Why Mike Pence’s GOP primary exit signals a 'campaign season from hell'

02 November 2023

With his campaign failing to gain any traction, former Vice President Mike Pence announced, on Saturday, October 28, that he was dropping out of the 2024 GOP presidential primary.

Pence, speaking at a Republican Jewish Coalition event in Las Vegas, told the crowd, "It's become clear to me: This is not my time. So, after much prayer and deliberation, I have decided to suspend my campaign for president, effective today…. We always knew this would be an uphill battle, but I have no regrets."

In a newsletter published on November 2, the New York Times' Frank Bruni views the demise of Pence's presidential campaign as a dark omen for 2024. Pence, Bruni laments, simply wasn't enough of a MAGA bomb thrower for today's GOP primary voters.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to hold office again?

"It's one thing to disparage Donald Trump," Bruni writes. "It's quite another to throw your body between him and his efforts to steal the presidency. Mike Pence, God love him, did the latter, and that sealed his doom. To the hardcore MAGA corps, tyranny is the meaty breakfast of champions. Virtue and democracy are a wimp's veggie canapés."

Bruni argues that Pence's presidential campaign was doomed because he chose "the embers of hope" over "the flames of anger" — an approach that is "not going to cut it in 2024."

"I'm braced for the campaign season from hell, for a race for the White House that's a rhetorically violent duel of dystopias, a test of who can sound the shriller death knell for America," Bruni laments. "It could be all Armageddon all the time."

Bruni goes on to say that the 2024 presidential election will likely come down to a rematch between incumbent Democratic President Joe Biden and GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump. The Times opinion writer argues that although Biden would "prefer to play the happy warrior" — which is "a better fit for his earnestness and goofiness" — he will have no choice to play hardball and fight dirty if he wants to be reelected.

Biden, Bruni predicts, will rail against "the MAGA menace" while Trump is ranting against "woke" Democrats.

"If President Biden, 80, is the Democratic nominee and Donald Trump, 77, is the Republican one," Bruni warns, "the conditions for extreme ugliness are optimal. Or is that pessimal? Assuming no major swerves from the present, each of these men would stagger agedly into the general election amid questions about his cognitive zest — and with anemic favorability ratings — that all but compel him to savage his opponent as the direr of two evils. That's what wounded politicians do: They make the other candidate bleed."

Read Frank Bruni's full New York Times newsletter at this link (subscription required).

From Your Site Articles