2024’s Elephant Parade: Who Plays The Trump Card?

>> Bill Whalen: It's Thursday, April 13, 2023, and welcome back to Matters of Policy and Politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the world. I'm Bill Whalen, I'm the Hoover Institution's Virginia Hobbes Carpenter distinguished policy fellow in journalism. I'm not the only fellow podcasting these days.

I recommend you go to our website, which is hoover.org. Go to the tab at the top of the homepage, it says commentary. Head over to where it says multimedia. And under the guise of audio podcasts, you will find no less than 17 in all, including one with a rather curious title of saint, sinners and salvageables.

That was a series of podcasts dedicated to election integrity that were done last summer and fall. The gentleman who is the voice of those podcasts, Ben Ginsberg, joins us today for an early preview of the 2024 election. About my friend Ben, Ben Ginsburg is the Hoover Institution's Volcker family visiting fellow and a nationally recognized political law advocate.

Ben's past clientele reads like a who's who of American elections for the past six presidential presidential nominees. I'll have to find out who those two are. I think I know who one of them is, but I'm curious who the other one is. Here at the Hoover institution, Ben's involved in several projects involving election integrity, which we'll also discuss today.

Ben, thanks for coming on the show.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Bill, thanks for having me great to be here.

>> Bill Whalen: So I wanted to have you here in the middle of April, Ben, because I think this is what I like to call the quiet before the storm in terms of the field actually taking shape.

There was news on this front this week. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott launched a presidential exploratory committee. Ben, you're a lawyer I'm not you could probably better explain what the exploratory committee is, but I think it's a symbol. It allows you to run a campaign. You can pay for polling, you can pay for travel expenses without formally announcing.

So you're a quasi presidential candidate, I guess best way to put it, if we assume Scott is in the race, that makes five candidates in all. Former President Donald Trump announced on November 16 of last year. Former South Carolina governor UN ambassador Nikki Haley jumped in on Valentine's Day.

Anti woke author businessman Vivek Ramaswamy jumped in the race a week later, on February 21, Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, took a plunge on April 2. Now, Tim Scott may be probably running as well. So, Ben, this sounds like a pretty scant field, but always good.

Go back in our history and do a little sleuthing. And here's what I found. If you go back to 2015, Ben, and the last time republicans had an open presidential race, no incumbent. On this day, April 13, 2015, Marco Rubio announced his candidacy, making him, at the time, the third candidate Ted Cruz had declared on March 23, ran Paul on April 7.

Things that got busy in May, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, George Pataky, all announced in May. June, things got even busier Ben. Letsy Graham, Rick Perry, Jeb Bush, Trump, Bobby Jindal, and Chris Christie all jumped in in June. Scott Walker and John Kasich jumped in July.

The point of this all, Ben, you ended up having 16 candidates in addition to Donald Trump. So let's start with a little Vegas odds making here. Ben, I'm not going to put you on the spot in predicting how many serious republicans, not including Gadflys, but how many serious republicans to run.

Let's do it a different way. Let's do over under simply with the start with this question. Well, give me an over under, Ben. If I put 16 as the as the number.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Under, but not by much.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, now, let's make it a little tricky. How about ten as the over under?

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: Over

>> Bill Whalen: Over ten.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah Yeah.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay. I want you to do a little habeas corpus here. I want you to produce the bodies here. So if we have five, as I mentioned already I will give you two mics. I'll give you Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo.

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: Take them both.

>> Bill Whalen: Seven I'll give you John Bolton, that's eight.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yep.

>> Bill Whalen: We can argue about if he's really a serious candidate or not, but there's a voice out there for him. That's eight candidates right now. Liz Cheney.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Maybe.

>> Bill Whalen: Maybe governors. I count three governors Chris Sanuduz, Christy Noem, and Glenn Youngkin, as possibilities.

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: Give you all those two out of those three.

>> Bill Whalen: Two of those three and then finally, Ron DeSantis, governor of Florida.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yep and we put him in there for purposes of this.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay so.

>> Ben Ginsberg: And then there'll be I mean, they're gonna be some people who are not in your crazy gadfly territory, although they seem like long shot people.

Like maybe Will Hurd of Texas, Mike Rogers, former House intelligence chair from Michigan. Maybe the Mayor of Miami, Mayor Suarez, is making noises about jumping in. So, all in all, you'll have a robust, I think, dozen candidates in the field.

>> Bill Whalen: So what's in it for some of these candidates?

Who we, if we don't call them Gadflyers or we don't call them kind of front of the pack, the kind of tweeters, what, what are they getting out of it Ben?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, I think they get out of it so it's different for different people. Any number of them think it is the right thing to do and honestly believe they have a chance because they bring something unique to the program.

Some of them have particular points of view that they feel deeply about, that they want to get into the mix. Mayor Suarez would probably, for example, feel that way about representing the Hispanic vote in the republican primary. Some of them see great tv contracts at the end of the rainbow, and that would not be without president.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Full disclosure, by the way, you are a tv guy yourself. You do commentary from time to time on CNN.

>> Ben Ginsberg: That is true I have never run for president nor been tempted to.

