The 2024 Presidential race will be a 2020 rematch between Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
And while President Biden has decided to stick with Vice President Kamala Harris as his running mate, the former President has moved on from Mike Pence.
And Donald Trump just called together his Vice Presidential shortlist to be at the same place at the same time.
Replacing Mike Pence
One of the biggest red marks of the highly-successful Trump Presidency was his choice of people to trust.
Donald Trump listened to Anthony Fauci about the pandemic, he appointed Jeff Sessions as his Attorney General, he put Christopher Wray in charge of the FBI, he implanted the fledgling and failing Ronna McDaniel to run the Republican National Committee, and he elevated Nikki Haley to national prominence by making her his United Nations Ambassador.
He also added Mike Pence to the Presidential ticket by making him his Vice-Presidential nominee.
While not exciting, the 2016 choice of Pence made political sense on paper.
Pence checked a lot of boxes.
He was able to add some religious-right credibility to a candidate with some personal blemishes on his resume.
While Trump knew how to run a business, with his experience as Governor of Indiana, Pence could show him how to transition those skills over to running a government.
And his time in GOP leadership during his tenure as a Congressman could help Trump learn the ins and outs of getting what he wanted out of the legislature.
But just because something looks good on paper doesn’t mean it will work out in reality.
Pence certified a highly-questionable election without investigating severe irregularities.
He would later go on to take up the leftist gaslighting line about the January 6 protest.
And he tried to take out Trump in the 2024 Republican Presidential Primary.
For those reasons and more, Pence hasn’t been invited back to run with Trump for a third time.
Let the Veepstakes begin
Trump is now auditioning candidates to join him at the top of the GOP ticket.
Trump was the headliner at the Republican National Committee’s traditional Spring Donor Retreat.
But he wasn’t alone.
Virtually all of the top candidates for Vice President were also in attendance, including Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Governor Kristi Noem from South Dakota, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, and entrepreneur and former 2024 Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy.
With all of the candidates at the same place at the same time, the Spring Donor Retreat served as an opportunity for the hopefuls to make a good impression in front of their prospective boss.
A mixed bag of candidates
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was considered to be a frontrunner for the spot.
But Noem came under fire recently for writing in her autobiography about how she had to put down an allegedly violent and dangerous dog.
Noem stands by the decision, but the controversy has some political insiders believing that she now brings too much baggage to the ticket.
Noem’s misfortune has turned the veepstakes into a wide-open contest.
While some of the top contenders, such as Noem, Vance, Donalds, and Ramaswamy line up well with Trump’s MAGA platform, others have spotty records that show either establishment ties or left-wing Republican leanings.
Senator Scott typically votes with conservatives in the Senate, but he has never been a leading fighter on any of the big issues.
He also has close ties to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the establishment wing of the Party.
In 2022, Scott endorsed RINO Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski over the Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka in a General Election race where one of the two Republicans were virtually guaranteed to come out on top.
Rubio has long been a favorite of McConnell.
And while he’s good on many issues, he’s shown a willingness to compromise on some of the most important issues facing American families.
For example, Rubio joined the Gang of Eight and voted for a supposed “pathway to citizenship” for illegal aliens.
Representative Stefanik currently is a loud and proud supporter of Trump.
However, that didn’t start until 2020.
Back in 2016, she called him “inappropriate and offensive.”
And she fought him on pulling out of the Paris Accords in 2017.
Stefanik has a long record of helping Democrats advance a left-wing vision for the United States.
In 2020, Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and the Lugar Center ranked Stefanik as the 13th most “bipartisan” Representative in Congress.
In 2018, Never-Trumper Paul Ryan called Stefanik “the future of the Republican Party.”
And she was selected to chair the moderate caucus of GOP Representatives called the Republican Governance Group in 2017.
She even once nominated Liz Cheney to chair the House Republican Conference.
Patriot Political will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
