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Senator Tim Scott (R-SC) has emerged as the Republican Party's man of the hour while former President Donald Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence look to hold its focus.

The 2020 presidential election took place less than six months ago but speculation is already rife about the next one, with attention focused on who the GOP will choose as its candidate.

Trump remains the frontrunner and there is continued speculation of a Pence run, but Scott's standing has been boosted following his response to President Joe Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress this week.

Scott's Republican colleagues have lavished praise on him, with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) suggesting he could be the future of the party.

But the GOP's recent past maintains a grip on its present and could have a profound effect on the party's 2024 choice.

Former President Trump spoke to Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo on Thurday and kept the door open for a possible third run at the White House.

When Bartiromo asked Trump about another presidential campaign, he said: "Yes, 100 percent."

"And the polls show that everybody wants me to do it. One hundred percent I'm thinking about running, and we will, I think, be very successful," he added.

Trump remains the favored candidate among Republicans, with 6 in 10 saying they want him to run in 2024, based on polling by Reuters and Ipsos earlier this month. But he's not the only potential option Republican voters could be offered in three years.

Former Vice President Pence delivered his first speech since leaving office on Thursday in what has been seen as a potential opener for his own White House campaign.

"We've got to guard our values ... by offering a positive agenda to the American people, grounded in our highest ideals," Pence told an audience at a dinner in South Carolina sponsored by the Palmetto Family Council, a Christian nonprofit that supports what it calls "biblical values."

"Now, over the coming months, I'll have more to say about all of that," Pence said, the Associated Press reports.

"We will stand with the right of every American, of every faith, to live, to work, to speak and to worship according to the dictates of their conscience," he added.

Pence has not yet directly indicated an interest in running in 2024 but there has been widespread speculation about his ambitions. The Reuters/Ipsos poll did not ask respondents about Pence but a March poll conducted by Echelon Insights found that the former vice president enjoyed 16 percent support when Trump was excluded as a 2024 option. However, this fell short of support for Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on 17 percent.

Pence's speech on Thursday was overshadowed by Scott's response to Biden and the effusive praise he received from both GOP leaders in Congress. It was McCarthy who first mooted a Scott presidential run.

"People are going to start talking tomorrow that Tim Scott should be running for president. Could you imagine him on the debate stage versus Joe Biden? It's not even close," McCarthy said.

The Republican primary process will begin in Iowa in early 2024 and many campaigns can be expected to be up and running by the fall of 2023.

Whoever the party chooses will likely face Biden, who has said it is his plan to run for a second term.

Newsweek has asked former President Trump, former Vice President Pence and Senator Scott for comment.

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Donald Trump Hints and Mike Pence ReturnsBut Tim Scott Is Man of the Hour - Newsweek

Former Vice President Mike Pence is due to have a book in stores in 2023, and two years out, we can confidently predict that Pences volume will come nowhere near toppling sales records set by, say, The DaVinci Code or Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone.

Tomes by second-tier political figures rarely set the world aflame, and Pence is also in the unenviable position of being despised both by folks who adore his former boss Donald Trump, and those who abhor Trump with the heat of a thousand suns. He is viewed by detractors as having been too obsequious to Trump through most of his term, and not obsequious enough by the Trump die-hards who insist he had the power to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Congress on Jan. 6 (he did not, but thats another story).

This hardly sets up Pence to sell lots of books, never mind stage a successful presidential run in 2024.

Still, Pence has the right to seek whatever publishing deals he wants and have his say. But thats not the view of some employees at Simon & Schuster, the publishing company that gave Pence an advance somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 million. They want Simon & Schuster to not only cancel the deal, but they also want the venerable publishing house to agree not to publish any books by any other former Trump administration officials. Doing so would, according to these employees, put them on the wrong side of justice.

For people who are in the business of publishing books, its a mighty peculiar stance to take.

Jonathan Karp, the chief executive of Simon & Schuster, has rejected these demands, pointing that the companys employees come to work every day to publish, not cancel, which is the most extreme decision a publisher can make, and one that runs counter to the core of our mission to publish a diversity of views and perspectives.

Obviously, Pence has little in common with Woody Allen, but the announcement last year that the Hachette Book Group was going to publish the filmmakers autobiography stirred up a similar tempest among employees of that company. They objected to Hachette taking on Apropos of Nothing because Allens daughter has accused him of molesting her close to 30 years ago. Even though no charges were ever brought, the statute of limitations has long since expired, and no one else has accused Allen of molestation in the three decades since, the mere allegation was apparently sufficient to render Allen guilty to the Hachette rank-and-file. Unfortunately, their bosses caved, canceled Allens contract, and the book was ultimately published by a smaller house.

