At last check, the Republicans’ repeal-and-replace health care legislation remains deadlocked in Congress. While it’s easy to dismiss the machinations on Capitol Hill as political theater, long-time Dallas Morning-News columnist and former Washington, D.C. bureau chief Carl Leubsdorf sees something more – the outlines of Campaign 2020, a real three-person race like the one that featured Ross Perot’s candidacy in 1992.
The ideological split within the Republican party that started in 2016 remains today, Leubsdorf says, and is “not going away.”
It’s assumed that President Donald Trump will run for reelection in 2020 and if so, Leubsdorf says Trump stands to do well because a significant proportion of the Republican base supports him. But Leubsdorf says an opening exists for a third-party presidential candidate, drawn from the Republican ranks. Leubsdorf names Ohio Governor John Kasich, who never embraced Trump and who disagrees with his party on issues like the pending health care bill, as a potential standard-bearer for Republicans who are not Trump fans.
Written by Louise Rodriguez.
