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      DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign books

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      DeSantis and Pence lead Republican wave – of presidential campaign books The GOP flopped in the midterms but its White House hopefuls still hope to find readers – and conservative group bulk-buyersIn one of the clearest signs that the 2024 Republican presidential primary will feature rivals to Donald Trump, a host of likely candidates have released or will soon release books purporting to outline their political visions.‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’Read moreSuch books often sell poorly, but that is rarely their point. They are markers of ambition. To judge from the political bookshelves, after midterm elections in which many Trump-endorsed candidates suffered humiliating losses, the former president will not be the only declared candidate for long.Among the first rank of likely challengers, Trump’s vice-president, Mike Pence, released a memoir last month and Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, will follow suit in February.Other possible candidates include the former secretary of state Mike Pompeo (book out next year); the Missouri senator Josh Hawley (one book done, another coming); the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley (two books out already); and the South Carolina senator Tim Scott (book published in August, including an inadvertent admission that he is going to run). Even Marco Rubio, the GOP’s great slight hope until Trump took him to the cleaners in 2016, has another book coming.Matt Dallek, a professor of political management at George Washington University, said: “These books serve as a way to generate free media and a way to put one’s name and platform, to an extent that it exists, in the eyes of voters you’re looking to reach.“It gives TV producers a hook. And so even though most of these books are, to be generous, pablum – filled with aphorisms and cliché – from the perspective of the candidate, it allows them to get their story out there, to put themselves before the public and to take a free media ride.”In short, these are not works of great literature, or even the sort of thing the great essayist Christopher Hitchens produced via “the junky energy that scotch can provide, and the intense short-term concentration that nicotine can help supply … crouched over a book or keyboard [in] mingled reverie and alertness”.It’s hard to picture evangelical hero Pence or culture warrior DeSantis like that, hunched over a desk, hammering out passages of memoir and policy to meet a publishing deadline. But perhaps their ghostwriters did.01:41The announcement this week of DeSantis’s book – The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Renewal – made the biggest splash. After all, the governor who won re-election in a landslide and declared his state “where woke goes to die” is Trump’s only serious polling rival.DeSantis has released a campaign book before, namely Dreams From Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama, published in 2011 when he was aiming for Congress. According to his publisher, HarperCollins, the Ivy League-educated ex-navy lawyer will now offer “a first-hand account from the blue-collar boy who grew up to take on Disney and Dr Fauci”. True to DeSantis’s success in pursuing distinctly Trumpist policies, the announcement was replete with such culture-war themes.How to beat a book ban: students, parents and librarians fight backRead moreDaniel Uhlfelder, a former Democratic candidate for Florida attorney general, tweeted: “Ron DeSantis, who has led a statewide effort to ban books, is writing a book called The Courage to be Free. This is not a joke.”Trump books are a publishing phenomenon but books about what the agent Howard Yoon recently called the “milquetoast” Biden administration have not sold so well. Neither, it seems safe to say, will the flood of Republican books.Asked if she was eager to read DeSantis’s book, Molly Jong-Fast, host of the Fast Politics podcast, laughed and said, “Are you kidding me?” She also pointed to the common fate of such books: bulk sales to political groups rather than bookstore crowds.“The DeSantis book is something the Heritage Foundation gives people at a lunch, and then goes on a shelf. This is book that is swag. When the Kochs have their big shindig with donors, it’ll be given away. Of course, that means publishers at least know it will earn out the advance.”In sales terms, Pence has an advantage. His campaign book, So Help Me God, is also in large part a Trump book. Pence has refused to testify to the House January 6 committee but on the page he provides detailed if partial testimony, written from the rooms where it happened. The result was a New York Times bestseller.Jong-Fast said: “The reason to read his book is because he’s such a liar. I think if you went through with a fine-tooth comb, you could find a lot of inconsistencies. But … at least Pence is charismatic. The irony is he’s probably more charismatic than Ron DeSantis.”So Help Me God review: Mike Pence’s tortured bid for Republican relevanceRead moreIt is possible to write a good campaign book. Barack Obama wrote two. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance was published in 1995, as he set out for the Illinois senate. The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream, came two years before the presidential run of 2008.“And he probably read them,” Jong-Fast said. “And also he knows good writing. So many people don’t. The constant problem with conservatives is that you’ve alienated most of the writers. Remember, Trumpworld didn’t have any intellectuals because they couldn’t find any. The thought leader was Newt Gingrich.”Asked what Guardian readers might glean from the new campaign books, and from DeSantis in particular, Dallek said: “If you know nothing or little about him, you could probably learn about the biggest political fights he’s had, you could get a sense of the soundbites he likes to use, you know, his war against so-called woke culture. Probably some sense of a why he thinks Florida is the greatest place on Earth, some of the attacks he’s going to use against Joe Biden, if he were to run.“But it will not be the most informative place to go if you want to learn about Ron DeSantis. There are many other places, including profiles in the Guardian, that would probably be much more fruitful.”TopicsBooksUS politicsUS elections 2024RepublicansRon DeSantisMike PenceMike PompeonewsReuse this content More

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      Nikki Haley: leaders should release tax returns and prove mental competency

