By Former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy believes there’s only one way for Donald Trump to lose to Joe Biden in 2024.
The former Speaker of the House warned Trump against making 2024 a sort of “revenge tour,” begging him to run an optimistic campaign about the future of the United States rather than the 2020 election.
“But this is a bigger question for Trump: If his campaign is about renew, rebuild and restore, he’ll win. If it’s about revenge, he’ll lose,” McCarthy said. “The only person that’s going to determine that is – not his campaign ad – is him,” according to The Hill.
The former third in line to the presidency also had thoughts on who Trump should pick as a running mate if he wins the nomination.
The National Review reported that after being who would be the “right person” to serve as Trump’s vice president should he win reelection in 2024, McCarthy chose Haley over three other options presented by the Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin: Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.), Republican presidential contender Vivek Ramaswamy, and Senator Tim Scott (R., S.C.).
“If I was a political person, and I was going to advise somebody, you’re going to pick the vice president that’s about addition, not subtraction. So you’re not going to pick somebody that already equates to you,” McCarthy said at the event. “Now if I was picking for purely political decisions, what it looks like today is the anti-Trump vote is going to Nikki Haley.”
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The California congressman, who was ousted from the House speakership in early October, argued that Trump needs to pick a running mate who can win over Republican and independent voters who do not support him for a second term. “If that person is with you, maybe they’d be with you too,” he said.
This is why Haley would be the perfect choice, according to McCarthy. “Well, right now I think it would be Nikki Haley, in my view,” he responded when asked who that person would be. “But the question is: Who you select, will they serve? So that’s another question you have to have. And it’s about addition.”
Haley has more recently been focusing on the top slot of the ticket, despite only attacking Ron DeSantis recently. She has become the top choice of the Never Trumpers, wooing mega donors from Wall Street and landing the backing of the libertarian, pro-immigration Koch political network.
The New York Times wrote last week that the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations “got an unexpected call from Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase. Mr. Dimon said he was impressed by Ms. Haley’s knowledge of policy details and her open-minded approach to complex issues raised in the Republican presidential race, according to a person familiar with what they discussed. Keep it up, he told her.
He wasn’t the only business heavyweight to say so.
In recent weeks, a group of chief executives, hedge fund investors and corporate deal makers from both parties have begun gravitating toward Ms. Haley and, in some cases, digging deeper into their pockets to help her.”
Haley has quickly shifted toward what the establishment and big business Republicans want from their president, even pledging to let corporations design immigration policy.
While on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, the former board member at Boeing said, “When it comes to legal immigration, it’s a broken system. It shouldn’t take someone 10 years to become a citizen. … For too long, Republican and Democrat presidents dealt with immigration based on a quota. ‘We’ll take X number this year. We’ll take X number next year.’ The debate is on the number. It’s the wrong way to look at it. We need to do it based on merit. We need to go to our industries and say, ‘What do you need that you don’t have?’ So, think of agriculture. Think tourism. Think tech. We want the talent that is going to make us better. Then you can bring people in that can fill those needs.”
Conn Carroll, a conservative writer for the Washington Examiner, noted that “This is absolutely how most Republican donors viewed immigration in 2007, it is how the Chamber of Commerce, Wall Street, and Big Tech view the topic today, and it is the same view shared by the Koch brothers-founded Americans for Prosperity, which endorsed Haley on Tuesday.
The problem is most Republican primary voters don’t agree. Haley’s call for big business to set immigration levels is no different than an open border. Big business will always opt for cheap foreign labor over paying higher wages to American workers. Republican primary voters want no part of that policy.”
Carroll noted that this is a big reason why she will likely not stop Trump in the primary, despite many Republicans not wanting him to run again. “They also don’t want to turn the party over to the interests of Wall Street and Big Tech on immigration. For all his other faults as a candidate, DeSantis has a proven track record of choosing American voters over big business on immigration. That’s why so many Trump voters say they would support DeSantis as a second choice. That’s why Haley has no shot at beating Trump.”
Maybe the McCarthy endorsement makes sense, after all.
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