Everybody's second choice
How an old Canadian election could be a roadmap for Tim Scott in 2024.
I still remember John McCain’s 2007-2008 turnaround very well, so I’ve resisted writing off Ron DeSantis this early in the 2024 campaign. Indeed, while he’s lost ground to Trump, he’s still way out in second place while all the other contenders are fighting for crumbs.
Hard to blame people for quietly noting where the emergency exits are located, though. It wasn’t supposed to be this way:
It seems like the more people get to know Ron DeSantis, the less they like him. This is the part where I should join in the mockery, but to be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever identified with a politician so much in my life.
Everyone does seem to like Tim Scott, though.
Well, not everybody - the fact that he comes across as psychologically relatively normal shouldn’t blind you to most of his political beliefs being pretty far to the right, and his skin color makes him a target for grotesque racist taunts, sometimes even from conservatives.
But some Republican heavy hitters who bit big on DeSantis are looking at Scott as their Plan B, according to Politico:
With Ron DeSantis stalling in the Republican presidential primary, some wealthy donors who’d hoped he could beat Donald Trump are now giving Tim Scott a serious look.
Billionaire businessman Ronald Lauder, the Estée Lauder makeup heir who supported Trump in 2020, recently flew to South Carolina to meet with Scott, the state’s junior senator and longshot presidential candidate, according to three people aware of the late June meeting.
The meeting comes amid widespread angst among wealthy GOP backers about the emerging 2024 field, and DeSantis’ bumpy start in particular. Many high-dollar donors in Trump’s native New York City have tired of the former president and worry about his general election chances. But they say their faith in the Florida governor has been shaken by early campaign missteps and his hardline positions on abortion, transgender rights and other culture-war issues. They fear time is running out for anyone else to break through.
Now, several donors are starting to more seriously mull backing Scott — a more traditional Republican alternative to the populist and combative Trump and DeSantis.
[…]
Other New York-based donors are also kicking the tires on Scott, according to three people based in the city who work closely with donors and were granted anonymity to freely discuss internal strategy. Two of those people are not affiliated with any candidate and one is partial to Trump.
“The major donors are still open and are still looking,” said one Republican who works closely with New York’s monied class. “They originally were with DeSantis. They’re looking for other options and Tim Scott right now is probably their top target.”
New York donors are not a reflection of the Republican Party at large and are often invested in candidates with a more moderate approach than the GOP base supports. But their anxiety about DeSantis does pose a major threat to the financial base that he was hoping to build in his efforts to take on Trump. And it illustrates larger concerns among the establishment that he hasn’t quite met the expectations of him.
Scottmania hasn’t yet gripped the GOP electorate, as shown by the RCP polling average copied and pasted above. But I don’t get the impression he’s hated by Republican voters as much as the other candidates, and if a few things go right, that would work to his advantage.
Once in a while, a “compromise” candidate comes up the middle to win a highly polarized party leadership race. Hubert Humphrey as the Democratic standard-bearer in 1968 comes to mind, and maybe Bob Dole for the GOP in 1996. And then, north of the border, there’s Joe Clark.
Warning: Canadian political history lesson incoming
In 1976, Canada’s main right-of-centre political party - then known as the “Progressive Conservatives,” which might be the most Canadian thing ever - held a leadership contest to replace the guy after whom my local airport is named.
Alberta Member of Parliament Joe Clark was considered something of a longshot candidate, while Quebec’s Claude Wagner was the frontrunner. But Wagner was considered too right-wing by moderate “Red Tories,” who gradually rallied behind Clark as other challengers gradually dropped out of the race.
And it worked: Clark finished third on the first ballot, moved up to second place in the next round, and eked out a narrow win in a one-on-one showdown with Wagner.
A few years later he was elected Prime Minister. For a little while. But that’s another lesson.
Obviously, the 2023 MAGA-dominated Republican Party in the United States doesn’t have much in common with a mid-seventies Canadian political organization which doesn’t really exist anymore.1
But, if you squint, you can see a few similarities, with a right-winger candidate as the front-runner and a lesser-known but relatively well-liked moderate getting a second look from voters whose preferred candidate faltered. (For the PC Party in 1976, that was Flora MacDonald, whose epic crash-and-burn during the first round of voting gave rise to a phrase well-known to Canadian political science students to this very day.)2
The biggest difference between then and now, of course, is that neither Wagner nor any other Canadian politician - heck, even any other American politician in recent memory - has such a cultish death grip on so many members of his party as does Donald Trump.
For my Tim Scott victory scenario to have any chance of success, you need a significant number of Republicans to risk the mean Truth Social posts and unhinged MAGA people possibly shooting at their houses to openly defy The Donald and bring him below the 50% support mark. I’m counting on GOP voters to do the right thing here.
So, yeah, this probably isn’t going to happen. But if it does happen, you read it here first.
Though one 1976 Tory candidate - a former Defence Minister, no less - went on to become a conspiracy theorist who might have weirded out even Marjorie Taylor Greene a little.
I’m pretty sure I’m the first person who has ever drawn any kind of comparison between Flora MacDonald and Ron DeSantis.
Another good article. I met Scott after a breakfast with another Senator. Very personable, willing to listen and debate Democrats and liked by all sides of his party.