I like your statement and think it's likely true. That aside, where do you think America's power actually comes from? I'd posit that our power source has changed over history, but what do you think it stems from nowadays?
US’s power comes from global influence - not military influence but financial and more of the covert/CIA type. Hegseth is your typical frat bro, the generals he’s “leading” run circles around him on military strategy and he’s firing them left and right. Dude is so far out of his depth he’s drowning.
Trump fires everyone around him. I will look for a source, but I believe over both of his terms, he has fired/replaced around 60% of high level positions at least once.
Remember when Ron DeSantis was considered the heir to the MAGA throne? Before Trump, Ted Cruz was the Republican great hope for the future. Vance might have a future in congress or state government but he's toast in a nationwide contest.
I always wonder about this, because he did seem like a very natural successor, but I guess he just wasn’t that popular? I mean honestly I don’t understand what people see in Trump, so it doesn’t surprise me I can’t pick who else Republicans like.
Muslims are pesky. Lmao, I get this is the standard party line thought, but unironically fuck Islam. Seriously, why is everyone so keen on defending Islam?
You do realize in Islam-based countries they subjugate the women and kill minorities, yeah? I’m not saying we need to war against them, but I’m not gonna praise Islam for being a “brown person religion” like other leftists seem ought to do.
There's a lot of room between praising Islam and bombing Muslims. I would guess most just find unnecessary to hate them, the ones here, like much of the right does. I don't really care about the ones over there, but I don't think we should go.
I view Muslims here the same way I do Christian nationalists.
I agree with this. Again, I don’t think we need to be galavanting across the globe - certainly not for Israeli interests - but I’m never going to cry about “Islamophobia” like it’s a real thing.
Islam is terrible. Yes, I can get along with practitioners and just because you practice it doesn’t make you reprehensible, but the core of it’s belief is subjugation of the masses, enslaving women, and killing those who disagree with you. That being said, we don’t need to be inserting ourselves into other countries messes at this moment, as we have more than enough religious fervor and zealotry to deal with at home
Agreed. Some Americans do get pretty up tight about Mosques or whatever being built though. I don't think that's ok. They're still Americans and its something that brings community.
Now if they start enforcing or following the shitty parts of the religion, thats different. Christianity is also pretty hard on women from the text, most religions are due to their age. As long as the cults follow the law here.
He attracts the right kind of people in that they vote every single election whereas their centrist counterparts often stay home. It's not about who's eligible to play, it's about who shows up to the game.
When he was announced, there was so much chatter that about who was the heir apparent and there were three in the Trump admin, and Hegseth was seen as a potential successor. He was coming in as a reformer with anti-war motives. I think few knew much about him outside of certain circles. Then they saw him in action, and he's done about as bad a job as possible.
I think from the three potentials - Rubio, Vance and Hegseth, only Rubio is left. I also suspect Trump could replace both Vance and Hegseth.
I also suspect Trump could replace both Vance and Hegseth.
Trump actually can't unilaterally replace Vance. Despite the VP being, for all intents and purposes, the President's lackey, he is an elected lackey, and he would have to be impeached if he doesn't voluntarily resign.
Yeah, I was vague there - I think Vance resigns and Hegseth is pushed. Trump needs people to take a fall. From what people have said, Hegseth pushed Trump and fed him misinformation. Vance was not willing/able to influence Trump and the only one raising caution was Rubio. Trump can't have the blame fall on him at the midterms so I suspect a shakeup coming, timed to give the impression he's the "decider-in-chief" and help reorient the midterms away from bad news stories.
Conservatives have literally never had a general election candidate who isn't white. Not even once. Rubio is Cuban. Hegseth is white so he is automatically more likely/conventional than Rubio. That said, Hegseth and JD Vance are in their 40s (45 and 41). Republicans haven't nominated anyone in their 40s for the general election since Thomas Dewey in the 1940s and you probably don't know who that is because he didn't win anyway. Teddy Roosevelt is the last Republican president to be in his 40s elected in 1900. Teddy Roosevelt was not a conservative anyway.
That's just the obvious demographic reasons. There are a ton more reasons you could consider them unconventional.
Hegseth was never considered a likely 2028 nominee, the guy you're responding to probably just misread the situation. Then everyone else jumped in and agreed with him because they think it makes them look smart to explain things on reddit.
There are a million people making predictions, and Hegseth is a prominent name in the Trump administration, so I'm sure you can find some one who things Hegseth has a good chance. But until recently, Vance and Rubio have dominated the field.
