Opinion: Here’s who should follow Pence’s example and exit the 2024 race

(CNN) — Editor’s note: A CNN contributor, Geoff Duncan served as Georgia’s Lieutenant Governor from 2019-2023. He is a former professional baseball player and author of “GOP 2.0: How the 2020 Election Can Lead to a Better Way Forward for America’s Conservative Party.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.

Mike Pence is a good man with an impressive resume, but he never stood a chance in the Republican presidential primary.

Since January 6, 2021, the former vice president has been a candidate without a home, reviled by the Trump crowd for doing the right thing on that terrible day and distrusted by the other side for his steadfast loyalty to the former president until that point in time.

As he announced that he was quitting the race, Pence correctly noted, “this is not my time.” His cheerful, optimistic, Reaganesque vision for America has been replaced by the constant chaos of his former governing partner, Donald Trump.

In 2016, when Trump selected the then-Indiana governor as his running mate, it was seen as an olive branch to the traditional wing of the GOP. As a former congressman and chairman of the House GOP Conference, Pence was a card-carrying member of the old guard that has since been supplanted by the MAGA movement.

Pence deserves credit for seeing the writing on the wall and stepping aside. Others would be wise to follow his lead before history repeats and former President Trump becomes a runaway train en route to the GOP nomination.

In my view, the next domino to fall should be Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Here’s why.

First, after a resounding 2022 re-election, DeSantis has fallen far short of expectations. Entering the race in the spring as the clear second choice behind Trump, he has slowly and steadily fallen to the middle of the pack.

A new survey from the Des Moines Register — long considered the gold standard of political polling — shows DeSantis tied at 16 points with former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley. Both are well behind Trump’s 43%, but Haley has seen a 10-point uptick since August, while DeSantis continues to lose ground.

DeSantis’ declining support in the 2024 race appears even more pronounced in New Hampshire, where he sits nine points behind Haley, according to a recent USA Today/Boston Globe/Suffolk University survey of likely voters. The poll puts support for Trump at 49%, with Haley at 19%, with DeSantis ceding second place to Haley at just 10% support.

Since the start of DeSantis’ presidential bid, news coverage has focused either on process stories about how quickly his campaign was burning through cash or his continued litigation of culture war issues.

The Florida governor wasted precious time railing against “wokeness,” a term that 56% of Americans actually view as a positive, compared to only 39% negative, according to survey data from USA Today. He spent days, for example, caught in a fruitless news cycle about the dubious benefits of slavery that a more adroit candidate would have put to rest.

His squandering of time and money is a shame, because DeSantis has a story to tell about his time as the chief executive in Florida.

People are flocking to the Sunshine State, which is experiencing the country’s highest population percentage increase. In the first quarter of 2023, Florida’s economy grew by an annual rate of 3.5%, outpacing the national average of 2%.

But DeSantis has failed to distinguish himself from the former president. Rather than offering a break from the past, the Florida governor has put forward a Trump-lite vision. His early equivocation on the Russia-Ukraine war — which he once labeled a “territorial dispute” — was a clear concession to the MAGA wing of the party.

Trump has said that if he is elected, the war in Ukraine would be over in a day — a position praised by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has said he “cannot help but feel happy about” the former president’s remarks.

More recently, DeSantis declined to criticize the character of Trump – a man facing 91 felony counts – saying it was “not a concern of mine.”

Here’s the thing: if voters are looking for Trump, they’ve got him. History tells us that a crowded field is a tailwind for Trump. Eight years ago, 10 candidates were on the primary debate stage for the third contest, plus an additional four for the undercard.

Now, just days before the third primary debate, Pence has kicked off the coalescing process among the most serious Republican contenders. And that process could accelerate appreciably in the coming days, since only four candidates have qualified so far for the November 8 showdown in Miami.

Of course, it’s entirely possible the die has been cast and that Trump already is an unstoppable force. The optimist in me wants to believe there is still hope. That path is harder to see without a winnowing of the field.

And it’s not just Republicans who should be hoping for this outcome. Democrats make a big mistake assuming President Joe Biden is a shoo-in in a re-match of the 2020 contest versus Trump.

A Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll last week showed Trump leading Biden in hypothetical head-to-head general election matchups across battleground states. According to a recent CNN survey, Biden’s job approval rating stands at just 39%, and 58% say that his policies have made economic conditions worse. Two-thirds (67%) of Democrats want their party to nominate a different candidate.

Pence’s legacy is forever linked to doing the right thing by following the Constitution on January 6 and certifying a presidential election. DeSantis could be known for stepping aside and allowing someone else in the field with better odds of success to take on Trump.

It’s a long shot, but it might be the only option for those who want to leave the Trump era behind.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.