2024 Elections

With polling showing Donald Trump is running away in the race for the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nomination, his rivals for the top spot are increasingly proposing extreme and dangerous suggestions for what they would do if they somehow pulled off a miracle and won the November 2024 general election.

According to an analysis by Norman Ornstein and Donald Kettl, there appears to be an "arms race" to promise the most outrageous plan to dismantle the U.S. government, many of which would be well beyond the reach of a sitting president -- thus indicating many of the candidates have no idea what they are talking about.

The central focus of the authors' report in the New Republic is businessman Vivek Ramaswamy whose desire for attention makes Donald Trump look like a wallflower.

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According to the New Republic report, "... in the crowded Republican presidential field where blowing up the government is a common core theme ... Vivek Ramaswamy is taking it to another level in his bid to get attention through shocking proposals."

Noting his desire to fire one million federal workers in his first year as president, the analysts wrote, "Ramaswamy wants a revolution that is Donald Trump’s 'Schedule F' executive order on steroids. Instead of pushing perhaps 50,000 career federal civil servants out of their jobs to be replaced by political appointments, as Trump attempted, Ramaswamy is going all the way, with a proposal to convert all 2.2 million feds into at-will workers who could be fired for any reason, including personal disloyalty. That outflanks Trump on the right."

"The Republicans are in an arms race to see who can seize the headlines by coming up with the most extreme assault on the federal government'" they wrote. "To be sure, these plans are unworkable and outside the bounds of legal and constitutional realities. And they have absolutely nothing to do with what it takes to deliver the things that people want and expect the federal government to do. But they are still deeply dangerous and destructive."

They concluded, "Attacking government has been a sure-fire Republican applause line since Reagan said, 'The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.' But further undermining the government’s ability to serve citizens will only further stoke their distrust in government, making it that much more difficult to govern," adding, "... a lot of Americans would lose when key and popular government services that protect public safety, public health, national security, along with economic prosperity and wellbeing, collapse or are damaged and diluted."

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Donald Trump's increasing statements that the Supreme Court's Dobbs ruling that, for all practical purposes, overturned Roe v. Wade hurt Republicans in the 2022 midterms is setting off alarms with anti-abortion leaders who feel he is no longer on their side and that they are being played.

In a speech last week the former president took credit for putting in place three new members on the Supreme Court who had no qualms about throwing out Roe after fifty years which, in turn, created a firestorm and became a rallying point from Democrats in the 2022 election.

Likely with that in mind, in that same speech, the former president seemed to hint that abortion talk should be taken off the table until after the 2024 general election and that has anti-choice activists feeling betrayed.

POLL : Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

According to a report from Politico, "As his GOP opponents have seized on the comments, hoping to close a wide polling gap by attacking Trump as a fair-weather conservative, the anti-abortion movement finds itself at a crossroads — afraid of alienating the presumptive nominee but loath to let his remarks go unchallenged."

Patrick Brown of the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center’s Life and Family Initiative complained, "Are pro-lifers going to allow themselves to be a cheap date? Are they going to sit back and take it when candidates are denigrating the cause they dedicated their life to?”

Kristan Hamrick, the 38-year-old chief policy strategist with Students for Life of America warned the former president that her group plans to hold Trump's feet to the fire on the issue.

"He won’t feel pressure until it’s applied, and we’re willing to apply it,” she bluntly stated. “You cannot ignore the human rights issue of our time and still get our vote.”

Billy Valentine of the Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which plans to invest $78 million to get out the vote effort said Trump may lose some of those very voters they are reaching out to.

“Looking at a general, he’s going to need all Republicans to come home if he’s going to beat Joe Biden," Valentine explained. "He’s going to need the base in order to win ultimately, and he’s going to need a clear position. In the absence of a clear position, the Democrats are going to define him.”

Top Trump rival Gov. D Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is warning anti-choice activists that Trump is preparing to "sell them out."

“I don’t know how you can even make the claim that you’re somehow pro-life if you’re criticizing states for enacting pro-life protections for babies that have heartbeats,” he charged.

You can read more here.