Trump has a successor in mind  — but his base is sabotaging his big plan: conservative

President Donald Trump’s own base is ruining one of his biggest plans, according to a conservative commentator — namely, his potential desire to anoint Secretary of State Marco Rubio as his successor instead of Vice President JD Vance.

“We begin with two quotes. They won’t seem related, but they are,” wrote Nick Catoggio of The Dispatch on Tuesday. “The first: ‘I would not support the Republican Party. There’s no chance I would support the Republican Party…. How could I or any American voter support a political party that’s not loyal to the United States, that puts the interests of a foreign country above those of its own citizens?... I’ve voted Republican my entire life … [but] I’m out. And if I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out.’”

The first quote came from conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, Catoggio said, and the second quote — “Cubans love gold.” — came from Trump. He added that the context, as gleaned from a recent book by New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, was Trump refusing to remove the gilded updates to the Oval Office decor in case he is succeeded as president by Rubio.

“Tucker’s quote speaks for itself and will be received warmly on both ends of the American right,” Catoggio added. “To postliberals, isolationists, Israel obsessives, and other creatures who inhabit the GOP’s chud wing, it’s a righteous cri de coeur against the White House’s foolish war in Iran. To classical liberals, hawks, Israel supporters, and the rest of what remains of the party’s negligible conservative faction, it’s a long-overdue matter of ‘good riddance.’”

Yet despite Trump seemingly wanting Rubio to succeed him, Catoggio doubts that this will manifest as easily as he wants. Carlson’s recent defection from the Republican Party over his war against Iran speaks to a possible future in which the party base does not automatically do the president’s bidding.

“A right-wing base that trends toward Tuckerism in the aftermath of our national embarrassment will come to appreciate Vance as an avatar of peace,” Catoggio opined. “He doesn’t start silly, self-defeating wars. He gets America out of them.”

He added, “That's what a winning wager looks like for the veep. Whereas a losing wager looks like this: Republican voters decide that the fatal mistake with Iran was failing to ‘finish the job’ by using military force to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Doves like Vance are schmucks twice over, they come to believe, having first discouraged Trump from prosecuting the war to an honorable end and later selling him on a deal that will shower billions of dollars on a terrorist regime.”

Catoggio continued, “The vice president isn’t an avatar of peace in this view; he’s an avatar of American humiliation. The United States needs a leader who isn’t afraid to use military power and who’ll prioritize victory once he chooses to do so: If that’s where GOP opinion lands when the Iran smoke clears—and given the right’s faith in ‘toughness’ and ‘strength,’ it’s more likely than not—then Rubio will be the obvious beneficiary.”

Breaking down prevailing sentiments within the Republican Party, however, Catoggio concluded that Vance’s bet is the better one.

“Vance is more likely to unite the right than Rubio is,” Catoggio wrote. “It will be easier for the vice president to persuade skeptical right-wing hawks to turn out for him in a general election, I think, than it will be for the secretary of state to persuade skeptical Lindberghians to do so.”

He added, “The sort of rank-and-file Republican partisan who defaults toward hawkishness and who might resent Vance for the Iran deal will nonetheless faithfully prioritize tribal victory over Democrats in 2028. No amount of Trump blather in 2024 about ‘warmongering’ by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will disabuse the American right of its atavistic fear that a foreign policy led by leftists will be dangerously weak relative to whatever’s on offer from the GOP.”

Ultimately, though, Catoggio doubted whether Rubio’s proximity to Trump will be an asset in a general election.

“I still wouldn’t bet on a Cuban American in the Oval Office in 2029, though,” Catoggio wrote. “The inevitable trajectory of the president’s final two and a half years in office will leave the electorate hungry for change, and ‘Donald Trump’s secretary of state’ isn’t very change-y. But if you’re trying to envision a Rubio administration, I’ve given you the path. All it’ll take is deep, lasting disillusionment with postliberalism in government and right-wing infotainment by a party rank-and-file that’s spent 10 years being indoctrinated into an authoritarian cult. Good luck, Marco.”

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