The ‘Draft Youngkin’ Conspiracy

When the truth hurts too much.

By
193
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin addresses the Economic Club of Washington's luncheon event at the Marriott Marquis on September 26, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

I sat down to write this morning about the “Draft Youngkin” push among Republican donors and had the sense that I’d covered it before.

When you write every day, you’ve covered practically everything before.

So I checked the Dispatch archives and there it was. “Is Glenn Youngkin Running for (Vice) President?”

The date was … September 29, 2022.

One year later to the day, quasi-influential people on the American right are still entertaining this dopey fantasy.

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  1. Belisarius.Aves

    At this point my bigger question is whether this cult only has one leader. I am strangely optimistic that Ramaswamy, auditioning for the role of heir apparent (or familiar depending on your POV) changed his persona overnight from Trump to Mr. Rodgers. I know Tucker or the Trump boys would love to inherit the mantle but I am thinking (and desperately hoping) that when this guy moves on, people may sober up - but I have been wrong many times before!

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  2. Belisarius.Aves

    Though Nick makes a good Trump case, this is not new. Fred Thompson, Colin Powell, Scott Walker and most bizarre of all, Giuliani, were all going to wreck the wrong Republicans and restore order to the nation. Unless one hails from the environs of Kansas City or Philadelphia, the backup quarterback is always the savior. If only Bill would start Zappe over Jones, the Patriots will win again. Does not work that way. And Youngkin himself was a recipient of a number of advantages not the least of which, like Trump in 2016, his opponent was fairly odious.

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      JDW

      Biden is fairly odious. The problem is Trump is so bad Biden looks like one of the great elder statesmen of the century. My only fear is Biden gets so bad off that it gives Trump a shot.

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        Normb1442

        I realize, as a lefty, that I'm reading on a righty site, so most of you probably do think Biden is "odious," but I sincerely doubt that most of the electorate feels that way (they WOULD agree with you that he's not one of the great elder statesmen of the century -- I doubt there are enough lefties who feel that way to fill a phone booth. If phone booths still existed). Biden is well within what most Americans consider non-threatening. They may not particularly like him or what he's done, but by next November they will know exactly what Trump will do in a second term and they will like it a lot less than when they know Biden will do. Regardless of the verdict of juries, it's the TESTIMONY that will expose exactly who Trump is that will sink him. Cassidy Hutchinson cannot be portrayed as an agent of the deep state. The cult may buy into that -- they buy into ANYTHING -- but they aren't enough to elect him. Once the trials begin, FOX will have to limit its news coverage to the weather report or else tell their audience what recent outrage was just exposed.

        Biden needs to stay healthy and he needs the cult to continue to act as if shutting down the government is going to be good for anybody, and he will win, even when the Saudis and the Russians, both of whom have major reasons to want Trump to win, drive the price of gasoline to $5 next year.

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  3. Paul in NC

    That is the Democrats' message in 2024: A vote for Trump is a vote to be ruled by a cult.

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  4. Bill.Devinney

    The draft Youngkin buzz reminds me of Fred Thompson in 2008. Cheney did not run, so the field was open and no one loved any of the candidates in the summer of 2007. A buzz about Fred Thompson arose and people thought, if he only would get in the race, he would capture all of the disaffected Republican voters. He got in relatively late--September 2007--and never caught any traction. I think Youngkin would probably suffer the same fate.

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    1. Belisarius.Aves

      It was a bummer to learn that the real Fred Thompson was not actually Arthur Branch from Law and Order. What was interesting about the real Reagan, the one who could take a bullet, make jokes about it, and be back on the job in a few months, was cooler than any role he played.

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  5. Mike Darnell

    Great piece. Thanks.

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    Dave Casper

    If not Youngkin, how about the Sweet Meteor of Death?

    https://dailycaller.com/2016/09/08/an-interview-with-the-sweet-meteor-of-death/

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    Mister D

    Why would Youngkin run at this point? The odds of beating Trump are small. The odds of raising the ire of Trump voters is great, and why risk angering his VA constituency by trying to bail on his current job? Better to serve out his term. Trump will likely lose and Youngkin will be unemployed just as the 2028 race begins in earnest. He'd be in a perfect spot to step in as savior. All these other GOP candidates will have gotten older and likely less relevant and probably come tarnished after this primary. Trump will be in his 80s. Even if the party hasn't smartened up completely, they'll probably (maybe, possibly, perhaps) want to move on. If by some chance Trump wins, he's term limited. There's still a path to the nomination, albeit one obstructed by whomever DJT picks as his veep. Either way, 2028 seems a better time to put his chips on the presidential table.

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    Mister D

    I have had my hopes of the GOP returning to something like normalcy strangled slowly over the past 7 years.

    First it was that they wouldn't nominate him.
    Then it was that he couldn't win.
    Then it was, well, I can ride it out. He'll lose in 2020 and we can move on.
    Then he won a huge number of votes in 2020 and I realized that while he's still a loser, he was also too popular to have been discredited.
    Then came January 6th and I thought it was horrible but it would finally put a nail in the coffin.
    Nope.
    I am still registered with the party. I will make one last primary vote next spring before, most likely, walking out the door into even greater political irrelevance.

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      JDW

      Right there with you. I stay in the party because I want to vote against Trump as many times as I possibly can before I die.

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        Mister D

        I can't quite go there. I'm tired of banging my head against the wall. It hurts me and the wall isn't close to buckling. I don't know which haunts me more: thinking that Trump might actually win the presidency, or that he won't and we'll be back here again in 2027.

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  10. Richard Kropas

    I am disgusted as a conservative and also by the baby boomers and millennials generations. I do not believe the silent Depression World War II generation would have fallen for this. My parents, aunts, uncles and assorted friends seemed to be better "adults" than anyone born post-war on average.

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      JDW

      Oh I absolutely think the generation that won world war 2 was a great generation in so many ways. They would not tolerate the way parents terrorize teachers nowadays. And the teachers would never cave in like they do nowadays. The boomers and generation X blew it. And I'm generation X so I'm taking some blame.

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    2. Besht2003

      You have our number kid! Kind of surprised millennials ended up in the pot. And, well, unless you are a boomer yourself, you don't have any parents, uncles, friends who weren't born post-war--you too, just a little further down the road Come to think of it, I'm a boomer and the folks in our generation who were born pre-war were those parents, and grandparents, and aunts, and uncles and they no longer with us.

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    3. Hikingguy

      Darn those crazy kids. Okay.

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        Normb1442

        I'm a pre-boomer (born in 1942) and while, as a lefty by nature, Trump never tempted me, an awful lot of my generation voted for him because they thought he'd be better for their stock portfolios than Hillary, and now they're mad at Biden even though the DOW is well UP from any point in Trump's term, because they have this idea that a Republican President will always be better for them.

        There are no age limits on strait-jacketed thinking.

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