Pence is out

It looks as if the size of the field in the Republican presidential contest has peaked. Yesterday came the first withdrawal of a major candidate: former vice-president Mike Pence, who entered the race a little under five months ago, declared that this was not his time, leaving perhaps six or eight serious candidates still in the field.

Pence’s chances were never good, although former vice-presidents or vice-presidential candidates have often won the nomination in the past. He tried to position himself as a critic of Donald Trump while also trading on his experience of four years as Trump’s loyal lieutenant. But he failed to raise much enthusiasm, and both his poll numbers and his fundraising were languishing.

Trump remains a runaway leader in the polls; his support among likely Republican primary voters has been rising ever since his multiple indictments earlier this year, and is now approaching 60%. It’s impossible not to feel that there may be an element of, let’s say, performativity in this, and that the pollsters may to some extent be getting trolled. But there’s no doubt that Trump must at this stage be a heavy favorite.

Down the list, however, there’s been movement. Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who at the beginning of the year was rivalling Trump, has fallen back to the low teens in the polls. That still puts him in second place, but former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, in the high single figures, is challenging him. Maxim Lott and John Stossel’s aggregation of the betting odds now has Haley ahead, with a 9.5% chance at the nomination as against DeSantis’s 7.8% (with Trump at 74.7%).

Another three candidates are showing the sort of numbers that Pence was before his withdrawal: businessman-provocateur Vivek Ramaswamy, former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and South Carolina senator Tim Scott. Behind them, barely clinging to a sort of semi-relevance, are North Dakota governor Doug Burgum and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson.

At this point in 2015, two serious candidates – Rick Perry and Scott Walker – had already withdrawn, but there were another dozen or so still in the running. That crowding of the field was a major reason for the success of Trump. If his support stays at its current levels then what the rest of the candidates do is pretty much irrelevant, but assuming he is beatable at all, it will only happen if the non-Trump vote consolidates behind a single candidate.

It’s too early to say for sure that Haley will be that candidate, but her chances look the best. In the four months between now and Super Tuesday (4 March), the other contenders will need to take a good hard look at their chances and consider following Pence’s lead.

But, in a story that’s become all too depressingly familiar, the Republican Party is still giving signals that it has no intention of standing up to Trump. That’s the message of last week’s culmination of the long-running saga of the House speakership (see my earlier report here), in which Trumpist Mike Johnson was elected on a party-line vote, 220-209.

That came despite a raft of stories in which non-Trump Republicans had briefed the media to the effect that they were finally developing some backbone and were going to stand up for their principles, even if that meant having to work with the Democrats. No such thing happened. Instead, desperate to end the deadlock, they opted for party unity, helped by the fact that Johnson was less well-known and more personable than the previous Trumpist nominee, Jim Jordan.

But party unity only runs one way. Trump and his supporters show no concern for it at all, having torn down three nominees for Speaker in as many weeks [link added]. Similarly, Trump has refused to give any commitment to support the party’s presidential nominee if it is someone other than himself: if Haley were to win the nomination, she would face the very real threat of a Trump independent candidacy.

So primary voters will face a real dilemma. If they want to beat the Democrats, they know Trump is a losing proposition. But an embittered Trump could destroy the chances of anyone who supplants him.