Even though the official start of the 2024 presidential campaign is more than a year away, the unofficial campaign soon begins. Former president Donald Trump has already announced his candidacy, and there is speculation that former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo might enter the fray.
As AFN has reported, the recently-released USA Today/Suffolk University survey found that by a 2-1 margin, Republican and Republican-leaning voters say they like the former president's policies, but they want a different standard bearer to carry them out. Only 31% of those surveyed want Trump to run for re-election, while 61% prefer some other Republican nominee.
Also, several polls show that if the election were held today, Joe Biden would defeat Trump in a rematch, but Biden would lose to Florida Governor DeSantis.
Gary Bauer, chairman of the Campaign for Working Families, says Republicans desperately want to win an election.
"We just went through another disappointing election," he notes. "People are furious, and they're depressed about it, and they know if we don't get the White House back soon, the country's gone."
Bauer says voters are flocking to DeSantis because he did so well in Florida and because he is currently more likely to win than Donald Trump is.
"My caution about that is any of these candidates may look like they have a better chance of winning now than Donald Trump does, but that's before the full weight of the Left and its media allies comes down on those candidates," the political activist submits. "The country is deeply divided. The Left is out for blood."
Washington Times columnist Robert Knight says Republicans must reform the system if they ever hope to win another national election. Particularly, he condemns the month-long voting period, saying there is "no excuse" for such a session.
"It paves the way for vote fraud," he asserts. "So does mailing ballots out based on registration lists and not mailing ballots only to people who request them because they might be out of town or something. Unmanned ballot boxes, same-day voter registration -- all of these so-called reforms were put in place to make it easier to cheat."
Knight also points out that Republicans need a better ground game.
"The Democrats did turn out more young people voting," he notes about the recent midterm elections. "They bribed them with the Biden payoff on the student loan promise, and they used abortion to draw a lot of the young people out to vote. They misrepresented Republicans. They played dirty on so many levels it's just hard to even list them all."
Bauer agrees and says the Democrats "think they're close to winning everything."
"They're going to be tough to beat no matter who we nominate," he concludes.
