Since the triumphant return of President Trump in November 2024 — and it was a triumph, with Trump winning all seven swing states and the popular vote — the Democrats have reacted by lurching hard left, electing a radical mayor in New York City, attempting to take purple Virginia far left with a crazy gerrymandered Congressional map (which was struck down by the state’s Supreme Court as unconstitutional), and on Tuesday nominating radical (and deeply troubled) Graham Platner as their candidate in Maine to face off against the moderate and widely admired Senator Susan Collins, Chair of the Senate’s powerful Appropriations Committee.
Radical candidates are expected to emerge as the party’s Senate nominees in Michigan and Minnesota as well. The “Democratic Socialists of America” hostile takeover over the shattered glass of the Democratic Party seems inevitable.
With the Democrats at best in an internal civil war between socialists and far-left liberals, which way will a post-President Trump GOP turn?
DOUG SCHOEN: DEMOCRATIC BATTLE PITS MODERATES VS. PROGRESSIVES FOR SOUL OF THE PARTY
The front-runner for party leader and 2028 nominee has to be considered to be Vice President J.D. Vance, but sitting Veeps don’t just accept the nomination save for extraordinary circumstances such as the Democrats faced in 2024 when Vice President Harris was handed the nomination when the physical and mental infirmities of President Joe Biden became too obvious to ignore.
Looking back to 1988, there is sitting Vice President George H.W. Bush, who had to fight off Senator Robert Dole for the GOP nomination in 1988. Four years earlier, former Vice President Walters Mondale had to withstand a challenge from Senator Gary Hart. More recently sitting VP Al Gore didn’t just get handed the nomination after loyal service as President Bill Clinton’s #2, he had to face and defeat Senator Bill Bradley to get the Democratic nomination in 2000.
The rule, then, is that Vice Presidents have to fight through primaries to win their parties’ nominations for president, and the exception to that rule is Kamala Harris. Look how that turned out. Parties emerge stronger when their primaries are contested.
So even if Vice President Vance seeks the office President Trump holds, he has to expect a challenge in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and beyond. While it is widely expected that President Trump will endorse his hand-picked #2, 2027’s debates — and there should be many — and 2028’s caucuses and primaries should be boisterous affairs as the “era of Trump” winds down.
VANCE IN ‘CATBIRD SEAT’ FOR 2028 GOP PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION, BUT THESE REPUBLICANS MAY ALSO RUN
President Trump and his message of “Make America Great Again” has dominated the Republican Party since the summer of 2015, when Trump methodically took down every Republican opponent in a crowded field, one-by-one. Trump swept aside all challengers from within the GOP in 2024, choosing not even to appear on debate stages with them.
There will be no such dominating figure for the Republican race ahead in 2028. Most GOP observers expect at least four contenders not named Vance: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is poised for a second run. Georgia’s popular incumbent Governor Brian Kemp and Virginia’s former governor Glenn Youngkin are widely tipped to be setting up their campaigns. Former Secretary of State and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency in President Trump’s first term Mike Pompeo is expected to join the field as well and brings along his career as a stellar West Point and Harvard Law School graduate and years in Congress as a member from Kansas.
That’s just the obvious quartet of challengers to Vance, and then there are the talented and ambitious senators like Texas’ Ted Cruz and Pennsylvania’s David McCormick. Suddenly we have seven very qualified candidates debating about the future of the country, and that doesn’t include members of the President’s cabinet who have run before and might again: Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum.
President Trump may endorse and throw his considerable political weight behind VP Vance — or Secretary Rubio or somebody else. Nobody knows and it’s very doubtful the president himself knows. He’s said a few times that a Vance-Rubio ticket would be formidable and it would be.
What it isn’t is “inevitable.” GOP primary voters don’t have to begin actually casting votes until January 2028. Will they want a “reversion to the mean” of GOP politics and issues? Will they want a candidate who can endorse what President Trump has done in every aspect or one who picks and chooses among the Trump record?
There will certainly be an opening night slot for President Trump when the GOP convention gathers in whatever city President Trump designates. His energy will be needed by whomever the nominee is, as there are millions of voters who are three-time Trump voters who wished the Constitution didn’t prohibit a fourth chance to vote for him.
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Parties are, however, an enduring staple of American political life. They evolve and change, and the GOP of 2028 will be radically different from that of 2000, 2012 and even 2024. Its voters may want a change in style or substance or both. As the Democrats hurtle themselves off the left edge of the American political spectrum with increasingly anti-American, anti-free market radicals, Republicans may very well collectively decide to move towards the rhetoric and style of the broad middle of the American temperament and more traditional conservative political positions.
The muffled sound you hear is of GOP presidential campaigns getting organized. We see the obvious positioning among the Democrats, from Kamala Harris to Congressman Ro Khanna and Senator Chris Murphy. They can afford to be obvious and out there.
Republicans must be far more discrete in their first steps as it’s President Trump’s party now. But as the clock winds down on his second term, every Republican office holder from the Senate to city councils across the land has a stake in nominating a winner in 2028. The GOP’s games won’t begin until the World Cup’s are over and probably not until December of this year.
But they will commence before year’s end, and it will be the most interesting primary season since 2016, and that one was an upheaval, a political earthquake that changed American politics for a dozen years. Maybe the Republicans will be in a mood that seeks the middle ground. Maybe.
Hugh Hewitt is a Fox News contributor and host of “The Hugh Hewitt Show” heard weekday afternoons from 3 PM to 6 PM ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh drives Americans home on the East Coast and to lunch on the West Coast on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcasting. This column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.
