To the surprise of absolutely no living person, Ron Desantis and Vivek Ramaswamy have dropped out of the primary process to be the Republican nominee for President in 2024. We also got news that Chris Christie had dropped out recently. As to Desantis, NBC blamed "Muddled messages, hiring too many staffers and even a puzzle." There are probably similar defenses of Ramaswamy as a candidate. Both of these argument threads miss their respective points.
Ramaswamy was a tech-bro who drank his own coolaid. He got lucky in business, parlayed that into a little bit of political success, and started inhaling his own gaslighting. Like Desantis, he presented himself as a Trump without the baggage. What Ramaswamy calls baggage, we would call a history of recorded and reported statements, policies, and actions. But I digress... Ramaswamy was another sideshow and no one wanted his also-ran tickets, either. On leaving, he has endorsed Trump.
Chris Christie is more of a question mark. He clearly sees Trump for what he is and is willing to state it, but Christie is too little, too late. But even if he were the right amount and on-time, he is running on a negative-Trump platform rather than a content-filled platform of his own. No one knows what Christie stands for outside "not MAGA".
For all intents and purposes, this leaves Nikki Haley. She is but a pale imitation of Trump (pun intended), and the only real question is whether Haley will pull out before Trump falls over from bad health.
But we can be a bit relieved because we are now free of the Ron-Vivek virus.
P.S. Yes, Trump continues to bounce among his various legal cases. I think there are four, perhaps a fifth that I lost track of, and still 91 felony counts hanging over him. He has been recently making more and more verbal mistakes in the press. Confusing Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi is the most recent one, but they are coming in a steady flow. Trump is still the unchallenged favorite to get the Republican nomination.
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