Should the GOP Dump Their Old Man Candidate

Nikki Haley said, "The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the one who wins this election." The Democrats have done and have reaped massive immediate benefits for having done so.

Should the Republican Party now retire Donald Trump, elevate JD Vance to the top of the ticket, and allow him to pick a new VP candidate?

 

Political parties are not mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Constitution was not even set up to have political parties, although they were certainly permitted as history has shown. George Washington and John Adams warned against the rise of having political parties. Prior to the entrenchment of the modern primary system during the 1970s, political parties did not rely on primaries to pick presidential candidates. I would hope that no one would want to suggest that the presidential election contests from 1789 until the 1970s were "an attack on democracy".

Also, a candidate for political office is not obligated to stay in a race all the way to the end. Various reasons can cause a candidate to withdraw at any point during, such death, illness, a family matter, etc. That is why political parties have procedures in place to replace a candidate who withdraws during a race.

 

Yes, Thomas Jefferson was a fan of political parties. George Washington and John Adams were not. George Washington and John Adams have been proven to have been correct. Thomas Jefferson has been proven to have been wrong.

It seems the moaning and groaning among some Republicans is that, while the Democrats were able to return their old, dilapidated candidate and have him replaced with a newer model, the Republicans are still stuck with their old, dilapidated candidate and are too scared of the MAGA folks to return the candidate and replace him with a newer model.

The question for 2028 will be if the GOP will be able to successfully return to being the party of Ronald Reagan, or if it will take several more years to defeat the MAGA National Conservatives and for the Freedom Conservatives to assume control.

 

Oh, people think that whoever is the president is in much more charge of things than he/she actually is. For instance, the Federal Reserve runs the economy, not the president. And a lot of what a president is in charge of is due to the Congress having ceded much of its power to the executive branch, so that the Representatives and Senators don't have to get their hands dirty in actually making policy and taking responsibility for it.

 

With a large majority of the United States disgusted with the idea of a rerun of the same two old men from 2020, Nikki Haley may have hoped that enough of those voters would support her campaign as an alternative to the GOP's old man to provide her with a chance of victory in the nomination race.

 

She may be wanting to keep her options open to run for the GOP presidential nomination in 2028.

 

I have no idea what the political playing field will look like in 2028. I'm just trying to observe the ebbs and flows of 2024.