Of course, publishers have the right to decide who they want to publish or who they dont want to publish, based on the quality of an authors work, their reputation, and whether it will make the cash registers ring. And there are some perspectives that are, frankly, beyond the pale no publisher should be in the business of disseminating modern-day versions of Mein Kampf or Protocols of the Elders of Zion. This is not a black-and-white issue. There are shades of gray. Still, except for egregious cases, publishers should err on the side of letting the presses roll.

Last year, Guardian columnist Hadley Freeman made the following observation about the Allen book, and it applies to Pences, too: What a strange, through-the-looking glass world we live in, when people who consider themselves liberals celebrate suppressing others words.

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Despite objections, Pence's book should be published | News, Sports, Jobs - The Sentinel - Lewistown Sentinel

Campaign Quick Hits

Results in the Texas 6th: The votes are in, and its headed to a runoff. Of course, with 23 candidates on the ballot, that was a foregone conclusion. The widow of Rep. Ron Wright, longtime GOP activist Susan Wright, took the top spot, which was expected. But despite a lot of puffery in the media about how the district was trending away from Republicans, it was Democrats who got a wake up call: The second person headed into the runoff was not the DCCCs Jana Sanchez, but another Republican, state Rep. Jake Ellzey. As FiveThirtyEight reported, Ellzey was the top fundraiser from either party but also had more money in his campaign coffers than any other candidate.

Of course, if I had asked you pre-2016 who would advance out of a 23-person field, the good money would have been on the widow of the officeholder (who shares a name) and the top fundraiser. No doubt some will argue this means doom and gloom for the Adam Kizinger disavow Trump Republicans, whose candidate finished with barely 1,000 votes, and it may. But Id say their bigger problem was picking a candidate with zero name ID in the district, a bland rsum, and very little money to raise his profile in time. Again, pre-2016, it would have been a clich that national media is no substitute for people in your district knowing who you are and feeling comfortable with you.

So does that mean we are returning to pre-2016 political realities? I think you can make a good argument that there was a singular exception to the rules of political gravity that nobody else has been able to replicate and that, at least, held true in this race.

The point: The Texas-6th will be held by a Republican, giving the Democrats no breathing room heading into 2022 with a five-seat majority in the House.

Courtesy of strategist Bruce Mehlman:

I was thinking about this quote that I included in last weeks edition of The Sweep from Richard Hanania: 49.1% of all Americans cast a ballot in 2020, compared to 2.9% who cared enough to actually give money to one side or the other.

Thats it! Thats the whole explanation for why we are where we are. Well, at least its half of it. See, my theory has long been that everything that is playing out currently in our politicsthe fecklessness of Congress, the disintegration of the Republican Party, and the negative polarization on both sidesis all an unintended consequence of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (aka BCRA, aka McCainFeingold).

I could literally write an entire thesis paper on this topic but let me give you the BLUF:

The ban on soft money weakened the national parties.

The low limits on individual federal donations disincentivized major donor programs and incentivized the money to come from elsewhere.

Well leave No. 1 for another dayits important, but lots of other people have written about it. But No. 2 hasnt gotten nearly its due. So lets break it down a little.

The current limit that an individual can give to a federal campaign is $2,900 toward the general election. So as a candidate youve got two problems: First, there arent that many people in the country who have that level of disposable income. Second, $2,900 is a small drop in the bucket compared to what you need to run a federal race at this point. The contribution limit was indexed to inflationbut not the inflation of campaign expenditures. My first campaign was in 2002 and the limit was $2,000. But the range for contributions from individuals in the top 50 House races in 2002 was $1 million to $3 million. In 2020, it was $5 million to $28 million. So while the donation limit is 1.5 times higher, the amount of money you need to raise to stay competitive is six to nine times more. What is a candidate to do?

To start, you try having outside groups without limits. Theres a reason Citizens United came to the Supreme Court for relief in 2010 and not 1995. There was no way for them to get the money to their candidate, and there was no way they werent going to spend the money to help their candidate. Thus, super PACs were born, and millions and millions of unlimited dollars started pouring into groups that are allowed to spend the money on electioneering activities as long as they dont ask the candidate how they should spend it. But as I wrote last year on Citizens Uniteds 10th anniversary, super PACs are pretty terrible and arent nearly as effective as direct spending by the candidate.

So while that money is being lit on fire, campaigns needed a new plan. Ben Carson wasnt the first to figure this outbut he did get a lot of attention for it. Ben Carson raised $20.8 million in the third quarter of 2015 and he spent more than $11 million raising it. To put it in political operative terms, he was spending 54 cents to raise each dollar. At the time, that seemed insane. When asked whether that kind of burn rate was sustainable (Scott Walker and Tim Pawlenty both learned about burn rates the hard way, dropping out of their races early after running out of money), Carson spokesman Doug Watts replied, Its not only sustainable, its strategic and its profitable. He was right.