>> Bill Whalen: Ben, what's the first cycle that you got involved in?

>> Ben Ginsberg: The first presidential cycle would really go back to 1992, when I was counsel of the Republican National Committee and George HW Bush was seeking re-election.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Okay well, I happen to know that campaign pretty well, Ben, because I worked on that campaign.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Indeed a young Bill Whalen.

>> Bill Whalen: Bill Whalen, agent of it. During that campaign cycle, I wanted to be a White House speechwriter, and this was my ticket to being a White House speechwriter.

I had it all elaborately planned out. I'd work like a dog on the campaign, get noticed. I'd get rewarded, maybe get a speech writing spot, a cabinet position, do that. Well, for a couple of years in the last year or two of the White House, play the big house, but didn't work out because of a guy named George, a guy named Bill Clinton.

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah things get in the way of great career moves, but yours was a fine, logical, well out, well thought out career path.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah the other funny thing about the 92 campaign, Ben, that people should know, if you go to any kind of Bush reunion which brings in people from past campaigns, once you tell them that you worked on the 92 campaign.

The rather meter ones will do an Ellen their forehead, because this is the only Bush campaign of father or son that actually managed to lose in November.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah It gets taken pretty personal.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah well, I asked you about how far you go back for this question.

We we're looking at this field and we're looking at some serious candidates, some not so serious candidates, a lot of questions kind of surfacing underneath this as various Republicans. What they're running on. And the question, Ben, has it always been like this, or is Donald Trump just absolutely turned over the apple?

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, Donald Trump has certainly affected a lot of things that have never been affected before in a Republican primary. We've had frontrunners before and obvious front runners, George W Bush in 2000, John McCain in 2008. We've never had a front runner who's been defeated in the previous election, presidential election and whose candidates actually did poorly for the Republican Party in the midterms of 2022 and 2018.

But he is such an overwhelming figure that. There are a lot of campaigns who actually tactically should probably have announced already, and they're holding back because there's no point in jumping into the propeller of Trump rhetoric, right.

>> Bill Whalen: Right, is that code language for Ron DeSantis?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, well, Ron DeSantis, I think, has a better, more time honored reason, which is governors do need to wait till the end of their legislative session.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Right.

>> Ben Ginsberg: To jump in, that's a solid reason to wait and I think he is wise to do that.

>> Bill Whalen: In fact, I think if you go back to 1999, I think George W got in in June of 99.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, he waited, our mutual former boss, Pete Wilson, waited until the right time and the never-ending California legislative cycle to jump in.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Right.

>> Ben Ginsberg: There's a consideration of Scott Walker in 2016, Chris Christie, many other governors.

>> Bill Whalen: Right, well, let's focus on DeSantis for a minute. One thing people probably don't know about Ron DeSantis, this is a very young man. He turns 45 in September.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah.

>> Bill Whalen: And there's always, with all presidential candidates, Ben, there's the question of now or later, and there's no kind of set rule on when to go.

We can point you to, for example, I can point you to Mario Cuomo. Mario Cuomo flirted with it in 1988 and passed on it, and then 1992, he, you might recall, he took it to just ridiculous extents. He waited until the very last hour, literally, to go up to New Hampshire to file papers.

There was a plane waiting in Albany to take him up there. He finally decided, no, two years later, he was out of a job.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, I'm not sure Ron DeSantis has the same sort of mental makeup is Mario Cuomo.

>> Bill Whalen: Right.

>> Ben Ginsberg: But you mentioned his age, and that's a really salient point.

If he goes in against Donald Trump, and Donald Trump's 30% of the Republican Party is as adamantly in favor of Donald Trump as it is now. Ron DeSantis has alienated those people. So there's gotta be at least a little bit of thought. The virtue of doing everything he's doing now, running really hard in this period, getting on Donald Trump's radar screen, making Trumpites worry about him, and then the last minute saying, you know what?

Donald Trump's such a great guy, I'm for him. And then Ron DeSantis, right, when he runs for president at the age of 49 stands to be a real favorite of the Trump base, in addition to others he can bring.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because essentially, I was watching Fox News this morning.

I saw no less than three ads paid for by Trump's people bashing Ron DeSantis. They're going after him on Social Security, of all things, but here's a question, Ben. Can DeSantis pull it back at this point? Cuz, look, he has been around the country earlier this year promoting his book.

And one way that people go back to presidential campaigns is they sell their book as a preview of coming attractions. He has an organization kind of in place, I understand a lot of donors he's talked to raised a bunch of money, there are people waiting for him to go.

Ed Rollins, speaking of Fox News, he's on Fox News doing ads, run, run, run. So, yeah, it's like the missile's ready to launch, but can you pull back if you're that close to running? And can he really do it credibly in terms of just not saying, I don't think I can beat Donald Trump?

How does he really kind of craft an effective message saying that now's not the time for me?

>> Ben Ginsberg: He does have the ability as governor of Florida to propose all sorts of model legislation.

>> Bill Whalen: Right.

>> Ben Ginsberg: He does have the ability to say, Donald Trump is a persecuted man right now.

