GOP's early 2024 pickle: Support 1 of 3 minority candidates for president or stick with the aggrieved white guy who could be a convicted felon by Election Day
- Republican Sen. Tim Scott has inched closer to challenging Donald Trump in 2024.
- Scott joins two other minority candidates seeking to expand the GOP's flagging brand.
Republicans eyeballing the 2024 presidential field right now are facing a black-and-white decision: give a person of color a shot at the White House or stand behind a defiant white man committed to running even if he's convicted of a felony.
While GOP supporters still have 18 months to fully decide who their standard-bearer should be, the growing roster of hopefuls vying to wrest control of the party from embattled former president and current frontrunner Donald Trump includes a trio of minority candidates who've made their marks elsewhere.
With the Wednesday launch of his exploratory committee, Tim Scott, the only Black Republican currently serving in the US Senate, joins former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy — both of whose parents immigrated to the US from India — as alternatives to the aggrieved former president.
Current polling suggests that all three remain significant longshots. Market research firm Morning Consult shows both Scott and Ramaswamy polling at only 1%, and Haley polling at 4%. Their combined share of likely GOP primary voters is statistically tied with likely entrant but still undeclared candidate Mike Pence, who sits at 7%.
More than half of the Morning Consult respondents say they are still in Trump's corner. And that's after he was arraigned on 34 counts of falsifying business records, charges Trump and his House GOP defenders assert are politically motivated.
Even if Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg secures a conviction, Trump told Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Tuesday that he'd stay in the race.
"I'd never drop out," Trump said. "It's not my thing."
Stark choices
How Republican voters wary of giving President Joe Biden another term next fall handle this potential inflection point remains to be seen. But whoever wins the GOP nomination will face a steep climb.
Just within the last week, Republicans have been hammered with scandals, including Tennessee's GOP-led House of Representatives expelling two Black lawmakers for protesting gun laws while sparing a white counterpart from being ousted, and the general public learning about a prominent GOP megadonor's unsettling collection of Nazi memorabilia.
And the Trump campaign only added fuel to the fire by letting slip that xenophobic bomb-thrower Laura Loomer was being considered for a job (which blew up after the news broke).
The barrage of bad news, which will most likely get worse as the other investigations into Trump play out in the coming months, seems to have invigorated Trump so far.
Trump's lead over anticipated 2024 contender Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis keeps widening as the hits keep coming — a circling of the wagons effect that Trump's been milking for all its worth.
But his fortunes could change if charges are brought in Georgia for alleged election tampering or special counsel Jack Smith finds that Trump mishandled classified documents.
Breaking with the past
At this point in the 2016 presidential cycle, the menu of options was also pretty thin.
The only Republicans who had officially declared for the presidency through the first half of April 2015 were Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas, Rand Paul of Kentucky, and Marco Rubio of Florida.
It would be another month before a woman, Carly Fiorina, and a Black man, Dr. Ben Carson, jumped into the contest.
And then everything changed two months later as Trump's fateful trip down a golden escalator sent the whole country on a rollercoaster ride.
Trump ally turned critic Chris Christie said last fall that the upcoming election will define whether Republicans are the "party of me or the party of us."
Scott, who is well-respected on Capitol Hill, is working to carve out a lane for himself as an opponent of those who pursue "grievance over greatness."
"Our divisions run deep, and the threat to our future is real," Scott said of the existential crisis at hand.
As she made the rounds in Iowa, Haley made her case for trying something different at the ballot box.
"We have to elect someone that can win a general election," Haley told attendees at a town hall meeting in Des Moines. "That requires a new generational leader."