GOP candidates scramble 'to keep up with an electorate that has lost its mind': analysis

Vanity Fair columnist Molly Jong-Fast has taken stock of the early days of the 2024 Republican presidential primary and has found it to be very grim in terms of what one of America's two major political parties has to offer.

In particular, Jong-Fast despairs that most GOP candidates running for president can't think of a better way to pitch themselves as anything but slightly more electable versions of former President Donald Trump.

She argues that this is a difference between today and 2016, when there were at least candidates such as Marco Rubio and John Kasich who tried to differentiate themselves substantively from Trump.

This year, in contrast, even more moderate-seeming candidates such as Nikki Haley and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) have felt the need to make MAGA-style appeals to voters fearful of transgender teenagers playing high-school sports.

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"During a CNN town hall on Sunday, Nikki Haley blamed teenage girls’ suicides on trans kids playing sports, a completely preposterous lie and the kind of unusual cruelty that is associated with Trumpism," she writes.

However, Jong-Fast only places part of the blame on the candidates themselves and reserves equal scorn for the electorate they are trying to represent.

"The current crop of candidates have seen polling which shows the GOP base continues to struggle with a pronounced case of brain worms," she argues. "They dismiss Trump’s critics out of hand and election denial runs deep, with 75% in one poll saying that Trump actually won the 2020 election. It’s possible that these 2024 candidates can’t figure out how to recon with a GOP base existing in a post-truth bubble, and are just trying to keep up with an electorate that’s completely lost its mind."