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Conservative Mike Cernovich (1.2M followers) Tweeted "Trump needs a VP that will make him assassination proof. Anyone saying otherwise has no understanding of the time we are in. Tim Scott as VP? Trump's survivability will drop to zero. It's incredible to me that more don't understand this."
How seriously should Trump take such a threat, and how seriously does Trump take such a threat? Yes, the powers-that-be truly hate Trump and if he became president and had Scott as VP many would rejoice at Trump's death. But by what mechanism might they kill him? Obviously, it creates horrible incentives if Trump believes the threat and it causes him to consider someone such as Kari Lake, Marjorie Taylor Greene, or Sarah Palin for his VP nominee. In sort-of support of Cernovich, part of the reason that Biden might be sticking with Harris as VP is to reduce the chances he gets removed from office for senility.
If these mysterious powers that be really don't want Trump to be president to the point that they're willing to assassinate him, and we presume they have the ability to pull it off, why wait until he gets elected? Anyone even more odious than Trump is probably someone who has even less chance of getting elected — and none of the personality cult — than he does, so why not do it now? Especially since the security of a sitting president is almost certainly much tighter than whatever he's getting now. We've never had a major party candidate drop dead during an election season before, so it's uncharted territory how much of a shit show it could turn into trying to find another nominee on short notice. The veep is the obvious choice, but I'd be willing to bet that the actual primary candidates will feel like they deserve a shot since they actually got votes at the convention and Trump's pick was only for vice. Or hell, do it now while there are still primaries to go and Haley is still on the ballot. She may have a better shot of beating Biden in the general but four years of her are certainly better than four years of Trump. Why even give the guy a chance if you don't have to?
That would almost certainly ensure a DeSantis or Younkin presidency depending on the time the assassination happened (Younkin being more likely the closer the assassination is to election day). Which is probably even less palatable to these powers. The problem, after all, isn't Trump, its Trump's voters.
I'd preface this by saying that since these "powers" were so poorly defined by the OP, speculating about who they'd find acceptable seems kind of pointless, since any discussion can elicit a response of "no, the powers aren't like that". Anyway, I'm going to proceed on the assumption that these mysterious overlords are left-leaning but not too far left, avatars for the man they're actually trying to keep in the White House. Which I guess makes me one of them, though I'm opposed to assassination and, in any event wouldn't know where to start, but I'll nonetheless use this as license to consider myself somewhat of an expert, especially since most of the people in my social circle are of roughly the same opinion.
Desantis was a credible Bogeyman two years ago but his absolute inability to outmaneuver Trump has rendered him impotent in the eyes of the Powers. And in the eyes of Trump supporters he's totally disloyal and probably a cuck, too for taking abuse from Trump and not bothering to fight back. Desantis's main advantages over Trump were that he was supposedly more competent and that he was actually willing to fight rather than get involved in messy political disputes. His campaign showed that he was totally uncharismatic and couldn't run a national campaign to save his own life, allowing also-rans like Nikki Haley to run circles around him. And he his profound unwillingness to attack Trump, even in the face of his abuse, didn't exactly project the image of a fighter. He's a guy most lefty Democrats would reflexively dislike and bitch about for his policy positions, but he isn't the kind of guy whom anyone would be concerned about the country over. If Trump, as charismatic as he is, was unable to cow the governmental apparatus into bending to his will, then Desantis sure as hell isn't a threat. He's also too much of a traditional Republican at heart to make any serious changes. He'll talk about ending woke but when he realizes that there isn't much he can do about it he'll just shift to enacting more tax cuts. PLus, the guy does have actual executive experience running a large state.
As for Youngkin, I've never met a Democrat who has strong feelings about the guy. I don't live in Virginia, but outside of there the man comes across to most Democrats as as somewhat moderate, the kind of Republican who can actually win a statewide election in Virginia. While he wouldn't be as acceptable as a guy like Phil Scott, he's not exactly the MAGA menace Republicans would need to nominate to really scare the lefties. For Trump to be assassination-proof his putative successor would have to be someone like MTG or Boebert, and there's no way in hell that's happening. And if it somehow did happen, there's no way someone like that is defeating an incumbent. And even if someone like that did beat Biden in the general, it would pose no real threat to any powers that be because these people are totally incompetent and more interested in soundbites than government.