Fast forward to now, and campaigns on both sides have gutted their major donor programs and beefed up their online and digital fundraising. The cost per dollar raised is substantially higher, but it doesnt take any of the candidates timea campaigns most valuable resourceand the candidate doesnt have to dial for dollars for eight hours a day, a task that very few candidates are willing to do without grumbling, procrastinating, or other tactics used by teenagers to get out of geometry proofs.

But remember what Hanania said. Only 3 percent of voters are ever going to give to a candidate (and that number gets lower the lower down the ballot you go). So how do you reach them? And how do you motivate them? Outrage.

When Mitt Romney got in trouble for his 47 percent comment in 2012, he was speaking at a major donor event. Up to that point, it was de rigueur for a candidate to say one thing in public and have a totally different message to their major donors. But online fundraising doesnt require that at all. In fact, it is the opposite. Everything is an opportunity to raise online dollars. So everything the candidate does and says needs to be geared toward that 3 percent. And, as you can guess, they dont care about the same stuff as the other 97 percent who dont give.

As a result, Congress has no incentive to legislate (in fact, not legislating is better to keep the problems alive think immigration reform), the national parties are of minimum help because they are drawing from the same pool as candidates (I drink your milkshake), and candidates are best served by stoking the outrage by doubling down on the culture war on both sides.

So there you have it. I am a Burkean minimalist because of the 17th Amendment and BCRA. Both sounded so good in theory, but beware the unforeseeable consequences that await the best-laid intentions in the tall grass.

Chris is back with his wit and wisdom, and its Mike Pences turn in the barrel:

Theres encouraging a little presidential speculation with a whisper campaign, and then theres scheduling a trip to New Hampshire right after giving a big speech in South Carolina. Former Vice President Mike Pence is forgoing the whispers and grabbing the bullhorn as he gets ready to head to the Granite State next month to speak at the annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner in the states most electorally important county, Hillsborough.

Pence chose a group of South Carolina social conservatives, Palmetto Family, last week for his first major public remarks since January 6, when a mob of pro-Trump rioters tried to keep him from certifying the results of the 2020 election. He also spoke to a gathering of hundreds of pastors and made a campaign-style stop at a South Carolina medical school to talk about coronavirus responsea convenient way to highlight his successes leading the White House pandemic response team.

Pence has scheduled a high-profile slate of speeches, appearances, and fundraising events in the coming weeks, and his team promises that he will frequently hit the trail in support of midterm candidates. Hes got a book in the works, and hes even launching a podcast. Its safe to say that hes runningor at least he wants to. What we dont know is whether his timing is right.

I have been bullish on Pences chances for the GOP nomination ever since the chaotic Capitol raid. As the former vice president for a divisive, unpopular commander in chief, Pence didnt have much of a chance for 2024. He was so obsequiously devoted to Donald Trump and his broad-shouldered leadership that it seemed unlikely Pence could get enough mainstream support to push through to the nomination. But because of his milquetoast persona and Sunday-school teacher vibe, neither could he tap in to the cult of personality among Trumps hard-core supporters. He was too Trumpy to win over traditional Republicans, but not Trumpy enough for the MAGA stans. When Trump turned on Pence and sent a mob of berserkers to go try to stop him from filling his constitutional duty, however, the former president gave his No. 2 a massive political gift.

Its certainly true that Pences decision to do his job will kill any chance of winning over the hardcore Trump lovers, but he probably wasnt going to score well with them anyway. And there will be lots of Trump wannabes dividing up that share of the vote. But now, unlike his potential mainstream competitors Nikki Haley and Mike Pompeo, Pence has shown that he was willing to defy Trump when it counted. The fact that he could do so without having to make a show of it is all the better for his chances. For a party that will surely be exhausted by the fight over Trumpism, Pence could represent the kind of bland compromise that voters may be seeking. If a former vice president could win the Democratic nomination by being the consensus compromise choice, why couldnt the Republicans pull the same trick?

Whats less clear is how Pences candidacy will wear over time. His incipient run will no doubt anger Trump, who is busy trying to maintain his grip on the GOP from his gilded bunker at Mar-a-Lago. Pence did as much as anyone to put the lie to Trumps loony claims in service of his efforts to steal the 2020 election. Trump, eagerly cruel and enthusiastically petty, can hardly let the offense go unpunished. Maybe the thinking from Pence and his very savvy strategist, Marc Short, is that its better to draw that fight out early so its old news by 2023. Or maybe they just dont think they can afford to start raising money and locking up support in what will be a very crowded field. Whatever the reason, well soon find out whether the former Veep can find a way to survive and advance in a party still terrified of his former boss.

