NEWNow you can listen to Fox News articles!
Since President Trump’s triumphant return in November 2024 (and it was a triumph, with Trump winning all seven swing states and the popular vote), Democrats have reacted by lurching to the far left, electing a radical mayor in New York City, attempting to take over the purple far-left of Virginia with a crazy gerrymandered congressional map (which was overturned by the state Supreme Court as unconstitutional), and on Tuesday nominating the radical (and deeply problematic) Graham Platner as their candidate. in Maine to take on the moderate and widely admired Senator Susan Collins, chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee.
Radical candidates are expected to emerge as the party’s Senate candidates in Michigan and Minnesota as well. The hostile takeover by the “Democratic Socialists of America” of the broken glass of the Democratic Party seems inevitable.
With Democrats at best embroiled in an internal civil war between socialists and far-left liberals, which direction will a post-President Trump Republican Party take?
DOUG SCHOEN: DEMOCRATIC BATTLE PIT MODERATES VS. PROGRESSIVE FOR THE SOUL OF THE PARTY
The front-runner for party leader and 2028 candidate should be considered Vice President JD Vance, but sitting vice presidents do not simply accept the nomination, barring extraordinary circumstances like those Democrats faced in 2024 when Vice President Harris received the nomination when President Joe Biden’s physical and mental illnesses became too obvious to ignore.
Looking back to 1988, there is Vice President George HW Bush, who had to fight Senator Robert Dole for the Republican nomination in 1988. Four years earlier, former Vice President Walters Mondale had to face a challenge from Senator Gary Hart. More recently, sitting Vice President Al Gore not only received the nomination after loyal service as President Bill Clinton’s number two, but he had to face and defeat Senator Bill Bradley to obtain the Democratic nomination in 2000.
The rule, then, is that vice presidents have to fight during the primaries to win their parties’ presidential nominations, and the exception to that rule is Kamala Harris. Look how that turned out. Parties emerge stronger when their primaries are contested.
So even if Vice President Vance seeks the office held by President Trump, he has to expect a challenge in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and beyond. While President Trump is widely expected to endorse his No. 2 pick, the 2027 debates (and there should be many) and the 2028 caucuses and primaries should be bustling affairs as the “era of Trump” comes to a close.
WIN THE ‘CATBIRD SEAT’ FOR THE 2028 GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION, BUT THESE REPUBLICANS CAN RUN TOO
President Trump and his “Make America Great Again” message has dominated the Republican Party since the summer of 2015, when Trump methodically defeated all Republican opponents in a crowded field, one by one. Trump pushed aside all rivals within the Republican Party in 2024 and decided not to even appear on debate stages with them.
There won’t be such a dominant figure for the looming Republican race in 2028. Most Republican observers expect at least four contenders not named Vance: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is up for a second run. Popular incumbent Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and former Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin are believed to be the ones preparing their campaigns. Former Secretary of State and director of the Central Intelligence Agency during President Trump’s first term, Mike Pompeo, is also expected to join the field, bringing his career as a stellar graduate of West Point and Harvard Law School and years in Congress as a member of Kansas.
That’s just the obvious quartet of Vance’s rivals, and then there are talented and ambitious senators like Ted Cruz of Texas and David McCormick of Pennsylvania. Suddenly we have seven very qualified candidates debating the future of the country, and that doesn’t include members of the President’s Cabinet who have run before and could run again: Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum.
President Trump can endorse and endorse Vice President Vance, Secretary Rubio, or anyone else with his considerable political weight. Nobody knows and it is very doubtful that the president himself knows. He has said a few times that a Vance-Rubio candidacy would be formidable, and it would be.
What is not is “inevitable.” Republican primary voters don’t have to start casting ballots until January 2028. Will they want a “reversion to the mean” of GOP politics and problems? Will they want a candidate who can support what President Trump has done in every way or one who will choose from Trump’s record?
There will surely be an opening night for President Trump when the Republican convention meets in whatever city President Trump designates. Their energy will be needed by whoever the candidate is, as there are millions of voters who have voted for Trump three times and wish the Constitution did not prohibit a fourth opportunity to vote for him.
CLICK HERE TO REVIEW MORE FROM FOX NEWS
Yet parties are an enduring staple of American political life. They evolve and change, and the Republican Party of 2028 will be radically different from that of 2000, 2012, or even 2024. Their voters may want a change in style or substance, or both. As Democrats move away from the left edge of the American political spectrum with increasingly anti-American and anti-free-market radicals, it is quite possible that Republicans will collectively decide to move toward the rhetoric and style of the broad American middle temperament and more traditional conservative policy positions.
The muffled sound heard is that of the Republican Party’s presidential campaigns organizing. We see the obvious positioning among Democrats, from Kamala Harris to Congressman Ro Khanna and Senator Chris Murphy. They can afford to be obvious and open.
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE FOX NEWS APP
Republicans must be much more discreet in their first steps, since they are now President Trump’s party. But as time approaches for his second term, every Republican official, from the Senate to city councils across the country, has an interest in nominating a winner in 2028. The GOP games won’t start until after the World Cup is over and probably not until December of this year.
But they will begin before the end of the year, and it will be the most interesting primary season since 2016, and that was an upheaval, a political earthquake that changed American politics for a dozen years. Perhaps Republicans are in the mood to find a middle ground. Maybe.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” is heard weekday afternoons from 3 pm to 6 pm ET on Salem Radio Network and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh brings Americans home to the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on more than 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all online streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel News Roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6 pm ET. This. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a professor of law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has appeared frequently on all major national news television networks, has hosted television programs for PBS and MSNBC, has written for every major American newspaper, and has written for a dozen. books and has moderated two dozen Republican candidate debates, most recently in November 2023. Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. This column previews the main story that will drive his radio and television show today.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM HUGH HEWITT