This is totally anecdotal but it proves my point. A friend of mine has a winter house in Boebert's district in Colorado. Being in the West, there's some local water authority, basically a citizens group, that relies on the local rep to get Federal funding for their operating budget. This isn't exactly controversial politically, but they have to meet with the rep every year to go over the budget and whatnot so the rep knows how much to ask for and can justify the number if pressed. First, instead of attending the board meeting, Boebert wanted to do it over the phone for no plausible reason other than that she was too lazy to attend. Okay, whatever, but when she's on the phone it's clear to everyone involved that she wasn't actually listening. When she asks for clarification of something that she should have understood had she been paying attention, it's clear to them that she's either a complete moron or has such a short attention span that she can't even listen to the answers to questions she asked (Which weren't pointed clarifications of someone involved but simply asking them to repeat what they just said). Then she terminated the meeting early by actually telling them it was boring. These aren't the kind of people who are going to make any significant change if in the White House.
The part about Boebert is what your described is an underlying reason why we're seeing such shifts in college educated suburbs outside of the other more obvious factors.
Like, I'm sure there have been a lot of right-wing representatives in the past who actually worried about constituent needs - one example off hand is Thad Cochoran of Mississippi didn't need a single black vote to win easily in the state, but nonetheless, he was well known for having good constuent services, even in overwhelmingly black areas of the state, and not surprisingly, while he didn't do fantastic in the black belt regions, he did much better than Trent Lott did who was the other Senator at the time, even pre-Strom Thurmond praise.
Hell, Brian Kemp has passed a fairly strict abortion ban, passed trans laws close to Florida, passed a strict voter ID law, passed the usual tax cuts, and done a lot of stuff I don't like as a left-wing social democrat, but he has a 65% approval rating in Georgia because he said, "nah, Biden won, you weirdos," then he and his Secretary of State easily curbstomped a primary challenge.
The problem for the modern hard-right/far-right/dissident right, whatever people want to call themselves is that there's zero appeal unless you're either a partisan Republican or you're obsessed with the the Culture War issues of the day, but if you're even a somewhat serious person, they all seem like weirdos. Again, I know some won't like this, but look up how AOC questions people in Congressional panels versus Freedom Caucus types. You don't have to like her questions, or agree with her premises even, but she's well prepared and has follow up questions.
Obviously, not every member of the Squad is like that, but the median member of the Progressive Caucus is more serious about actually doing the work of legislating as opposed to trying to get a hit on Fox News or Newsmax than the median member of the Freedom Caucus, and in the long run, swing voters given the choice of having to use certain genders they don't get and some more immigrants speaking Spanish but actually getting stuff done versus chaos, abortion bans, and weird obsessions with issues they've never heard about, they'll back the woke side, even if they heavily disagree.
AOC might be charismatic and indeed she literally got on the casting couch for this job, but she's a filthy traitor. If I was a leftie I'd be absolutely pissed about her shenanigans (not using the squad leverage to extract Medicare for all from Pelosi).
As a leftie, there was no way to get Medicare for All from Pelosi, because not only does M4A not have the 218 votes you need in the House, it'd die on the Senate. All that would result of such a vote is a bunch of terrible primary challenges that would fail, because the median Democrat, while preferring Medicare for All, it's not a support it or else issue. Stuff like abortion, gay rights, thinking Trump is bad, those are actually support or else issues to the Democratic base of African-American women, suburban Mom's and so on.
Plus, in the long run, Biden did far more of what lefties expected economically. Unfortunately, some of the dumber ones are now upset about that full employment and higher wages means higher prices for Chipotle or Doordash.
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If you think AOC is prepared and say Chip Roy isn’t then I think you are just operating from a biased perspective.
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No, people like a strong horse, not a dead horse. If Trump is assassinated, the Democrats think "good!" (and we probably have a few stories celebrating it, including on major media though those will be quickly toned down) and the Trump base is demoralized, leading to a Biden landslide.
If Trump is assassinated in a blatant way expect a real insurrection, not the Qshaman walk about kind.
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... When has that ever worked like that?
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