And I think that's wrong, and on behalf of all Americans, I'm standing up against the deep state, it's going after Donald Trump. I think there are a number of ways to do it, do it gracefully. Part of that would be working on the language that Donald Trump would use to praise him to the high holy heaven.

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: And setting him up for a much clearer approach in 2028. Now, I tend to agree with you that he has gone to great lengths right now, and it would not be a perfect pivot, but I think you can never completely rule it out.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, it would be awkward, it seems to be bad for him to pull back because donors who are looking at him thinking he's the best chance to stop Trump.

They might very well remember him not running if there's a very bad Republican cycle in 2024, which I wanna get to later in this podcast.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, I mean, I think all of that is true, but I think that the way candidates approach the last steps before they go hurtling off the cliff is different for all of them, and there are a lot of considerations.

So I believe that a presidential candidate's mind is not firmly made up until they actually take that step. And as we've seen in candidates withdrawing once they're in the race, you do get

>> Bill Whalen: So one thing our listeners should know is that Ben and I spent time last summer doing a round of interviews with Republican consultants.

This is part of a larger endeavor at the Hoover Institution run by Dave Brady and Doug Rivers, two very renowned political scientists. Which is to just look at the question of the Republican existence and what it is that Republican candidates should be talking about and what it is Republican voters are looking for.

And, Ben, it seemed to me that there is one very obvious thing coming out of those interviews, that Donald Trump has a hold on this primary in ways that people perhaps can't appreciate it. It's not a majority hold, but it's just he is clinging, I think you mentioned a minute ago, this hard and fast 30% that just won't go away.

And I'm kinda puzzled by it in some regards. I mean, especially those Trump followers who just believe in him and he just cannot do any wrong. For all the bombast, remember the line he said about he could walk down, what, Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and get away with it?

That seems to be the case with his followers, to whom he just can do no wrong.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, it does, it is. He is clearly a hero to his followers, and they are not going to brook any real criticism of him. That is a significant chunk of the Republican Party primary electorate, and it's based on really a sort of personality attraction he has for voters.

It's not based on the track record of how successful his endorsed candidates do, cuz that's mixed events. It really is a devotion to him as part of a cult of personality.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, it's just as a curious relationship. I'm not pretty to the nature of the Ginsburg marriage, for example.

But I suspect if you came home to the lovely and charming Mrs. Ginsburg and said, by the way, honey, while you were nursing our young child, I just had sex with a porn star. I think he would have been in trouble.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, wouldn't have gone well.

>> Bill Whalen: Right, know your followers as well.

Trump has also been in the news, Ben. This week, announced that he's filed a lawsuit in Southern Florida court against his former attorney, Michael Cohen, demanding $500 million in damages. And let me read you a line from this quote. An action arising from his multiple breaches of fiduciary duty, unjust enrichment, conversion, and breaches of contract by virtue of past service as Trump's employee and attorney.

This is not your exact field of legal expertise, Ben, but what's Donald Trump doing here?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, I think this is more for performance art than anything else. In other words, it is a way to, To say publicly that everything Michael Cohen has said about him in terms of the New York indictment, the aforementioned porn star, is nonsense and self-serving for Michael Cohen.

Whether or not there's a grain of truth in those assertions about Michael Cohen, this is a process is the penalty sort of a suit. And so Michael Cohen's gonna have to pay a lot of money in legal fees and go through the trauma and time of responding to this lawsuit.

Not a really pleasant way to spend money.

>> Bill Whalen: And I think I saw, Ben, where Trump was on a plane yesterday to New York to give testimony or take part in, I think, a $250 million case involving some aspect of fraud related to a Trump endeavor. Then, of course, there's a situation in Manhattan.

So, question for you, can he effectively run for president while he has all these legal distractions around him? I'm of mixed minds here. On the one hand, it's just a relentless kind of wave of bad news in terms of having to go to court. It's just a bad look for a candidate.

On the other hand, it's not like he needs the attention, not like he has to need to be in Iowa, New Hampshire, pressing the flesh that much because he's already known entity there.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, I think you have to take note of Donald Trump as a unique figure.

There's no legal bar on him running for office if he's under indictment or even if he's convicted for either of the New York acts, so he can do it. I mean, I think what we've seen so far is that even his opponents, or potential opponents in the presidential race have laid off criticizing him and, in fact, have trained their fire on the Manhattan district attorney who brought the case.

It's really, that indictment has really had the effect of kind of freezing the republican field, with the exception of Tim Scott. But I think that Donald Trump, and given the devotion of his followers, can actually go ahead and run a Republican primary campaign while he's facing all this legal trauma.

I think it's real different for a general election campaign because how this is playing with his devout 30% Republican base. He needs to win the primary, not playing the same way with suburban Republican leaning voters who really will spell the difference in the very few battleground states that will be up in 2024.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Glad you mentioned that, because so there's a Quinnipiac poll that came out the other day, Ben, it showed 90% of Republicans think that the indictment's political. So there you are, it's blanket across Republicans. ABC came out with the poll meanwhile, Ben, which asked for Trump's approval rating and Biden's approval rating.

