Will Nikki Haley ever admit defeat? Will the radical left decide to run an alternative to Joe Biden? It’s going to be a wild ride, but it’s one we’ve had before.
Like it or not, it seems all but certain that the Republican nominee for president in 2024 will be Donald J. Trump. His opponents, chiefly including an army of entrenched career bureaucrats, their enablers among elected officials, and legacy media cheerleaders, are working overtime in the attempt to render a vote for the Donald meaningless, if not downright illegal. They may be successful. Who knows? In the event we are allowed to vote for former President Trump, let’s consider how an actual, honest presidential election might look this coming November.
There is a historical precedent that’s interesting to consider when we look forward to the election of 2024. Specifically, we might consider the election of 1860. I’m not suggesting that Donald Trump is the analog for Abraham Lincoln, but let’s think about the mood of the country at both periods of time.
In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was a political outsider. He had served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was a backwoods, if successful backwoods, attorney. He was part of a political movement, the Whigs, that had all but died by 1860 and was a leader in a new movement, the Republican Party, at the time of his nomination. It was his outsider status that led most of Lincoln’s opponents to dismiss him as a wannabe nobody before he secured the nomination and scared them after he did.
Lincoln did not secure the GOP nomination by declaring himself an abolitionist. He was never an absolute, uncompromising abolitionist. He would never have been elected president in the context of his times if he were. Instead, Lincoln drew a line. At the time America was still incomplete. Vast areas West of the Mississippi were still federally controlled territories or not yet incorporated. Lincoln knew, as all Americans knew, that these areas would eventually become states. While he personally believed slavery was wrong, he did not attempt to impose his beliefs on the nation as a whole. Slavery, he said, might exist where it currently existed, but the massive machinery of the federal government should not support its extension into future states. By thus stopping the growth of slavery, Lincoln was sure the institution would die on the vine.
Then, as now, great swathes of the nation freaked out when presented with the possibility that an inexperienced outsider championing—for the time—radical ideals might be elected president. Lincoln’s nomination threw both parties into a panic. Democrats, most of whom supported the “little giant” Stephen A. Douglas, were torn. Douglas was the champion of states’ rights: your state, your choice. Northern Democrats tended to believe in Douglas’s doctrine, while most southern Democrats found his position unpalatable. John Breckinridge offered the Democrat alternative. He represented the southern view that slavery was not only acceptable, it was also desirable.
Torn, Democrats were confused after Lincoln was officially nominated. From their perspective at the time, Douglas would lose because he was soft on slavery and Breckinridge would lose because he was hard on slavery. Enter John Bell. Bell was a popular politician from the state of Tennessee whose views and votes about slavery pretty much mirrored those of Douglas. He entered the presidential race of 1860 after Lincoln was nominated believing that even though he, Bell, would not receive a majority of electoral votes, nobody else would. The election would then fall to the House of Representatives, which would be sure to pick Bell as the ideal compromise candidate.
That didn’t happen. What actually happened is that Democrats, who were previously unsure about whether to go Douglas or go Breckinridge decided it didn’t really matter. Bell had split the Republican vote. Therefore the election was now theirs to win. They could run two candidates and still win, all thanks to Mr. Bell.
Of course, we now know that’s not the way it worked. Bell did draw off some votes that would have gone to Lincoln. But that effect was inconsequential. Bell didn’t move Lincoln majorities in electoral states that mattered. The Douglas–Breckinridge divide made a huge difference in electoral votes that mattered, handing the election to Honest Abe.
Might Ms. Haley play Bell’s role in this election, providing a “moderate” third-party alternative to Bad Orange Man? That might not be a bad thing for President Trump, if the Democrats respond as they did when Bell jumped in more than a century and a half ago.
Emboldened, the radical wing might then feel justified in running a “progressive” alternative to President Biden, while the centrists are unable to come up with a better alternative to He Who Shakes Hands With Phantoms. That, I submit, dear readers, would in turn pretty much guarantee that President Trump would pull off a Grover Cleveland. Assuming, of course, that we are still capable of staging a free and fair election in the United States, which unfortunately seems to be somewhat in doubt.