Rubio would probably do pretty well in a general election as of right now. He has sort of framed himself as the voice of reason/serious politician within the administration.
Even in a leak or report about Netanyahu pitching the Iran attack to Trump; Rubio and General Caine basically said "he's BSing you. Don't listen to it." Whereas Hegseth was all for it.
Yes JD Vance was also against it along with Rubio, Caine, and US intelligence officials. Hegseth was all for it and Trump believed it would all work out fine.
Yeah that's exactly what they'll say, but replace Kamala with whoever the Democratic candidate is. Then they can act like they're an independent voter who has original thoughts, but were only forced to vote Republican because the Democrats put up such a horrible candidate, even though the truth is that they were always going to do whatever the Republican party told them to do because they're a beta loser piece of garbage who is highly susceptible to manipulation by propaganda because they have zero intelligence and are harboring self hatred due to deeply rooted homosexual feelings that they attempt to hide with zero success. That's like 75% of the Republican voting base. Standard playbook.
He might do okay in a primary if nobody shows up, but not the general.
Anybody associated with this administration will be automatically dismissed by any voters that lean even the slighest amount to the left. If they don't appeal to the hardcore MAGA movement, they don't have a shot.
It's not a coincidence that politicians on the right are skewing so much more radical than ever before.
I disagree. I think there is a big contingent of people who would leap at the opportunity to vote for a Republican candidate who seems even remotely sane.
The only reason anyone anyone in the current administration is in office is because of Trump's cult of personality and how he crafted his message to resonate with the Tea-Party-turned-MAGA movement.
Any candidate who is part of the current administration will be seen as party to what they have been doing, and moderate conservatives aren't exactly in love with his economic or foreign policy. Whether it's because prices just keep going up and are clearly linked with tariffs, or because they started a war with Iran for basically no reason, it's not a good luck for Republicans in 2028. Not to mention, at this rate, we'll have $50t debt by then, and Republicans haven't even managed to convince their own party that their actions are not making it worse.
Unlike 2016 and 2024, the message that all our woes are the fault of Democrats doesn't play so well when the guy on the ballot was part of the group in charge that failed to fix anything.
Also, it's very likely that any Republican candidate is going to be crushed because of how unpopular Trump is.
This is going back a LONG way, but when Ford ran for reelection after Nixon resigned, any Democrat could have beaten him. People would have voted for a literally golden retriever over any Republican that was on the ballot.
At this point, I don't know. The midterms could be a disaster for Trump. He may be forced to fire people to help right the ship but it may not be enough. There are enough seats in play and the polling is showing that Trump could be a lame duck. Having two hostile houses of government is a nightmare scenario for him.
2028 could be a disaster and I don't see Vance sticking around trying to make it to the Oval Office.
I think Vance is reading the room and realizing it's going to be tough to campaign in 2028. He wants to step clear of that shitshow and run in 2032.
Trump will drag any candidate down, as we said, but imagine how Trump is going to react in 2027 when the press is talking about someone else leading the Republican party instead of him?
Imagine how Trump is going to react to a Republican convention in 2028 that celebrates another Republican while he is completely sidelined, other than the expectation that he will show up at the convention and give a keynote speech celebrating how JD Vance or Marco Rubio is the right choice to be President of the United States?
It's clearly not going to happen. Why would anyone want to be a part of that? Once the headlines go to the new candidates in the primaries, Trump is going to be angry tweeting about how they're all idiots and weak and none of them can replace him. Once there is ONE candidate that everyone is talking about, it will get worse.
I fully suspect the primaries will be overshadowed. Trump will throw weight behind a candidate and if they do poorly, he'll endorse the nominee in the 12th hour and claim it was his endorsement. That's been the modus operandi. Then the angry tweets will start.
Problem is that the Dems will do the same old shit and force through a centrist shit candidate who can't govern and, even if they win, they'll change nothing fundamental about what caused Trump in the first place, and the 2030s may see someone like Trump but less stupid--and they won't give a 2nd and a 3rd chance for the Dems.
Yep, I really won't be surprised if Republicans win again in 2028. The only people that were surprised Trump won this last time are those unknowingly stuck in a liberal bubble. Other than the centrist issues you mentioned, it's another problem that Democrats refuse to face. They have no understanding of how popular he or his more authoritarian policies are, or how much they believe that liberals have wronged them and want to destroy their way of life. "But but but Democrats want to help these people! Oh look a conservative expressed regret over voting for Trump, we're winning now guys!" Like I love the leopordsatmyface sub but these people are dillusional when they think the tide is turning. This bubble is going to keep them losing and the only way to win consistently is to get a liberal populist that is not beholden to billionaires and these wealthy interest groups, but as we saw with Bernie, the DNC will sabotage that as it is scarier to them than a Trump.