25% approval rating for Trump, 34% for Joe Biden, this shapes up as perhaps the grimmest of grimmest choices in a 24 election, if they are the two respective nominees.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, it's not a great choice according to what people's feelings are. But then again, both of those candidates, if you were to put your money down right now, will make it through their respective party primaries in a little over a year from now.

And at that point, it becomes much more of a binary choice.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, let's go back to DeSantis for a second since you mentioned the suburban voters here. Explain to me what you think he's up to on abortion, Ben, because he is, as I understand, he is poised to sign the bill which would create a six-week ban in Florida.

Last year, he signed one that was a 15 week ban. You look around at other republican candidates. Glenn Youngkin, after the Dobbs decision, he was about the first prominent Republican to kinda overshoot with a policy, and his proposal was a 15-week ban. Tim Scott was campaigning and, excuse me, he was visiting New Hampshire, can't say he was campaigning.

He was visiting New Hampshire earlier today. He was asked if he would do a 20 week ban. He said he would sign that. I'm curious as to why DeSantis would do a six-week ban when 15 to 20 seems more the sweet spot. And especially, Ben, after that Wisconsin Supreme Court race, which was driven in large part by abortion.

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: I believe that Ron DeSantis is trying to out-Trump Trump for the deeply conservative Republican base. I think he's also got some considerations in the makeup of the Florida legislature, which is a deeply, deeply conservative majority and virtually a super majority of Republicans. And I think he, his strategy seems to be to be the most conservative, most Trump, like non Trump.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Well put. Let's talk now a little bit about the GOP itself. Ben, I am a all-time Washington person, and I remember back in the day when going to the Republican National Committee building just on Capitol Hill, not too far from the grand building itself, it's like going to the temple of Zeus.

It was where the power structure laid, and go to the Capitol Hill Club and see movers and shakers. This was the Republican establishment, Ben, plain and simple. Tell me what the republican establishment is today. Is it Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy? Is it party elders like George W Bush?

If a candidate like Donald Trump or someone's gonna bash the establishment, who are they bashing?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Really good question. I had the honor of working in that building for six years, both at the Republican Congressional Committee and the Republican National Committee. It was a different place back then.

So I think you have a really hard time defining who the Republican establishment is today. Certainly, you can make a case for the legislative leadership, but it doesn't seem that the legislative leadership is really driving the train. That's Donald Trump, the Republican National Committee is very Trump heavy these days.

And in point of fact, I'm not sure there is republican establishment these days. I think ever since McCain Feingold went into effect in the 2004 election, it changed not only the money dynamics of the National Party Committee, but because the money dynamics really changed in the state party.

The makeup of the national Committee, which you would think of in part as the establishment, went from people who had actually run campaigns to people who were more fundraisers and interested in politics. If you want an example of what I mean, go to the Republican National Committee website and look at the resolutions that the Republican National Committee passes twice a year at its meetings.

They are doing things about foreign policy and monetary policy and social policy. And I can promise you from my experience in the cloakrooms of both the House and the Senate, the first thing on the minds of Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy is, gee, what do the members of the National Committee think about this bill we're to vote on?

So I think whatever you believe the establishment might be, it is much more diffuse than it was 20 years ago, even 15 years ago. And it is. Why Donald Trump, as truly a large figure, has been able to so dominate the party, so that the national committee is a tool of his.

And the legislative leadership, including governors in the states and state legislatures, are not taking him on on either policy positions or political judgments that he's making, it seemed to be hurting the party in election.

>> Bill Whalen: There's another way to pose this question Ben, and that's to go back even before our time, and that's to go back to the late Robert Taft, the senator from Ohio, famous isolationist, Robert Taft's nickname was Mister Republican.

The question, Ben, in 2023, is there a Mister Republican or a Miss Republican out there?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, it's Donald Trump.

>> Bill Whalen: Well, let's build on that, because if I asked you this question of Democrats, Mister Democrat would be who? Let's say Barack Obama.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, I'd say Joe Biden, since he's sitting in the White House.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Well, but I'd probably say Obama because Biden is, look, Biden's kind of a Reynold at the end of the day. I mean, he may run for a second term, but, Obama's Obama. I mean, it's very safe, you saw the NCAA women's title game and the flap that ensued after that where Joe Biden wanted to invite both teams to the White House.

Bad move, first lady, an LSU player said, I'll go to the White House only to see the real President Barack Obama.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, he is that galvanizing figure, but you know what's different between him and Robert Tapp? Robert Tapp was actually deeply involved in party politics during his tenure.

I'm not sure that Barack Obama is really calling up the state chairs of the target states on.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, so the choice is either go around the world and give speeches at great prices and dine in great restaurants and hang out in wonderful vacations.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Make movies, Make movies.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Make movies and podcast, or get on the phone and talk to party chairs, Gee, which do you think he's doing?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, it's hard to disagree with the judge.

>> Bill Whalen: Speaking of, Robert's not Taft, Robert Kennedy. So he is running against Joe Biden.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yes.

>> Bill Whalen: You're laughing.

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: I am laughing, you were talking about vanity candidates in the Republican field, it's good to see democrats have some, too.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, but going back to 92, Ben, which was problematic for George HW Bush because he had to deal with Pat Buchanan, who was a precursor to Donald Trump in many ways.

