Trump’s coronation is confirming GOP’s 'status as a cult of personality': analysis

22 January 2024

Supporters of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, including author Ann Coulter and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), viewed him as the GOP's best chance to move on from Donald Trump in 2024. But DeSantis' struggling presidential campaign officially came to an end on Sunday, January 21, when he announced that he was dropping out of the race and endorsing Trump.

Now, there are only two candidates left in the 2024 GOP presidential primary: frontrunner Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, whose supporters include New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu and billionaire Charles Koch's political network.

The Nation's John Nichols analyzes the state of the primary in a biting article published on January 22, arguing that the primary was never anything more than a coronation for Trump.

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"DeSantis' flameout is the most significant thus far," Nichols explains. "But he was by no means the first Trump challenger to see the writing on the wall as the campaign moved from speculative phase to actual voting. The candidate who tried to position himself as Trump's Mini-Me, Vivek Ramaswamy, quit the competition immediately after his decrepit fourth-place finish in Iowa and announced that he would formally become what he already was in practice: a Trump surrogate."

Nichols continues, "More consequentially — for the tenor of the debate within the GOP, if not for the overall outcome — were the decisions of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who ran an aggressively anti-Trump campaign, and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, arguably the race's most honorable contender, to abandon their efforts to redeem what, for the time being at least, is an irredeemable party."

Haley, Nichols laments, has never been a truly aggressively challenger to Trump.

"Even if Haley finishes strongly enough to maintain the fantasy of viability for another few weeks," Nichols writes, "she's very likely to get tripped up in her home state of South Carolina, where the former governor is trailing far behind Trump in polls leading up to the February 24 primary. No matter what happens in New Hampshire, or in the convoluted February 8 Nevada Caucuses, or in South Carolina, or on what is shaping up as a not-so-Super Tuesday, however, the Republican race is no longer a serious contest for the future direction of a party that is rapidly confirming its status as a cult of personality."

Nichols adds, "While they garnered a fair share of media attention, billionaire money, and big-name endorsements, Haley and DeSantis never mounted honest challenges to Trump."

John Nichols' full analysis for The Nation is available at this link.

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