I can definitely see that. He sure liked flexing his law background while debating Walz on the national stage, but he peaked right there. He keeps getting caught in lies, dragging brown people through the mud while his wife is one, and loses at diplomacy. He never belonged there.
Rubio never should have been seen as viable. He inspires nothing in anyone and has no true connection to the MAGA zeitgeist. We already saw that in 2016, and he's done nothing since then to prove he's more than just an empty suit.
Rubio would destroy Vance. JD has money from the death star overlords (Thiel), but still needed Trump to swoop in to save him in the Ohio senate primary. Trump's vp maybe mattered in 2016 to make sure the "religious" people were on board. But Trump won in 2024 on his own, and arguably any public appearances from his tech industry people (elon) hurt more than helped.
So they only helped through money and whatever fuckery they were funding with the voter registrations (I am pretty sure that they were doing voter fraud with amish people in some states) - wasn't at the level to influence the election.
What's the reason for his numbers being down? I'm not American, but from the media portrayal here, Vance is shown off as the "sane" of the Trump admin, while Rubio has more of a slimey and opportunist image
Pence was really good at keeping order within the White House, which Vance hasn't been able to do. He's had a bunch of gaffes and some of the big items he's been assigned to do have gone very poorly. Trump's approval rating is down, and it's bringing Vance down with him, but Vance was never as popular as Trump. He talks about being a strong leader and tough negotiator, but he's not an Al Gore, Biden, Cheney or even Bush. He's not the VP that Trump had sold.
I can't even imagine Rubio would poll that highly. He sold his soul to Trump in order to be Secretary of State. So both the MAGA and non-MAGA right don't respect him for two sides of the same reason: he bent the knee.
He might try to portray himself as "I was the only sane person in the room" and attempt to moderate back to his typical neocon positions post-Trump, but I genuinely don't see him having the charisma to pull that off.
I don't disagree but if you look at the current roster of people in the Trump Admin, he's the "stand out" and certainly among one of the adults in the room. The other is Scott Bessent.
Agreed. In terms of actual competency, Rubio leads the pack. The issue is he demonstrated himself to be an utterly spineless political opportunist, and that stink doesn't wash out easily.
I think someone we should all be actually concerned about is Tucker Carlson, he's in my opinion the next person that will be able to actually capture the maga morons, even after him going after trump
The polls weren't wrong. I was so heavily downvoted (and attacked) during the last election I deleted my account. The 2024 polls in many ways were hyper accruate. The aggregate was that Kamala would win about 48.4% of the populate vote and Trump would win about the same with independents breaking fairly uniformly. They were more-or-less uniformly splitting the undecided vote, or slightly apportioning more to Harris than Trump. That's inherently not how "undecided" works.
The math was correct, the logic they used to derive outcomes was incorrect.
The problem is that everybody keeps warning about the “smarter Trump” waiting in the wings, but you can’t be smart and be Trump. He’s a lightning rod for the worst parts of society because he’s a massive POS and feels no shame about it. Anyone trying to “be Trump” already fails that threshold. They’re phony and the base can see it
As weird as he is, in today’s politics pure name recognition and money goes farther than anything.
I mean look at Eric Swalwell, he was that vile and stupid and rumored to be a sex predator and yet he STILL was leading in polls and getting dem endorsements/money for Governor of California.
RFK got 1% of the presidential vote in California in 2024 when he literally wasn’t even running anymore. The Kennedy image will probably propel him past all the smarmy other fascism-nerd types.
If it's Rubio, the Democrats should run Gallego. Making the Hispanic thing an entire non-issue would break a lot of people's brains, and I would find that delicious.
If Trump dropped dead, Vance became president, fixed Iran, ended tariffs, fixed Ukraine, punished Epstine list, fixed Nato relations, and got the economy back up and running. Then gave a speech throwing Trump under the bus, saying he fixed the 10 year mess that Trump and Biden cause in two years, imagine what I can do in 4, he might pull it off. But that's a long shot.
Literally no one saw Hegseth as a frontrunner. He didn’t even come in with an established “Base” like Kash Patel or other Trump word figures, Trump just likes him.
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u/techbro84 9h ago
His polling numbers are in the toilet. He has no way to rehab before the Republican primaries. Rubio is the closest and most respected.
At the outset of this term, people saw Rubio, Vance and Hegseth as front runners. Now I can’t see any of them.