OPINION:
The 2024 Republican presidential primary campaign is not a traditional contest among independent political entrepreneurs. It is a chess match pitting Donald Trump against a deep-pocketed Never Trump cartel with vast media reach.
This Never Trump cartel is anchored by a dark-money Koch network, Big Pharma vaccine peddlers and Democratic Wall Street billionaires who hedge their political bets by funding Republicans. This globalist troika is united in their love for open borders to import cheap labor and the offshoring of American factories and jobs to leverage the sweatshops and pollution havens of Asia.
The Never Trump cartel likewise includes corporate media conglomerates ranging from CNN and MSNBC to the RINO Right of Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News empire. Rounding out the roster is a coterie of Silicon Valley venture capitalists and social media oligarchs, including Mark Zuckerberg, who spent vast sums to defeat Mr. Trump in 2020, and the richest man in America who has offshored his largest Tesla factory to China, Twitter’s Elon Musk.
This Never Trump cartel will provide much of the Republican primary fundraising, polling and strategy. To understand its various gambits, consider two “favorite sons” contesting early primaries.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, the shadow “noncandidate” in the bellwether second primary on Jan. 30, and South Carolina’s Sen. Tim Scott, in the fourth primary on Feb. 24, will use their home team advantage to try to blunt the “inevitability” of a Trump victory early on.
Mr. Scott has zero chance of winning the nomination but wants to maximize his chance of being picked for vice president by either Mr. Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, leader of the Never Trump cartel pack. As long as Mr. Scott drains votes from Mr. Trump, particularly early on in his home state, he will be lavished with cartel support.
South Carolina’s “favorite daughter,” former Gov. Nikki Haley, is likewise auditioning for veep but knows Mr. Trump would never pick her. She has simply bitten the Trump hand that fed her too many times.
Ms. Haley’s slogan will be “Trumpism without Trump.” Her primary mission is to peel Republican women away from Mr. Trump. Ultimately, Ms. Haley hopes a strong showing in the primary may lead to veep redemption if Mr. Trump falters.
The Dark Knight Sununu harbors no such veep fantasy. Throwing punches from the sidelines, Mr. Sununu’s singular purpose will be to take the New Hampshire primary punch bowl away from Mr. Trump. The cartel’s corporate media will provide him with a huge megaphone for his “anybody but Trump” rants, and he knows he need not formally be on the ballot to deprive Mr. Trump of a Granite State victory.
ABC’s designated Trump hitter Chris Christie is on a similar kamikaze mission. This former New Jersey governor is one of a pack of former Trump loyalists who switched sides after the 2020 election, only to be rewarded with well-paid, Trump-bashing media gigs. Others include Mr. Trump’s former acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney (CBS), press secretary Kayleigh McEneny (Fox), Fox Business host Larry Kudlow and press aide Alyssa Farah (ABC).
That Mr. Christie is willing to give up his high-profile ABC gig to enter a race he can’t possibly win is the real tell in the cartel’s Never Trump con game. This Pillsbury Doughboy of venom is the least popular of Republican candidates, with a rare “net negative” approval-disapproval rating. If ABC takes Mr. Christie’s smoldering cinder of a political corpse back for the general election run after he does his wet work on Mr. Trump, that network is ethically bankrupt.
There will be no shortage of other sacrificial pawns. Most prominent on the chessboard is former Vice President Mike Pence, a perennial Koch network supplicant.
Mr. Pence is the “et tu, Brute” Shakespearean figure in the eyes of Mr. Trump’s MAGA base for his turncoat role on Jan. 6. His sole mission is to chip away at Mr. Trump’s Christian right base by attempting to outflank him on the abortion issue — never mind the damage this may do to any Republican candidate in the general election forced to navigate the rocky feminist shoals of the overturned Roe v. Wade.
The field will fill further — possibly with former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney. Her blood feud with Mr. Trump over his open disdain for her father, former Vice President Dick Cheney, is palpable. Mr. Trump holds the neocon Mr. Cheney directly — and rightly — responsible for his costly, endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the blood and treasure lost to America.
If the Never Trump cartel pollsters think Liz can drain votes from Mr. Trump, she’ll be in the race faster than a lie from Rep. Adam Schiff’s mouth. If Mr. Trump wins the nomination, Ms. Cheney may run as an independent spoiler with full cartel backing.
Here, we must remember that the Never Trump cartel cares not who wins the general election. Once Mr. Trump is out, the uniparty wins either way.
• Peter Navarro served in the Trump White House as manufacturing czar and chief China strategist. This column originally appeared at http://peternavarro.substack.com.
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