With Donald Trump pulling away in the polls as the 2024 Republican Party candidate of choice among voters, Politico reports that sniping has begun between the also-ran GOP candidates who are trying to keep their hopes afloat and stay close in case he falters.
As Trump heads to Manhattan this week to be arraigned on charges contained in a sealed indictment handed to District Attorney Alvin Bragg by a grand jury, his rivals -- and potential rivals -- are attempting to get attention for the campaigns while he sucks up all the oxygen in the room.
As Politico is reporting, aides for vice president Mike Pence, who has yet to announce his bid and are lashing out because they feel Nikki Haley, who was the first to announce she would challenge Trump, is getting better coverage.
As Politico's Adam Wren and Natalie Allison wrote, "Inside Pence’s orbit, staffers have begun privately complaining about a presidential contender who, like Pence, is polling in single digits — distressed that Haley is drawing what they view as more favorable media coverage than the former vice president receives. In recent weeks, they fumed about coverage that painted her as a fiscal conservative at a donor retreat in Florida and didn’t fully capture what they described as her tepid reception at CPAC, where Pence previously drew headlines for getting booed."
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According to Jeff Timmer, former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party, the fight between the two candidates is much ado about nothing since Republican voters seem to have little interest in either candidate.
"It’s like giving a sh-t about who wins the NIT tournament,” he explained. "Everybody is watching the NCAA Tournament. To use a boxing metaphor, it’s like an undercard race that no one is even paying attention to. They’re all watching the heavyweight matchup between Trump and DeSantis.”
The report adds, "Pence and Haley have long been on a collision course — which their rivalry in the 2024 primary has only accelerated. They are the only two former Trump administration officials and GOP governors whose administrations overlapped one another in the early 2010s. Pence picked her as a member of the Cabinet during the transition, and Trump signed off."
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