Stoppable only by events.
File photo © 2016 – Paul L. Gleiser
The Hamas-Israel War has dominated the news cycle for the past ten days and has resulted in a presidential politics story that otherwise might have attracted some attention going almost totally unnoticed.
Rob Collins, one of the two top dogs at the Trust In the Mission PAC – a.k.a. TIMPAC – a well-funded political action committee that has been supporting the candidacy of Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, wrote a memo saying that the GOP 2024 presidential nomination race is “stuck.” Said Collins:
Donald Trump leads a cluster of statistically tied contenders by a wide margin. Vote share of non-Trump candidates trades up and down, but no campaign has achieved break away velocity. The fundamentals of the race remain unchanged: President Donald Trump occupies a lane by himself.”
Every national poll backs up Collins’s assertion. The latest Real Clear Politics Average of national polls shows Trump in first place at 59 percent of GOP primary voters, Florida governor Ron DeSantis following at 13 percent and everyone else, including Tim Scott, bouncing around in single digits.
Ron DeSantis has dropped by more than half since November of last year when he wasn’t formally in the race. Tim Scott stands today at two percent, having never been above five.
TIMPAC and the Tim Scott campaign together have so far spent about $20 million on TV ads. But TIMPAC announced that it is cancelling its fall TV buys. Again, Rob Collins:
…the electorate is locked up and money spent on mass media isn’t going to change minds until we get a lot closer to voting…we aren’t going to waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative.”
Collins goes on to say that the PAC remains committed to Tim Scott.
Once the voters truly engage and are ready for a new conservative direction – we will be ready to engage in broadcast media to help Tim earn our party’s nomination.”
It, of course, remains to be seen if Tim Scott can hang on until that day comes, assuming it ever does. Memoranda like this one from his Super PAC often constitute the first tolling of the bell for a dying campaign.
The fact is the real story here goes well beyond Tim Scott. What Rob Collins is saying without saying it is that unknowable events constitute the only hope for everyone in the GOP race not named Trump.
“Events” can be anything from a criminal conviction (though recent evidence suggests that would only make Trump stronger), to a sudden health problem (he’s 77), to a totally-out-of-left field, no-one-saw-it-coming-Lord-knows-what that takes Trump out of contention.
Early presidential primary leaders often fade as the months wear on. Howard Dean for the Democrats in 2004, Rudy Giuliani in 2008 and Ted Cruz in 2016 for the Republicans come to mind.
But Trump’s lead is greater than that of those three men at their respective heights added together. No amount of TV advertising by any of the other challengers can fix that.
It likely will, indeed, take some unknowable event to knock Trump out.
