re: #108 KGxvi

Cruz will run in every cycle in which there is no GOP incumbent until the day he dies. I suspect Rubio and Paul will both want to give it another go. Then there are governors like DeSantis, Ducey, and maybe Kim Reynolds in Iowa… hell, Asa Hutchenson is hanging around as governor of Arkansas. They’ve got plenty of potential candidates/nominees.

The question will be whether anyone wants to try and claim the Trump mantle the way so many tried to take the Reagan mantle for a couple of decades. They may be facing the question of what direction the party goes the way the Dems had to in 92, following the losses in 84 and 88.

The open question is whether anyone actually CAN claim Trump’s mantle. I see Trump as very much sui generis, and no current prominent Republican politician has the same combination of stupidity and narcissism. Plus, they bodily ejected anyone who wasn’t a simpering suck-up to Trump. They all look weak and pandering by comparison.

Trump made the GOP so much about him that without him, what’s it about? I mean, Trump’s “philosophy” is totally incoherent, haphazard, and ad hoc. Republicans like his policy positions, such as they are, because they like HIM. Without him, will they still be keen to push tariffs? Or retreat from the world stage?