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Bill Weld 2020?
Buried by other news was a little nugget reported this week by WCBV in Boston. Bill Weld is considering running for President as a Republican and may have even taken a leave of absence from his law firm to do that.
If you’re not familiar with Weld, he was Governor of Massachusetts for six years and change back in the ’90s. He tends to get antsy; after winning reelection in 1994, he challenged John Kerry for his Senate seat in 1996. Then, rather than finish his term as governor, he resigned when Bill Clinton tried to appoint him Ambassador to Mexico, but the Senate Foreign Relations Committee never even gave his appointment a hearing and the nomination was withdrawn. (Jesse Helms didn’t want to give Weld a hearing because Weld was too moderate for Helms’ taste.) And, of course, he appeared on the 2016 Libertarian ticket as Gary Johnson’s running mate.
(As a member of the NYLP, I’m obligated to mention that Bill Weld tried to run for governor of New York in 2006. He received the LP nomination, but withdrew from the race after failing to also receive the GOP nomination and had to be replaced on the ticket.)
Bill Weld running for President in 2020 is not shocking news for me. In 2018, he was making the rounds of the various LP state conventions, including the New York convention held last April. Everyone knew Weld was there. The guy is 6’4″, so he’s hard to miss in a room full of people. He was making the rounds (and making amends for both his previous positions on gun control and his “vouching” for Hillary Clinton shortly before the 2016 election).
The thing that shocked people was the notion that Weld might run as a Republican. Mostly because that datum runs contrary to, well, most of Weld’s statements on the subject. According to Matt Welch of Reason, Weld is denying the report. Michael Levenson of the Boston Globe is reporting the same thing. Weld is denying that he’s leaving his firm and that there’ll be an announcement soon.
The idea that Weld might run as a Republican is … interesting. He’d be running as a small-government moderate, as opposed to … whatever Donald Trump is. There’s clearly a market in the Republican Party for a challenge to Donald Trump. We keep seeing trial balloons to that effect.
We’ll have to wait and see. Weld is denying the report, so it may or may not be true. He may stick with the LP or he may run as a Republican. With Bill Weld, you never know what his decision might be. And you never know if he’ll stick with his decision.
Published in General
Well, he’s no Evan McMullin, but . . .
Define “market.” Niche markets in and around the suburbs of Washington, DC and isolated pockets here and there. (Isolated pockets are defined by “a house on your street.”)
There may be two people on the entire planet who could launch a credible challenge to the President in the GOP primaries. One said she’s not running, one is probably not running, and one of them is not Bill Weld.
Pro-choice. Dead in the water
Weld also strongly commended the integrity and competence of Clinton, saying that he considered her “a person of high moral character, a reliable person and an honest person.”
And trial balloons keep getting shot down.
Bill Weld? Really? How did the last former GOP Massachusetts governor do in 2012? At least most Americans knew who Mitt Romney was (George’s son).
Trump is the man in 2020, even if he French-kisses Nancy Pelosi after the next SOTU address. Hmmmm . . . even Democrats might vote for him after that . . .
Vanity candidates in the Republican primaries will just help Trump in the long run – stay in the Libertarian lane, we disgusted conservatives need a throw away box to check on election day.
There needs to be a viable candidate to take on Trump in the Republican Primary. While I would prefer a Pro-Life candidate, what is most important is that we remove the Trump albatross from around our necks.
Never trust a politician who married a Roosevelt.
At this point, the only albatross I see are Republicans who are ineffective at advancing conservative principles – that, or they only pay lip service to believing in them. Now it sounds like you’re chucking one of your conservative principles (pro-life) merely to get Trump out of office.
No, the Trumpster has done more for conservatives in the last two years since Ronaldous Magnus was last in office . . .
If by viable you mean someone who has a chance of actually winning, then I don’t think it is a stretch to suggest that Weld is not at all viable.
