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Bill Weld and the Never Trumpers’ Last Hurrah

The former Massachusetts governor is primarying the president, though he isn't likely to last long past tonight.
Bill Weld

A second-place finish in New Hampshire surpassing expectations, followed by the endorsement of a major newspaper and an incumbent governor of your party, would in most other cases indicate momentum for a presidential candidate.

Yet former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld goes into Super Tuesday still mostly as a vehicle for Never Trumpers to vent. In recent weeks, he did expand beyond devoted readers of The Bulwark, gaining the backing of Vermont’s popular Republican Governor Phil Scott and the Boston Globe. He’s claimed a pre-Super Tuesday “groundswell” in three of the 14 states holding presidential primaries on March 3.

While Massachusetts is one of those states, the Globe‘s endorsement might have been better timed before the New Hampshire primary, when it could have at least nominally boosted him higher than the nearly 10 percent of the vote. That’s a very distant second to be sure, but it did keep Trump below 90 percent after the president scored 97 percent in Iowa. Weld did pick up an Iowa delegate.

The February 26 Globe endorsement opined, “If a Republican Rip Van Winkle had dozed off during Ronald Reagan’s presidency to wake during President Trump’s, he would no longer recognize his party.” It’s not clear how qualified the Globe editorial board is to lecture Republican primary voters about Reagan conservatism, however.

But Weld did bring fiscally conservative governance to Massachusetts in the 1990s through tax cuts, spending cuts, and cleaning up the mess left by predecessor Michael Dukakis. Weld was elected as the first GOP governor in the Bay State in two decades. In this election cycle, he has attacked Trump over government spending and anti-free trade views, even claiming Trump “is the real Republican in name only.” Nevertheless, Weld hasn’t exactly been running to Trump’s right, having also criticized him for inaction on climate change, and holding firm to his socially liberal views.

Weld said in a fundraising appeal, “We are seeing a groundswell of support” in Vermont, Utah, and California. For a candidate who has marketed himself as a “truth teller” versus Trump, we might find out Tuesday how deep that groundswell is.

Over the last few weeks, Weld has campaigned in his home state of Massachusetts, in Vermont (hoping to capitalize on Scott’s endorsement), and out west in Utah, where a U.S. senator and fellow former Massachusetts governor would seem a natural Weld supporter. But even though Utah Senator Mitt Romney felt Trump was unfit to finish out his first term as president, he’s so far neutral as to whether Trump should be the party nominee.

In fact, Romney had kinder things to say about Weld as a vice presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party in 2016 than he has said about his long shot Republican presidential run. Romney said the Libertarian ticket should have been Weld/Johnson instead of Johnson/Weld.

Gary Johnson, a former New Mexico Republican governor, wasn’t offended. The duo got almost 4 percent of the vote in 2016, a record for the Libertarian Party, but a crushing disappointment after they had polled as high as 12 percent. Most would agree that Weld would have been a better face for the LP ticket than the gaffe-prone, hapless Johnson—who also endorsed Weld ahead of the New Hampshire primary, as did Christie Todd Whitman, former New Jersey governor and Environmental Protection Agency administrator in the George W. Bush administration.

Generally, a certain type of Republican backs Weld—typically throwbacks to a different era.

Super Tuesday will most likely be Weld’s last swing, if he ever had a first. There are blue states with a sizable number of left-leaning Republicans, such as California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont, that could cast an anti-Trump vote, just as red state Democratic primary voters in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Arkansas gave more than 40 percent of their votes to token Obama opposition in 2012. In this case, at least anti-Trump voters would have a credible option. And according to Weld, the very red Utah has some favorable circumstances.

Weld has consistently said he’s in the race to actually win, but would be satisfied with making Trump lose in November.

He hoped to win six state delegations, which would guarantee a speaking spot at the Republican National Convention. That seems unlikely at this point and was probably contingent on his initial goal of scoring close to 40 percent in New Hampshire, similar to Pat Buchanan against George H.W. Bush in 1992, and other primary challenges that foretold an incumbent losing in the general election. Winning just 10 percent was well short of the historical level to cripple an incumbent. Nevertheless, the few pollsters that even bothered asking voters about the Republican primary in New Hampshire showed Weld winning only between 4 to 7 percent.

While he may not win any states, he has said that another goal is to be the last man standing with delegates in hand should Trump face insurmountable legal troubles before the Republican convention.

Weld isn’t the first candidate to base a campaign on wishful thinking scenarios. It’s also not clear whether his campaign will leave any lasting mark aside from giving an ever shrinking number of anti-Trump Republican an outlet.

It should be said that even Weld isn’t as anti-Trump as some Never Trumpers. He won’t support Trump in a general election, and has said he could back Joe Biden or Michael Bloomberg as Democrat nominees. But he’s said he assuredly would oppose Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren if they were the nominees and he wholeheartedly rejects socialism. He’s waiting to see who the Libertarian Party will nominate, but says he won’t run third party.

His campaign even argued that Trump can’t beat Biden, contending in December after a favorable poll put Biden over Trump that “President-Elect Joe Biden will make it his top priority to implement the Democrats’ socialist agenda if we simply stay the course” and nominate Trump.

Perhaps Weld will stay the course after Super Tuesday even if he can’t move beyond the low double digits. His chances for winning won’t really be statistically lower than before voting began. He could still collect delegates to try to create some Ron Paul-like mischief at the GOP convention, minus the passion.

Fred Lucas is the author of Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections. The views expressed are solely his own. Title and publications are listed are for identification purposes only. Follow him @FredLucasWH.

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