Is there room in that field for somebody to make trouble if they so chose? I mean, Bernie, Sanders, maybe, or someone like that, could somebody get in, actually give Biden a hard time?

>> Ben Ginsberg: I think the answer is yes, but he's done a pretty good job of being close enough to the progressive wing of his party who are the ones who might go in and give him the most trouble.

So the candidate to represent that progressive wing is not Robert F Kennedy Junior. And I'm not sure we could put our finger on who that individual is.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, I think, by the way, Bobby Kennedy is a convicted felony, I think he was convicted of a felony heroin charge.

And I don't know how many times you've been asked this question, Ben, I'm getting tired of astronaut, can somebody who's under indictment run for president? And can a felon serve as president?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, the answer is, yeah, they can.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay thank you, that'll be $500.

>> Ben Ginsberg: What?

It was only three minutes of work.

>> Bill Whalen: Hey, legal consulting, you pay by the hour, right? Right.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, this is saying Tim Scott, so I mentioned Tim Scott is in New Hampshire. Let me read you something that Scott said when he announced his exploratory committee. Ben, quote, I bear witness to what America can do for anyone, what she's done for me, but we must rise up to the challenges of our time.

This is a fight we must win, and this will take faith in God. This is a upbeat fellow, this is somebody who talks about his family's experience. He talks about his father being illiterate, he talks about his connection to slavery. But he is running, Ben, an aspirational campaign at the end of the day, and that's not something you could say to Donald Trump.

And I don't think it's something you could say of DeSantis if he jumps in, because he'll run very strong against woke us, and what he's doing in Florida. Is there room in today's Republican Party, Ben, for an aspirational candidate?

>> Ben Ginsberg: It's a little hard to see the lane that Tim Scott would need to pick up with that message.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah.

>> Ben Ginsberg: So I believe that there are Republican voters who are not enamored with the Trump DeSantis brand of Republicanism.

>> Bill Whalen: Mm-mh.

>> Ben Ginsberg: First of all, they're few and far between, and second of all, I'm not sure how Tim Scott with that message actually draws a contrast on the things that matter to people without criticizing Trump and DeSantis.

And so far, he has shown no inclination to do any challenges. The other thing to remember about the republican presidential nomination, whether you're talking about Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis or anyone else. Is this, the rules for how the delegates are selected in the state will be done, really, by the beginning of July, and they have to be officially into the Republican National Committee by the end of September.

That means that the rules are getting locked in now, and Donald Trump has a tremendous advantage in that. He is, by all bits of information, the only candidate with a really broad enough organization to be talking to the state parties as they go about selecting their method. He is in the driver's seat with that 30%, because in a winner take all primary, all you need is 30% to win in a multi candidate field, right?

 

>> Bill Whalen: Could you take a moment, Ben, and explain how the delegate allotment works, how it plays out in the early states in January, February, and then how it changes come March and April, May and June?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, the Republican National Committee has set windows for when primaries, conventions, and certain kinds of primaries can take place.

So that under the rules, there is a favored four that will go in February, which is Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina and Nevada. And their method of doing things is pretty much set with the caveat of Iowa's got some issues going on about whether they're going to be able to, to stay at caucus, which I think they will.

So those four will go.

>> Bill Whalen: Right?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Then the RNC says that from the first Tuesday in March through the third Tuesday in March, a state cannot be winner take off. Right? So that it can be proportional, statewide, proportional by congressional district, or it can be a convention and, or a caucus after, I think it's March 14 this year or next year, states can be winner take all.

Your Donald Trump winner take all is good because you've got your 30%, conventions are probably even better because a convention has a self selecting. Crew of a few thousand people who determine who the delegates. So right now, Donald Trump is the lone candidate that I see having a 50 state organization to be able to impact this.

However, it's best for him in each state has the best relationships with the state parties. And it's gonna be a little late for the candidates like Tim Scott or Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley to be able to go into the individual states to impact the type of delegate selection process they have.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Okay and this is not just, you just can't go in and spend money to make this happen, right?

>> Ben Ginsberg: No, you need to convince the members of your, some places it's the state chair, in some places it's the county chairs. And some people it's a state executive committee.

In some states it's even a convention. So it is not just. Hi. Hello, Iit's me. I've got the best message. Please give me my set of rules.

>> Bill Whalen: Final question, Ben then I wanna shift over to what you're doing at Hoover and some non Hoover projects as well.

And that is the news out yesterday. I believe that Fox News will be hosting the first republican debate in August in Milwaukee. Milwaukee, the site of the 2024 Republican National Convention. No date has been assigned to this, Ben. But there are questions as to some of the rules of the road for this debate, including the purity, the pledge question.

If you participate, do you have to pledge to support the nominee? What do you think of these kinds of requirements?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, I think it's more show than go because there is no enforcement mechanism behind it. And so there will be a lot of bargaining back and forth about whether you have to sign that pledge.

