Editors in the NY Times newsroom are almost certainly wringing their hands at the mere thought of a civil war among Republicans if President Trump has a primary fight on his hands.
That might explain why they’ve elected to stir the pot of rumors in their latest issue with rumblings of potential GOP candidates.
Sens. Ben Sasse (R-NE) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) along with Gov. John Kasick are being bandied about as likely challengers since all three have made recent trips to Iowa, the veritable starting line for presidential hopefuls.
All of them are also denying or refusing to answer questions about whether they’ve any specific White House ambitions.
But the specter of a Trump impeachment has many curious.
And of course the continued speculation of a Pence presidency is ever on the lips of both Republicans and Democrats alike.
The problem with all of this is no Republican Senate is going to remove President Trump without clear and convincing evidence of ‘crimes or misdemeanors’.
And no party apparatus is going to lend its resources to unseat its own sitting president.
In short, this is likely much leftist ado about nothing, but we’ll wait and see.
Here’s more from NYT…
Senators Tom Cotton and Ben Sasse have already been to Iowa this year, Gov. John Kasich is eyeing a return visit to New Hampshire, and Mike Pence’s schedule is so full of political events that Republicans joke that he is acting more like a second-term vice president hoping to clear the field than a No. 2 sworn in a little over six months ago.
President Trump’s first term is ostensibly just warming up, but luminaries in his own party have begun what amounts to a shadow campaign for 2020 — as if the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue weren’t involved.
The would-be candidates are cultivating some of the party’s most prominent donors, courting conservative interest groups and carefully enhancing their profiles. Mr. Trump has given no indication that he will decline to seek a second term.
But the sheer disarray surrounding this presidency— the intensifying investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and the plain uncertainty about what Mr. Trump will do in the next week, let alone in the next election—have prompted Republican officeholders to take political steps that are unheard-of so soon into a new administration.
Asked about those Republicans who seem to be eyeing 2020, a White House spokeswoman, Lindsay Walters, fired a warning shot: “The president is as strong as he’s ever been in Iowa, and every potentially ambitious Republican knows that.”
