Since everyone seems to agree that former president Trump will be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee, the Political Media Industrial Complex (PMIC) has now begun what will soon be an atmospheric river of reports and commentary on the subject of his running mate. We jumped the gun on this, speculating that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. might be in the running. The New York Post followed up with a report that “people close to former President Trump made preliminary overtures to Robert F. Kennedy about the possibility of serving as his running mate.” The Trump campaign followed up on that report with an ice-water denial that any such thing was in the cards.
In the trade, the Post’s report is known as a trial balloon. (Ours is known as thumb-sucking). There will be many such trial balloons floating forth from Mar-a-Lago, both to keep the media dogs fed and to gauge reaction from the four corners of Trump’s populist coalition.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has been campaigning hard for the job and got a big boost from her strong performance questioning three elite university presidents at a Congressional hearing. Her questioning led, if not directly then not indirectly, to the resignations of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. Bringing down two pillars of the academic elite garnered Stefanik rave reviews with “the base” and put her on the press’s shortlist of possible Trump running-mates.
Unfortunately for Ms. Stefanik, things move fast in modern politics and, as quickly as she emerged, another contender appeared: Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX). Mr. Abbott has been riding the immigration issue hard for a number of months now, even busing some of the new arrivals to places like New York City, Chicago and Philadelphia — Democratic strongholds all — and garnering some headlines and lots of local TV news coverage, as well as kudos from “the base.”
All that moved the needle a bit, but not appreciably. Florida Gov. and erstwhile GOP presidential candidate Ron DeSantis was getting most of the ‘migrants to Martha’s Vineyard” attention last year. Abbott was a national media afterthought.
As a result, Abbott wasn’t getting mentioned as a possible vice presidential nominee by the Great Mentioners in the mainstream and conservative media. But then came a stroke of luck, neatly summarized by The Texas Tribune:
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