The Republican presidential race is just getting started, but Kim Schmett said he and his fellow conservatives are spending more time thinking about the end of the 2024 campaign and trying to answer one question above all.
“We like him,” Schmett said. “The question is can he win?”
He, of course, is former President Donald Trump, who was squarely at the center of the discussion among Republicans this week at a breakfast meeting of the Westside Conservative Club. Admiration for Trump’s policies was clear in one conversation after another, but so was fatigue with the former president’s personality – and intrigue about a certain Florida governor.
“We have to get a candidate who is going to be a winning presidential candidate,” said Schmett, a longtime Republican activist. “That’s not excluding President Trump – right now, he’s closer to getting that majority in the party than anyone else – but it didn’t work last time and we’re concerned about that.”
In less than a year, the Iowa caucuses will open the Republican presidential nominating season in a contest with a storied history of humbling frontrunners and elevating alternatives.
It’s an open question how the 2024 race will be influenced by Trump, who finished second in the state in 2016 before going on to win it in the following two general elections. But for now, he looms large over the early stage of the campaign – among admirers and detractors alike.
“Donald Trump is the only one who can lead us back to where we were in 2020,” said Terry Pearce, a retired general contractor who wore his red “Make America Great Again” hat to the gathering of conservatives at the Iowa Machine Shed Restaurant. “He’s got the experience and he knows how to solve these problems that we’re having right now, such as the war in Ukraine.”
The Republican…
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