Now, if you're the chair of the Republican National Committee or any Republican candidate not named Trump, you probably absolutely want this sort of showy pledge, right? Because the mortal fear of the RNC, and many are Republicans is that Donald Trump goes and becomes a third party, which would almost sure a Democrat being elected but might play to Trump.

And I think the idea of a pledge is a situation where Trump can sort of exhibit that he is the leader of the Republican Party just by jerking Rona Romney McDaniels around on whether there's a pledge or not. Trump certainly writes Priebus around in 2016 or 2015 when he tried to impose a pledge.

So I think you should pop some popcorn and watch the show.

>> Bill Whalen: Sounds good. And you and I were talking not too long ago about the idea of a Trump third party candidacy and what it would look like. And I think what we came down to, the conclusion was people are mistaken if they think it would be a 50 state effort.

But he could do considerable damage if he focused on just a handful of swing states.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yep, he really could. The map in 2024 is shaping up one to be where there are probably four swing states for sure, and maybe a couple others that could end up being contested.

But by and large, once you get past Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, not clear what the gettable states are. So Donald Trump going into any very republican state where he might win a nomination would mess up that electoral College calculation great deal. So he's got some power to be able to, to do that.

And hey, guess what, Bill? Even if he signed that pledge, that loyalty pledge, he could still become a third party candidate. There's no enforcement.

>> Bill Whalen: He could. I would encourage our listeners to go to a website called 272 win.com. That's 270 to wynn.com. Ben's nodding his head. That's because they have a really cool interactive map and you can click on it.

You can change states from red to blue and vice versa and leave them blank if you want to. And if you look at that, ma'am, what you find is that, let's see, the last race was 306 to 238 after redistricting. It's now, if everything were the same in 2024 and 2020, it would be a 303 count for Joe Biden.

But if you flip Georgia and Arizona and Wisconsin, Ben, I believe that delivers the election to the Republican candidate.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yep, it sure does.

>> Bill Whalen: It's that simple.

>> Ben Ginsberg: That's why this is really on a knife set and people should go to that site. You, too, can be a wily political operative.

Second, guess what all the campaigns are doing strategically.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah. By the way, Ben, if you do flip those three states, you know what number you get? You get 271 to 266. Does that sound familiar to you?

>> Ben Ginsberg: It does sound a little bit familiar, hauntingly familiar. Why do you say that?

Echoes of 2000 in my head.

>> Bill Whalen: So do you ever wake up in the middle of night reliving that the 2000 Florida recount or. Listeners should know that Ben was on the legal team for the Bush campaign and he lost considerable quality time of Florida and Tallahassee fighting the fight.

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, you haven't lived till you've been in Tallahassee in late November and early December. Yeah, sure. I mean, it was really, really quite something. I mixed feelings about it. It was such a remarkable experience working with such a remarkable group of people, including the best set of lawyers any of us ever worked for before since.

And that's an experience you sort of want to share with people. But then again, boy, nobody wants to. And the country certainly doesn't want to have to go through that trauma.

>> Bill Whalen: I think HBO did a movie on it, didn't they? Was it called like recount or something like that?

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: It was.

>> Bill Whalen: Did somebody play Ben Ginsburg?

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, let me think. I believe it was George Clooney.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah maybe not so much. Maybe it was a short, bald, bearded guy with glasses named Bob Baliban, who was a terrific actor.

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah. So it's both the fear and the dread.

If ever you get immortalized on film, please, please choose a handsome man.

>> Ben Ginsberg: There were others they could have chosen.

>> Bill Whalen: Yes. So that's a good segue into talking about what you do in Hoover right now, Ben. So two things I'd like you to discuss. First of all, the preservation of the institution of voting project that you're a part of.

Tell us what that's all about.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Well, this is part of director Rice's overall project on the preservation of american institutions. What is true is that so many norms have been stretched over the past couple of decades, and especially in the last few years, that she's assembled a remarkable group of scholars to look at different institutions.

I am honored to be working on the voting project in which we will be looking at some of what I think are the myths that contribute so heavily to our polarization these days. The fraud suppression narrative that the political parties use is really kind of stoked polarization. I think the examples of fraud that Republicans cite is absolutely.

Absolutely as illusory as the number of suppression incidents that the Democrats cite. Yet there's a huge get out the vote mechanism based on fraud versus suppression that does nothing but polarize us further and cause people to lack faith in the results of elections. I think there are some myths involving turnout.

Republicans got more congressional votes in 2022, yet we believe that we are better off in low turnout elections. Democrats have won low turnout elections, yet they believe they should throw away the safeguards on voting and let everybody vote. So there is some scholarly research to deal with those issues.

 

>> Bill Whalen: You're also looking better at post election vote tabulation, which is something near and dear to those of us in California where it takes 30 days to count the votes.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, that's exactly right, Bill. The whole idea of having to wait so long to get election results has proven to be sort of the devil's workshop or the petri dish for the election denial virus.

And now states like Florida and Georgia can get their results in on election. And states like California and really Arizona take a real long time. And there are things that can be done on the front end to process ballots sooner, not count them, just see which ones are eligible, counted on election day.

And there are other states like California that believe they need to hold open the receipt of balance till long after election day, which means you can't get final results. So that too needs some research to see if it is really worthwhile to hold off being able to say who wanna stay.