One of the most unasked questions is why in 2016, there were not just two bad* choices, but actually at least three. The Johnson and Weld ticket was an utter, catastrophic failure. Not to mention that Weld is a gun grabber (although admittedly he has changed his positions so frequently that I’m not sure where stands on the issue now).
Why did the Libertarian Party allow such dopes to be the frontrunners?
*) At least frequently perceived to be bad.
Franklin and Eleanor were both Roosevelts, so they married each other.
Point confirmed.
Bill Weld endorsed Obama in 2008 because he viewed John McCain as too radical and right wing, I guess.
Anyone who runs in the Republican primary against Trump is signing their own political death certificate. Whatever anyone thinks of Trump, the electorate simply won’t stand for it.
One word: dilettante. It seems like he gives up just when things get difficult. Yea, he’d last about two seconds against Trump. Next !
Weld was politically alive? That’s news.
Why?
The answer is right there in your question.
“Dope.”
You’re deluding yourself if you think anti-Trump Republicans are that limited in location and number. I’d suggest you look at the 40 House seats Republicans just lost a few months ago.
That’s why the Trump people are looking to lock down the RNC and the primaries before 2020. That’s why there have been moves to silence anti-Trump voices in right-wing media.
I’m not sure about that anymore.
I used to think it was true. But things are different now. All the rules that we used to think applied anymore. The whole system has been disrupted.
Sure, Donald Trump is pro-life, but only nominally. And he shattered the idea that you had to pretend to be a conservative to win the Republican nomination.
So all the old rules are out the window now.
That did him a lot of damage in LP circles too.
On the other hand, there’s this photo:
I’m not saying the one justifies the other. I’m saying that there’s a limit to the amount of damage the datum you’re pointing to does to Weld as a candidate.
There were lots of people who crossed over and endorsed Obama in 2008. Including Christopher Buckley, if I recall correctly. It was a weird year like that.
Bill Weld is already 73. It used to be that after 70 or so, most people didn’t have a political future (therefore a political death certificate had little meaning). It’s unlikely that Weld will run for anything in 2024, so he has nothing to lose there.
However, I disagree with your comment.
Look, after the Fall of Trump, there will have to be some kind of reckoning. If Trump faces a serious primary challenge in 2020, that person, even if they lose, will be in a position of leadership to rebuild the ashes of the Republican Party.
Weld may well be a dilettante. The flip side of that is the fight may embolden Weld and he might rise to the occasion.
Not for nothing, but they said Trump wasn’t viable either.
Well I don’t know many of them. Most of the Republicans I know are either pro-Trump or Trump skeptics, like me. And forced to decide between Trump and Harris, it’s an easy decision. Everywhere I look the “I’ll take a Prog-D over Trump crowd” is outnumber 10-1 or better.
The mid terms were supposed to be either a big huge referendum on Trump and the Rs would lose and lose bad, or they were gonna be a big huge referendum on Trump and they were gonna gain in the house and senate. Turns out it was just the same as it ever was.
The left hate Trump. That is obvious. The right takes him with grain of salt, for the most part.
I didn’t consider Trump a “moral” choice like you do Weld. Trump may not personally be pro-life, but operationally, it appears he is. I fully comprehend that Trump can be a Groucho Marx style chameleon (“These are my principles, and if you don’t like them, I have others”) but until the point he does I’m not working with the hypothetical pro wrestling heel turn on what got him to the dance.
I don’t understand your transactional costs in your choice. A good man with bad policies that will do harm to your ideals is not better than a bad man who does not do bad in his policy choices. If your concern is “the brand” then why are you going to get behind someone who is closer to your opposition in the hopes that he loses and give your opposition 4 years of media pr spin to build momentum for re-election to keep the “historicalness” going?
William Weld can’t win. In the race between old white Republican male and intersectional generic Democrat candidate with multiple similar policies, Weld will be Hitler still and generic Democrat will be “the transformational candidate we’ve been waiting for”