Nope, not that Joe Walsh.
I’ve always enjoyed that song, though.
Former Rep Joe Walsh (R-IL) has declared for the GOP Presidential nomination:
Conservative radio host and former Illinois US Rep. Joe Walsh will challenge President Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2020, he announced Sunday.
“I’m going to run for president,” Walsh said on ABC’s “This Week,” also telling host George Stephanopoulos, “I’m going to do whatever I can. I don’t want him (Trump) to win.”
Walsh had said Thursday that he was “strongly, strongly considering” entering the race.
“I’m not trying to be cute or coy. I’ve told you before — if somebody’s going to get in there and go after him … it’s got to be done soon,” Walsh told CNN’s John Berman on “New Day.” “You’re running out of time. But more importantly, these are not conventional times. Look at the guy in the White House. These are urgent times.”
Walsh had previously called for a Republican to challenge the President, calling him an “unfit con man” who is “bad for the country” earlier this month. [CNN]
It’s difficult imagining anyone mounting a serious challenge in the Republican primary to President Trump, but it’s still interesting to look at Walsh and try to understand the chemistry he’s hoping to build. WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin provides an very short overview:
Joe Walsh, the former Illinois congressman turned radio talk show host, said some pretty outrageous things in his day. But unlike those who have admitted no wrong and have drunk the Trump Kool-Aid, Walsh has apologized. “On more than one occasion, I questioned [President Barack] Obama’s truthfulness about his religion,” he wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “At times, I expressed hate for my political opponents. We now see where this can lead. There’s no place in our politics for personal attacks like that, and I regret making them.”
On The Issues has this graphical representation of Walsh’s ideological position:
To the right, for your reference, is the On The Issues graphical summation of President Trump. Based solely on these measurements, it appears there’s little to differentiate the two. Of course, there’s far more to winning a nomination than ideological position, and while I favor such mundane observations as competency and sobriety, many folks on both right and left are susceptible to charisma. While I don’t personally see it, the energy and size of President Trump’s base indicates that he has a charisma that appeals to, and, in my view, overwhelms the rational faculties of a sizable percentage of the American electorate.
Can Walsh crack that charisma? I’m dubious. Certainly, he’ll attract a few Never Trumpers, but that won’t be enough. He needs to evaporate much of the 80+% of Republicans who approve of Trump. Simply shouting every day of the campaign that Trump is a “con man,” to use his own words, an incompetent, a fool who is endangering the country, is in itself a foolish approach. Trumpists will simply cover their ears and proclaim to each other that Walsh was never, as he admits, a fellow Trumpist, merely an anti-Clinton voter. Such will Walsh be dismissed, even if he manages to enlist Fox News on his side.
Walsh would need to adopt a subtle approach designed to show how Trump is basically someone whose loyalties are fickle, not least to the principles on which this country was founded and nominally operates, that he is inconstant, exclusively self-interested, and incapable of wise, deliberate governance. There are numerous examples of these points from which Walsh can select. By asking his base why they adhere to someone who betrays their own principles constantly, he may be able to engender some cracks in that foundation.
But will he? I guess we’ll find out. Walsh is not the first challenger to Trump; former Governor William Weld of Massachusetts, an old-line Republican and former candidate for Vice President from the Libertarian Party, has also entered the field. I have not discussed him. But it shows there’s a little life in the Republican Party that worries about the traditional values of a President, and how Trump is a miserable failure when it comes to those values.