 

>> Bill Whalen: I think also worth looking to, Ben, in terms of California versus other states, is California gives everybody a ballot. And then secondly, we do mail voting in California. Mail voting is interesting because mail voting started as a novelty in California. Mail voting used to be a lifestyle choice with a non lifestyle choice used to be a necessity for people.

You do it basically if you're traveling abroad and couldn't be there to vote. But in California now, it's become just another part of the lifestyle. You get your ballot there, it sits on your table. And unfortunately, a lot of Californians wait until the very last second to hand in their mail ballot, even if they know who they're going to vote for.

And this adds to the problem in California, Banvo. Not only does it take a long time to count the votes, but the numbers start dancing and republicans complain the numbers dance on Democrats failures. And they get into arguments about ballot harvesting and fraud and so forth, but it just all contributes to one problem, which is the erosion of confidence.

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, it really does. And there are fixes and it should be an area where the two parties can actually compromise in the name of providing greater credibility to our election.

>> Bill Whalen: You would think that, Ben, in a state like California, where Democrats outnumber republicans two to one among registered voters.

I'm not sure if I'm a Democrat, I'm gonna give up the idea, of giving every voter a ballot.

>> Ben Ginsberg: The thing about giving every voter a ballot, I understand the policy that in many states, of giving every voter an application for an absentee ballot and letting them return it and verify that they're a voter.

I think giving every voter an absentee ballot means that there are live ballots that do not have any sort of a chain of custody about them. And I think that that stands to be a real problem for a candidate of either party who wins a very close election, because there are just elements of proving that the vote is valid.

When you've given universal ballots to everyone, that would prove really, really difficult in a crisis situation.

>> Bill Whalen: And then you're working with Bruce Kane, who's a Stanford political scientist. He's also director of the Bill Lane center for the American west at Stanford. This is looking at causes of a crisis of confidence in us elections and solutions for getting through it.

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, and Michael Boskin, another Hoover senior fellow, is in charge of the broader project. But we're looking specifically at how to, what provisions can be put in laws to increase confidence in elections and how we might be able to get that through. We're very interested in doing survey and focus group work through the aforementioned Dave Brady and Doug Rivers on voter attitudes about a number of these changes.

Focus groups with organizations of political operatives to sort of get their sense of what's needed and what might work. And it's an exciting area to take a look at, because, again, there are preconceived notions that are part of the practices now. And if you could sort of show that the preconceived notions are not accurate, there may be a way to come to better solutions.

 

>> Bill Whalen: I'd be really curious, Ben, to see, when we talk about a crisis in confidence, who exactly is lacking confidence? Is it one party more so than the other? And is that a function of winning and losing elections? Is it a gender issue? Is it a race? Is it an identity issue?

Is it a generational issue? I'd just be very curious as to who really lacks confidence here.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, I think, and that's part of what we wanna look at, although our working assumption on that is that it happens in very close races and it is the losing party that sees problems with the system and the illustration of that.

You've seen what Donald Trump said about his election. But honestly, imagine 2024 when Donald, if Donald Trump were to be declared the winner of the presidency, I think Democrats are gonna find their own sort of Trumpian playbook to attack the validity of the results. And that's the problem that we've got.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Yeah, I think that's a problem in a nutshell. It's Trump will play this game if he loses, he'll say the fix was in and stolen election. Democrats will say the election was stolen if Trump wins. Abrams never conceded in her race in 2018 in Georgia. It's just whichever ox is getting gored, they're the ones who cry the conspiracy card.

And the problem is this day and age, and you mentioned this earlier in terms of institutional voting, you're battling one problem here, which is the Internet. And the Internet is just like a termite farm when it comes to crazy conspiracies. I'm sure you get these like I do, just constant emails from friends saying, what about this?

And what about that? It's always some proof of Russian meddling or some proof that ballots were stolen and, you know, so on and so forth.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, it's absolutely true. I mean, I think that there are ways to help that, too. In sort of some non-Hoover work, I spend a lot of time with election officials talking about elections and how to make it better.

And I think one of the things that election officials did really well before the 2022 election, and we talked about this on same senator salvageable, is be transparent and try and bring the biggest election doubters in to take a look at the safeguards That are built into the system long before election day, answer all their questions about their perceived worries about the election system, and that transparency is really important.

And I think it is also really important to recognize that this is not something that's gonna get solved on the national level, that, in fact, this is a community effort. And we've got a project called the pillars of the community, in which we're going into the most contentious county in the country, getting the leaders of the community from business, from faith, from education, from civic organizations.

Get them to meet with the election officials, understand the safeguards in the voting system, and then to share their experiences with the broader community. To look at the safeguards and say, we don't know who won the election, but we know that the system that we have tabulate those votes is accurate.

 

>> Bill Whalen: I remember, Ben, you did a wonderful one day conference at Hoover where you invited Secretary of states and election officials around the country. And it was great that, first of all, you got the right states there. You didn't get a bunch of boring states where there's no drama.