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The Sweep: How McCain-Feingold Ruined Everything - The Dispatch

Simon & Schuster has a Mike Pence-shaped blowup on its hands. On Monday, higher-ups at the publishing house received a petition signed by over 200 employees, as well as more than 3,500 outside supporters, the Wall Street Journal reports, demanding that it stop cutting deals with authors tied to Donald Trumps administration and cancel Pences forthcoming memoir. When S&S chose to sign Mike Pence, we broke the publics trust in our editorial process, and blatantly contradicted previous public claims in support of Black and other lives made vulnerable by structural oppression, the letter read, per the Journal.

While the petition was not formally submitted until Monday, word of its circulation internally and on social media last week prompted Jonathan Karp, the companys chief executive, to address its demands in a note to staffers. We come to work each day to publish, not to cancel, Karp reportedly wrote in his letter, dismissing the calls as counter to the very core of our mission to publish a diversity of voices and perspectives. Mondays petition challenged the notion that employee pushback is in this case a matter of differing opinions, accusing Pence of supporting racist, sexist, and homophobic policies during his time in office and urging Simon & Schuster not to treat the Trump administration as a normal chapter in American history.

The petition also reportedly calls on Simon & Schuster to sever distribution ties with Post Hill Press, a conservative book publisher. That demand builds upon opposition to a Post Hill Press book written by a Louisville police officer involved in the fatal shooting of Breonna Taylorbacklash that led Simon & Schuster two weeks ago to announce that they would not distribute the title. That decision was immediate, unprecedented, and responsive to the concerns we heard from you and our authors, Karp reportedly wrote in last weeks memo to staffers. Yet he continued to reject calls to cut off all distribution ties with the conservative partner, citing contractual obligations and the need to respect the terms of our agreements with our client publishers.

Earlier this month, Pences reported multimillion-dollar deal with Simon & Schuster drew attention to the host of issuesfrom ethical to logisticalthat major publishing houses must grapple with when it comes to signing members of Trumps orbit. Industry sources cited opposition from not only staff but consumers and talent as a reason to avoid taking on such clients. Well-known Black writers were among the several thousand outside signatories of Mondays petition, according to the Journal, including two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward, who has published five books with Simon & Schuster.

The recent Post Hill Press decision was the second such evaluation the publisher made due to outcry over conservative-penned titles this year. Following the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Simon & Schuster scrapped plans to publish Senator Josh Hawleys forthcoming book, citing the Missouri lawmakers role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom. (A conservative publishing house has since taken up Hawleys title.) As Axios notes, hundreds of executives, authors, and other publishing professionals signed an open letter of intent in the wake of the insurrection stating, no one who incited, suborned, instigated, or otherwise supported the January 6, 2021 coup attempt should have their philosophies remunerated and disseminated through our beloved publishing houses. Conservatives have often lumped that criticism into the broader trend of so-called cancel cultureas have some industry sources, albeit anonymouslya debate that Axios reports is nevertheless causing publishers to look closely at who and what they give a platform to, as well as the potential fallout from that choice.

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Simon & Schuster Will Die on the Hill That Is Mike Pences Multimillion-Dollar Book Deal - Vanity Fair

Mike Pences controversial skiing holiday in Colorado at the height of the coronavirus pandemic broke federal guidelines and cost cost taxpayers at least $757,000 (544,000) in security costs alone, a watchdog report has revealed.

The then-vice president and his family travelled with at least 48 agents who rented 77 cars durin the trip, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew).

Mr Pence, who also headed the White House coronavirus task force, took the trip slopes at Vail, Colorado in December last year when coronavirus cases were surging - even though his task force had put out dire warnings to stay at home over the holidays after Thanksgiving.

Clearly, Pence did not follow the governments advice, and in the process put dozens of Secret Service agents at heightened risk of infection, the report said.

The trip was extended from 23 December to 1 January and included at least 48 agents that contributed to both the high cost and the risk of infection, it added.

According to Crew, the agents rented 77 cars and stayed in several hotels, racking up bills of more than $270,000 (194,000) at the Marriott Vail Mountain and more than $80,000 (57,000) at the luxury Ritz Carlton.

Donald Trumps administration has faced criticism for violating the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance.

USA Today reported that the former president and key officials violated the rules at least 27 times from September to October last year.

Several Secret Service officers were infected with Covid-19 while others had to quarantine after coming in contact with infected people as Mr Trump continued his election campaign rallies and travel during the pandemic.

The report noted that Mr Pences travel during the pandemic was not the first that contributed to a higher risk of infection.

Previously in April 2020, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump also traveled to Mr Trumps Bedminster club despite stay at home orders.

In 2019, Mr Pence traveled to Ireland for government business in Dublin but extended the trip to stay at the former presidents resort in Doonbeg, costing the Secret Service more than $15,000 (11,000).

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Mike Pence skiing holiday at height of pandemic cost taxpayers $757,000, report reveals - The Independent