“On the Holmes Front,” with Frank Holmes
It looks like the 2024 Republican presidential race is about to get even more crowded.
At an off-the-record meeting in the nation’s capital this week, a rising Republican star told his closest friends and allies that he’s running in the presidential primaries—even if it means going head-to-head with former President Donald Trump.
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Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., made the stunning announcement to about two dozen major financial supporters gathered inside D.C.’s luxurious Hay-Adams Hotel on Tuesday.
According to Politico, top Cotton adviser Brian Colas went through a full PowerPoint presentation about how Cotton can not only run but, in their view, win the primaries against the 45th president.
His campaign studied more than a dozen successful campaigns and, Colas told the donors, winning or losing the presidential comes down to one thing: How well the candidates does in Iowa and New Hampshire.
It just so happens that Cotton has been laying the groundwork for a presidential bid for some time. He’s made 10 trips to those two states since 2020—six to Iowa and four to New Hampshire.
He’s also in strong financial shape. Since no one challenged him in his Senate primary, he already has $8 million in his war chest, which he can roll over into his presidential race immediately. Or he could give it to other candidates, in exchange for their support or endorsements.
Like many “secret” meetings in Washington, work leaked to the media immediately. Cotton was on Fox News that day to address the rumors—and he basically said he’d make his final decision about whether to run for president after this year’s midterms.
The meeting was “an annual event” of “friends and supporters” that has been going on “for many years,” he began. “We’re going to do to help Republicans win the Senate and the House later this year. And then what the future holds.
“So, I’ll take that first at that election first, and then we’ll see what happens after the midterms,” he concluded.
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It’s not exactly news to The Horn’s readers that the junior senator from Arkansas is aspiring to lofty goals. We told you in February that Cotton attended a hush-hush confab that let him and at least three other possible 2024 contenders confer with Republican Party bigwigs, including Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, party co-chair David Bossie. The March 30 event, allegedly about keeping New Hampshire the first-in-the-nation primary featured Cotton, and Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Rick Scott of Florida, and Tim Scott of South Carolina.
The Arkansas senator has had huge presidential buzz for a long time. He’s been handing out non-denials about throwing his hat in the ring for almost a year.
During Cotton’s visit to Iowa, the conservative outlet The Daily Caller website asked the senator whether he planned to launch his own campaign for the highest office.
Instead of saying no, he gave a miniature campaign speech.
“One thing that I’ve always, always tried to do from the time I got into politics is to protect our country and to protect Americans and everything they hold dear—that’s why I joined the Army as well, is to protect our country, whether that’s from rising crime, illegal immigration, foreign threats, whether it’s China, or a terrorist organization,” Cotton told the website.
“And now Americans need protection from the radical liberal agenda as well, that wants to take more of their money, and boss them around using unelected bureaucracies in Washington, indoctrinate their kids against their wishes, oftentimes to hate their country. That is a message, I’ve delivered in Iowa and South Dakota today, on which I’ve campaigned in Arkansas now three times, in which I’ll be taking all across the country.”
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Cotton has advantages—but he also has disadvantages. The senator is a little plain vanilla on the campaign trail, especially compared to Donald Trump. “He’s more Scott Walker than Trump in terms of personality,” National Review columnist Dan McLaughlin wrote Tuesday, all but begging Cotton to run in 2024. Cotton “comes off as dry” on his own.
And the biggest problem is that he has a totally different foreign policy than Donald Trump; Trump run as a non-interventionist, while Cotton has hardly seen a foreign war he didn’t think Americans should join.
And he won’t exactly have the field to himself. He could face a challenge from Cruz, Scott or the other Scott. Former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley also has the financial backing of Paul Singer—and some of Trump’s own in-laws, like son-in-law Jared Kushner’s father Charles Kushner.
And even Trump’s inner circle seems to acknowledge the strongest challenge will come from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, whose uncompromising performance in Tallahassee has been setting conservatives’ hearts on fire across the United States.
But one thing is clear: If Donald Trump want to run for the White House in two more years, he’s going to have to walk through Cotton to do it.
Frank Holmes is a veteran journalist and an outspoken conservative that talks about the news that was in his weekly article, “On The Holmes Front.”