President Trump’s first term is ostensibly just warming up, but luminaries in his own party have begun what amounts to a shadow campaign for 2020 — as if the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue weren’t involved.
The would-be candidates are cultivating some of the party’s most prominent donors, courting conservative interest groups and carefully enhancing their profiles. Mr. Trump has given no indication that he will decline to seek a second term.
But the sheer disarray surrounding this presidency— the intensifying investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the plain uncertainty about what Mr. Trump will do in the next week, let alone in the next election—have prompted Republican officeholders to take political steps that are unheard-of so soon into a new administration.
Asked about those Republicans who seem to be eyeing 2020, a White House spokeswoman, Lindsay Walters, fired a warning shot: “The president is as strong as he’s ever been in Iowa, and every potentially ambitious Republican knows that.”
But in interviews with more than 75 Republicans at every level of the party, elected officials, donors and strategists expressed widespread uncertainty about whether Mr. Trump would be on the ballot in 2020 and little doubt that others in the party are engaged in barely veiled contingency planning.
“They see weakness in this president,” said Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona. “Look, it’s not a nice business we’re in.”
Some of the Republicans identified as conducting these "shadow campaigns" are Senators Tom Cotton and Ben Sasse, Ohio Governor John Kasich, and least surprising of all, Mike Pence.
This should not be surprising in the wake of sanctions bill the Senate Republicans forced Trump to sign, and the fact that they are making it impossible for him to make any recess appointments.
Clearly the Republicans see the writing on the wall, and are becoming convinced that Trump will not be a viable candidate in 2020.
Considering of course that he even lasts that long.
Source http://ift.tt/2wkcOGL
