David Graham: “The Iran war will pose a challenge for Vance, Rubio, or any other administration official who mounts a run. In that way, it’s a microcosm of two challenges that any would-be Trump successor will face. First, they will need to forge a base of support, which means trying to keep together as much of the MAGA coalition as possible. Trump’s ideological flexibility and personality-based politics have allowed him to assemble a group that doesn’t agree on anything except loving Trump and hating Democrats, and that group is already starting to splinter, in part due to criticism of his handling of the war. (Interestingly, Rubio and Vance are latecomers to Trumpism compared with many GOP voters.)”
“But just keeping a majority of the MAGA base united won’t be enough to win a general election. The second challenge will be for candidates to distance themselves from the things that have made Trump a historically unpopular president among the general population without infuriating Trump and alienating his hard-core supporters. Think about how loath Kamala Harris was to criticize Joe Biden during the 2024 election, and how that may have hurt her with swing voters—and then imagine how that might work with a president who is both more vengeful and more influential with his base.”
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