Closing summary
Election day 2024 is still a long way off, but we’re getting closer to 23 August, when Republican presidential candidates will have their first debate. Most of the big names have qualified, but Donald Trump says he might not attend, while his former vice-president, Mike Pence, is struggling to qualify, as are Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson. We’ll see if these candidates can turn it around in the weeks to come. Meanwhile, the White House expressed alarm at the latest news from Israel, where the far-right government has won passage of a key part its judicial overhaul. Opponents of the move say it could threaten the country’s democracy.
Here’s what else happened today:
Texas’s Republican governor has rejected a justice department demand that the state remove floating barriers intended to stop migrants entering from Mexico.
Mitt Romney says donors should cut off support to Republican presidential contenders who have no hope of winning the nomination, in an effort to winnow the race to two candidates and defeat Trump.
House Republicans may decide to hold Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in contempt.
Special counsel Jack Smith has obtained documents from Bernie Kerik, who advised the Trump campaign’s attempt to prove fraud in the 2020 election.
Alabama Republicans are resisting a supreme court order to draw a second majority Black congressional district.
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Mitt Romney, the Utah senator who was the Republican nominee for president in 2012 but lost to Barack Obama, has proposed a strategy to unite the current crop of GOP contenders for the White House against Donald Trump.
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Romney, one of Trump’s most outspoken opponents in Congress, calls on donors backing Republican presidential candidates to withdraw their support once it becomes clear that their choice can’t win. The goal is to winnow the field to a two-person race, in hopes the other candidate can keep Trump from returning to office.
Here’s more of what he has to say:
Despite Donald Trump’s apparent inevitability, a baker’s dozen Republicans are hoping to become the party’s 2024 nominee for president. That is possible for any of them if the field narrows to a two-person race before Mr. Trump has the nomination sewn up. For that to happen, Republican megadonors and influencers – large and small – are going to have to do something they didn’t do in 2016: get candidates they support to agree to withdraw if and when their paths to the nomination are effectively closed. That decision day should be no later than, say, Feb 26, the Monday following the contests in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina.
There are incentives for no-hope candidates to overstay their prospects. Coming in behind first place may grease another run in four years or have market value of its own: Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum got paying gigs. And as former New Hampshire Gov John H Sununu has observed, ‘It is fun running for president if you know you cannot win.’
Left to their own inclinations, expect several of the contenders to stay in the race for a long time. They will split the non-Trump vote, giving him the prize. A plurality is all that is needed for winner-take-all primaries.
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Our party and our country need a nominee with character, driven by something greater than revenge and ego, preferably from the next generation. Family, friends and campaign donors are the only people who can get a lost-cause candidate to exit the race. After Feb 26, they should start doing just that.
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