Is Glenn Youngkin running for President?

The Virginia governor appears to be eyeing a primary bid along with Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley. There are a few important reasons for this.

WEST HOLLYWOOD — Here in California, my city council last week voted to defund the sheriff’s department. But West Hollywood isn’t the only American neighborhood that has given up on legislating. The Mar-A-Lago sheriffs also appear to be off duty.

My late mentor Mark Perry called Harry Truman “more Democrat than American” in reference to the 33rd President’s dislike of his successor, Dwight Eisenhower, who aligns with the GOP. But Truman’s most notorious political observation extends to the very party he hated: If you want a friend in Republican politics, get a dog.

Two months after ex-President Donald Trump looked the Midas touchit’s open season on the american antipope.

We’ve been here before with a lot of doubters about this Donald Trump guy. But it should be said that it hasn’t been like that for about six or seven years. Looking ahead to 2024, the Republican Party appears poised for another open presidential primary.

The stark, sudden reality on this front has reportedly prompted Forty-Five to declare its intention to become Forty-Seven — and at the momentPeople.

With politics of the late millennium Denouncing the man before Congress, the Palm Beach paladin isn’t content with enduring what he sees as a mean, dishonest summer. “They call it the summer of Trump” In 2015, the future president was beaming.

Will there be an encore in 2022? Now, as then, Trump’s rivals don’t care. You were dead wrong seven years ago; Who’s right this time?

For one thing, has anyone gotten any wiser? Are the alternatives to Trump more than “Bush League”? The readers were subjected to my treatment of the Florida governor Ron Desantis last week. The intriguing (albeit doomed) prospect of one President Mike Pence must be saved for another.

Now let’s dive into what I call the “Republican Third Circle.”

governor Glen Youngkin, from my native Virginia, licks his chops to switch to a (slightly) better river than the James in Richmond. It was just as a Youngkin staffer wearing a Youngkin hat told me at the diner at NatCon II last fall: The governor has Potomac fever.

youngkin would be the first President born in the Commonwealth since Woodrow Wilson, and only the second since the state served as the fucking headquarters of the wrong side of what Johnny Cash called our bloody fratricidal war. For some reason, Virginia feels like she’s paid her dues for another round at the White House.

And the former co-CEO of the Carlyle Group feels he knows how to spot an opportunity: maybe he’s shooting some kind of commercial aimed at becoming supreme commander, definitely roar to New York for donor conversations and plunge into foul politics at the venerable Virginia Military Institute. Youngkin asked his squad on the board of the Landeswehr Academy and, two years after our nationwide Summer of Love, is sniffing at a conservative comeback.

It’s an interesting fight – one that Youngkin obviously enjoys: the fight over the schools. As an alumni board member a Virginia State University and product of the Commonwealth Public Schools, I can testify to this great Jefferson legacy in this country: Don’t mess with education. Leftist exaggeration in the learning field led to Youngkin being elected. And he hopes that could get him promoted 100 miles further north. He’s not a Trumpist, but Trumpists cheered his win last fall. Youngkin’s appeal is oddly unique.

Speaking of military academies, a bonafide product of a citadel of our national defense would like to be president. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—originally from Orange County, but primarily from the famous West Point “Class of ’86” – shows all the signs, at least officially, of going up against his former boss. He got ads, not in New York or California but in Iowa and South Carolina. He’s tanned, rested, and less huge. Nobody can surpass him.

Speaking of The Citadel, Nikki Haley, former governor of Palmetto State and Grande de Turtle Bay, says she shouldn’t be left out. I bet big bucks she’s not the Republican nominee, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t personally working to stave off the recession by buying plane tickets to Iowa. Thank you, Madam Ambassador.

What the hell is going on? Two main theories.

First, everyone whose name isn’t Ron DeSantis is a banker, against 2016 that before the primary (which is still a year and a half away) a consolidated opponent of Trump will emerge and for whatever reason it won’t be the governor of Florida. But, perhaps second, this tranche of players, for all the fanfare, is betting that Trump is actually remarkably bad at being consistently petty.

Trump Youngkin 2024? Trump Pompeo? Trump-Haley? Even more likely if they run.