4 | the Republican Party, not thankfully as big as it was in 2016. We had like 19 people on the stage |
| 1:06.5 | and having to have two tiers of debates and all the mess that that was. It's a pretty strong field. |
| 1:13.0 | I think people have been sort of self-disciplined. Mike Pompeo decided not to run. Yonkins decided |
| 1:18.0 | not to run, though there's some rumblings he may change his mind. I think he's sort of preparing himself |
| 1:22.0 | for if everybody else stumbles and there's an opening for somebody to swoop in in November, |
| 1:27.1 | then he might jump in. But it's been sort of a semi-disciplined, you know, it shows that people aren't afraid of Trump in terms of getting in. So that that's a sign, but it's also not so big that it's unmanageable. What do you think, Danny? Could a challenger emerge to challenge Donald J. Trump? So, I mean, I'm trying not to let, you know, |
| 1:45.3 | my hope triumph over my experience. No, look, I think, you know, Trump is a, setting aside |
| 1:51.4 | everything that we've iterated and reiterated a million times on this podcast and elsewhere, |
| 1:57.1 | he's a formidable candidate because he's, he really, and I said this before, I said this before |
| 2:03.1 | January 6th happened with perhaps a little bit more admiration than I do now, which is that |
| 2:08.1 | he just has a feral marketing sense. |
| 2:11.1 | He really does. |
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