Joe Walsh will not be president in 2020. No matter what happens, Joe Walsh will not win the presidential election.
His recent decision to run for the Republican Party nomination, however, would certainly help pave the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. for former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., or Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt..
Two presidential incumbents in recent history have faced primary challenges: Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. Both candidates won the primary but lost the general election.
One might make the point that Carter and Bush would lose anyway, as Carter’s support had dropped to nearly 50% in his own party and Bush was dwindling below 75% among his party members. That is, they had lost or were losing their base of support.
Trump, however, does not have this issue. Polls show that Trump maintains a high level of support within the GOP, usually showing anywhere from 90-94%. So does Walsh expect to rally the roughly 6% of Republicans who don’t approve of Trump to overwhelm the rest of the party and carry him to victory?
It would be hard to imagine that even Walsh thinks he can do this. In his Op-Ed in The New York Times, Walsh broke out many of the familiar talking points against Trump. He focused on the President’s temperament, claiming he sows division. He also said Trump is owned by Russia —a theory thus far proved to be unsubstantiated.
Walsh also touched on critical issues for conservatives, namely the rising national debt and tariffs. Conservatives can and probably will argue about tariffs until we’re all blue in the face, but the rising national debt is one thing almost all conservatives can agree must be addressed.
The Trump administration is hardly the first conservative administration to see the debt rise. The debt also rose under Reagan and during Walsh’s time in Congress. The Trump administration has garnered many victories for conservatives in its three years. Trump appointed two conservative Supreme Court justices and 146 federal judges as of Aug. 25. The economy under Trump has been fantastic and has reached a point where we now have more job openings than unemployed people – a situation people would have merely dreamed about when Walsh was elected to Congress in 2011. The Trump administration has slashed regulations, cutting two for every one it proposes.
In his Op-Ed, Walsh wrote that there is no place in our country for personal attacks, yet his website and Twitter account are full of personal attacks on the President and next to no policy suggestions.
Trump will win in a primary against Walsh. Trump’s 94% Republican support and incumbency will assure his victory over another Republican candidate. Walsh’s candidacy empowers the increasingly left-leaning Democratic candidates, nearly all of whom have promised expansive government programs.
Democratic candidates and their supports have proposed court-packing, gun confiscation, tax hikes, universal or single-payer healthcare, and some have even began demanding retributions. Good luck getting the national debt any lower with them.
Joe Walsh either has absolutely no political prudence or he is self-righteously grandstanding in hopes that this stunt will somehow benefit him. In doing so, he is putting a variety of issues that he professes to care about at serious risk.