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      Nikki HaleyNikki Haley: leaders should release tax returns and prove mental competencyComments by Republican believed to hold presidential ambitions questioning Biden’s mental health could also apply to Trump Martin Pengelly@MartinPengellySat 6 Nov 2021 09.38 EDTLast modified on Sat 6 Nov 2021 09.40 EDTThe former Trump cabinet member Nikki Haley was accused of ageism, as well as a startling lack of awareness about senior figures in her own party, after questioning Joe Biden’s mental health and suggesting there should be “some sort of cognitive test” for office holders “above a certain age”.Glenn Youngkin condemns report his son twice tried to vote in VirginiaRead moreHaley made the remarks in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network – a conservative outlet founded by and often featuring the televangelist Pat Robertson, who turned 91 last March.Asked about the mental health of the president, who turns 79 later this month, the former ambassador to the United Nations first avoided directly commenting on Biden.“What I’ll tell you,” she said, “is rather than making this about a person, we seriously need to have a conversation that if you’re going to have anyone above a certain age in a position of power, whether it’s the House, whether it’s the Senate, whether it’s vice-president, whether it’s president, you should have some sort of cognitive test.”Haley, 49, is widely seen to have ambitions to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. But in a party dominated by older men, her remarks may not have done her too many favours.The former president Donald Trump is 75 – and has boasted, while in office and facing questions about his mental acuity, of passing a simple cognitive test. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, is 79. The oldest Republican in the Senate, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, is 88 and has said he will run for another six-year term.Democratic leadership is also dominated by older politicians. The House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is 81. The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, is 82. In the Senate, Dianne Feinstein of California is three months older than Grassley. Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, is a relatively sprightly 70.Haley pressed on.“Just like you have to show your tax returns,” she said, “you should have some sort of health screening so that people have faith in what you’re doing.”Candidates for president do not have to show their tax returns. Trump memorably upended the convention that they did so by refusing to release his.“Right now,” Haley continued, “let’s face it, we’ve gotten a lot of people in leadership positions that are old. And that’s not being disrespectful. That’s a fact. And when it comes to that, this shouldn’t be partisan. We should seriously be looking at the ages of the people that are running our country, and understand if that’s what we want.”Finally, Haley came round to the subject of the question.“You look at Biden,” she said, “and I think there’s a concern. I think there’s a concern when people say, ‘You know, who’s really making the decisions here.’ That’s his job to prove that he’s making the decisions, but it’s not helping us when he says, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that France wasn’t included in the idea that we were going to do this [defence] deal with the UK and Australia.’“He can’t act like he doesn’t know something. Because every time he acts like he doesn’t know something, from ‘OK, they tell me to call on these reporters,’ you know, he keeps giving signals that he’s not with it.“So it’s not people hating on Biden, it’s Biden really showing the country that he’s not totally in charge and that makes everyone nervous.”Nikki Haley has gotten where she is by embracing oppression, not fighting it | Arwa MahdawiRead moreAmid widespread criticism, Sarah Longwell, publisher of the Bulwark, a conservative anti-Trump outlet, said: “What I’m hearing is: Nikki Haley calls on Donald Trump to release his tax returns and prove mental competency ahead of 2024.”In South Carolina, where Haley was governor before she joined Trump’s cabinet, a columnist for the State newspaper said her comments “reeked of ageism and that’s nothing to joke about”.Trudi Gilfillian added: “According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, ‘An employment policy or practice that applies to everyone, regardless of age, can be illegal if it has a negative impact on applicants or employees age 40 or older and is not based on a reasonable factor other than age.’“Given that standard, perhaps all politicians of all ages should be taking these cognitive tests Haley supports. I’d wager some of the youngest ones likely wouldn’t fare too well.”TopicsNikki HaleyRepublicansJoe BidenUS politicsDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Nikki Haley positions herself to lead the post-Trump Republican party

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      Nikki Haley has kept busy since leaving her post in the Trump administration as United States ambassador to the United Nations.A former governor of South Carolina, Haley is often mentioned as a potential Republican presidential candidate for either 2024 or 2028 – depending on whether Donald Trump wins re-election in November.There has even been speculation that Trump might switch out Vice-President Mike Pence for Haley as his running mate in the hopes of boosting his lagging approval numbers among the broader electorate, though there has been no strong evidence that that will happen.Either way she has positioned herself as a national leader within the Republican party.A rare woman of color in the party’s senior ranks, she has been fundraising for Republican congressional candidates as well as in the Senate and gubernatorial arena. She has set up a non-profit organization to boost her policy priorities. She has continued to pen editorials on foreign policy. And she has retained a small, tightly knit orbit of advisers.Haley is one of the few high-ranking Republicans to leave the Trump administration on good terms. She has pledged to campaign aggressively for the president and has echoed some of the same arguments Trump has made on national topics such as cancel culture, defunding police forces and statue removal, although the tone and frequency between Trump and Haley vary dramatically. At other times she has kept her distance.After serving in the Trump administration, some top-level officials have receded from public life, taking jobs at thinktanks and other academic institutions or retiring outright. But former and current aides to Haley see her recent moves as a carefully executed plan to stay involved in key Republican policy circles and the national discourse.“When she left the administration she told the president that she wanted to stay engaged and promote good public policy,” said Tim Chapman, the executive director of Haley’s Stand for America non-profit group, the primary vehicle for Haley’s policy-related initiatives. “SFA is partly a platform for her to do that type of voice, to be engaged in public policy.”Stand for America is composed of a small team of about six people, including Chapman. The team has a weekly Zoom call with Haley and Chapman spends much of his time coalition-building and working with outside groups and policymakers.Haley often weighs in on foreign policy or “Democrats’ embrace of socialism” as she did in a February op-ed for the Wall Street Journal’s editorial section. Warning about advancing socialism is a favorite topic for Haley and her organization. A recent mailer sent out to supporters asked them to participate in a “REFERENDUM ON SOCIALISM”. The mailer went on to tick off some liberal policy proposals like free college tuition or the Green New Deal proposed by the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. More