GOP Presidential Candidates Listed in Their Likely Order of Disappearance | Opinion

The ill-fated presidential candidacy of former Vice President Mike Pence collided with empirical reality on Saturday and unfortunately for him, only reality survived. Pence is the first to bow out of the Republican primary but won't be the last. The devil's bargain Republicans cut with Donald Trump is methodically sucking the blood out of candidates one by one. The only question is who will be next.

Pence will be the first current or former vice president of the binding primary era to seriously seek and then fail to gain his party's nomination. The only other veep with presidential dreams who didn't at least get the nod for the general election was Dan Quayle, who tapped out in 1995 and again in 1999 before the debates. Vice presidents begin their quests with extraordinary built-in advantages, including near-universal name identification and the loyalty of their party's most reliable voters—the ones who show up in low-turnout mid-winter presidential primaries. So, Pence's swift and humiliating exit from the race months before the Iowa caucuses is a testament both to his cosmic void of charisma as well as Trump's ability to decide who lives and who dies in the party.

Pence's fate was sealed nearly three years ago, when he decided not to claim the non-existent powers Trump wanted him to use to halt the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. Prior to that, Pence had played the part of loyal stooge to the MAGA movement, including casting evidence-free doubt on the election results just like Daddy told him to. It was only when the spotlight was on him—when it wasn't just indulging Trump's delusions but instead putting his reputation and freedom directly on the line—that Pence decided to make a stand for the principles of democracy. By the incredibly low bar set by Trump and his allies, I guess that last-minute change of heart constituted a courage of sorts.

The problem for Pence the presidential candidate is that there is no coming back once a vengeful Trump sics his minions on you. The former president's grip on the party, consolidated last winter, remains vice-like. When he decided to seek the GOP's nomination again, it made it virtually impossible for Pence to gain any traction. The concept of 'lanes' in presidential primaries is mostly vibes and lazy analysis, but it is certainly true that Pence's "Trump was a great president who tried to do a terrible thing" shtick was never going to work with Trump himself still available to voters as an option.

Who will be next into the abyss? Pence was polling around 3.5 percent nationally, according to Real Clear Politics averages, and we should probably expect other members of the sub-5 percent polling club to find the exit sooner rather than later. The guess here is that it will be Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who had a brief moment as the normie alternative du jour before turning in two genuinely unwatchable performances in the first televised debates. His candidacy has never found any ballast, and with fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley locking down the remaining anti-Trump vote and donors while rising modestly in polls, it is no longer clear what exactly he is accomplishing by hanging around.

The same could be said of both North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who have produced entertaining moments on stage but remain mired in the low single digits in national polling. Burgum is leaning on his personal fortune to stay afloat, even offering supporters a $20 gift card in exchange for a $1 of voter scratch (yes, I thought about it because I like free money), a testament to the GOP's inane debate qualification rules that prioritize the mindless hoovering up of small-dollar donations over thinking about whether a candidate has a chance in hell of winning a single primary.

Christie's bid is fueled by Super PAC dollars and liberals who enjoy watching him light into Trump on national TV, but he has gotten nowhere with the Republican primary electorate he needs to actually become the nominee. And I would feel guilty for wasting any more of my limited word count here talking about former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, for whom dropping out publicly might prompt surprised reactions from people who didn't know he was still in the race.

That whole group will almost certainly be gone by Iowa. The big question is whether it will be a three- or four-person race heading into the actual contests, and that might depend on whether biotech gadfly Vivek Ramaswamy can stop irritating everyone long enough to take a deep breath before the debates and make a measured case for himself. He's already down several points from a mid-September high of 8.1 percent as voters quickly tire of his interrupting chicken routine on stage and realize that he has about as much depth as a kiddie pool. There's a good chance that by the time the calendar turns to the new year, only Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Haley will be left standing.

I'd speculate about whether Pence's voters might gravitate to one of these also-rans, but he really doesn't have enough saddened supporters to have much impact on the race one way or the other. Besides, it's only a matter of time before he is out there stumping for Trump like the dignity wraith that he is, a fate sure to be shared by most if not all of the former president's primary competitors. Until then, the remaining aspirants will focus on how to be designated the big media winner at the Pence-less Nov. 8 debate in Miami, where the near-certain nominee will once again be counter-programming at a rally instead of on stage with a bunch of people who aren't going to be president.

David Faris is an associate professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics. His writing has appeared in The Week, The Washington Post, The New Republic, Washington Monthly and more. You can find him on Twitter @davidmfaris.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.