You got the ones really in the crosshairs. I just remember sitting there, of these guys, it was Brad Raffensperger from Georgia. Remember sitting, listening to the fellow who was representing Maricopa county thinking, this man might have the worst job in America.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, and what is really inspirational about those people is they may have the worst job in America, but they recognize how important it is to the democracy and to the country.

And they are willing to put up with the slings and arrows, sometimes worse substances, to do what they know to be the important job of running good elections.

>> Bill Whalen: Right, and actually, you're involved in election official legal defense network.

>> Ben Ginsberg: That's a group I started with a fellow named Bob Bauer, who was my political adversary for years and years, but we co chaired a presidential commission on election administration, got to know these election officials back in the 2013, 2014 timeframe.

Then when they came under such harassment, both for doing their jobs and on a personal basis, we formed the election official legal defense network to find pro bono lawyers to help them out when they were in legal Jan. And we continue with that project that, unfortunately is needed.

 

>> Bill Whalen: And Bob Bowers, a Stanford law professor, right?

>> Ben Ginsberg: NYU law professor.

>> Bill Whalen: NYU, I thought you were at Stanford, I'm sorry.

>> Ben Ginsberg: No.

>> Bill Whalen: I was gonna take a shot at this stuff.

>> Ben Ginsberg: He'll make it up. He'll step up eventually.

>> Bill Whalen: But you've been affiliated with Stanford law, haven't you?

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: I have. I taught there with Nate personally, professor at Stanford, and really does terrific work, not only on election administration issues, but technology issues and how they intersect. We talk courses together. Yeah.

>> Bill Whalen: So let's make some news here. If they have a vacancy for a new associate dean for DEI, you're gonna take yourself out of the running right here and now.

 

>> Ben Ginsberg: Yeah, I'm gonna give you a very Sherman esque statement on that. Totally unqualified for that.

>> Bill Whalen: So let's wrap up here, Ben, and I wanna wrap up on a maybe not so cheerful note, but if you are following the Republican resistance right now, it's very easy to see something very bad coming down the road in November 20th, 224.

It goes something like this. You have a field dominated by Donald Trump. Donald Trump gets the nomination. As I mentioned, he has that 25% approval in that one poll. He's not gonna get elected with numbers that rotten, even if Joe Biden's numbers are similarly anemic. So Trump's not gonna win.

Second, you look at the Senate races and the question of 2024 is gonna replay at 2022, where weak MAGA candidates win in states like Montana, very potentially winnable races, but loseable now. Because you have run weak candidates, because you have a divided primary party. And between all that, been a question of just why the party is not kind of better organized and just more deft in its thinking and more mobile.

Good example being when we did those interviews last summer, we did it before the Dobbs decision, the Dobbs decision came out and all hell broke loose on abortion. And guess what? Republicans, Ben, for the most part, were flat footed on what to say. Glenn Young did have an abortion position, but most Republicans didn't know where they were on it.

The Supreme Court goes after abortion again this year, which they might, given the recent rulings. Here are Republicans once again having to have some sort of message on abortion. I just don't understand it, Ben, because the party has been talking about undoing Roe v Wade, not for months, years, but decades.

You would think that the party would just kind of have a plan of attack as to what to do post Roe, but no.

>> Ben Ginsberg: It is a phenomenon that we are much more tactical than strategic in our politics these days.

>> Bill Whalen: Yes.

>> Ben Ginsberg: And it also goes to the question you asked earlier about who is the Republican Party, who's the establishment of the Republican party?

And we struggled to answer that question. And I think the result is really following a cult of personality these days in the form of Donald Trump, who certainly has very particular news about subjects. But it's always been a little bit hard for him to articulate what the overall strategic vision is what the plan is, what he would do with another administration.

Actually, what he accomplished in the last administration has been spelled out very articulate by a number of people, but not by Donald Trump, interestingly enough. And he's talking, the leader of the party, the person with the most support, is talking much more about the past and what he perceives as election injustices than the future.

And so what you are describing is very much symptomatic of complaining about the past and not looking to how you're gonna make people's lives better with conservative principle policy down the road.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, so if we wanna call this a rebirth, reboot, renaissance, choose your favorite r word here.

Where does it start?

>> Ben Ginsberg: I think it starts in a couple of places. Again, I'm a big proponent of sort of local action as opposed to national action at this point. So you mentioned those key Senate states. You can also identify 30 to 40 key House districts where people start articulating what they see as a Republican vision for the future.

Look, I do think that even if Donald Trump is not the nominee, the notion of Trumpism is much more is still gonna be very prevalent in whoever the nominee is. So that it's gonna start a little bit with having to take some electoral defeats to see that the current path is not a good one.

 

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, sounds like preview of the 2028 presidential election.

>> Ben Ginsberg: I believe that will be the inflection point.

>> Bill Whalen: Okay, Ben Ginsburg, enjoyed the conversation today. Thanks for all you're doing for Hoover Institution. It's really an honor and a pleasure to have you on campus with us.

>> Ben Ginsberg: Thank you, Bill.

The honor is all mine.

>> Bill Whalen: Thank you. You've been listening to matters of policy and politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the world. If you've been enjoying this podcast, please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to our show.

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