United States | News & Politics

Somebody just like, oh, say, Joe Rogan.

This feels like the speculation I saw about Tucker Carlson or Mark Zuckerburg running for office. I think it misses how much of Rogan's popularity is artificially inflated, how much of his job is merely to market crypto and blue chew, and how much he wouldn't actually want the job of running for office to begin with.

These bloated egos inevitably do put their toes in the water. But trying to separate a few million dipshits from their wallets is a radically different task than trying to win a plurality of the 150M+ voting poll (heavily weighted across states full of people who don't listen to podcasts). You're going to send Joe Rogan to Iowa to eat a stick of fried butter while telling a gaggle of fifty year old hog farmers how much he loves soybeans and he's going to do a worse job of it than Rick Perry.

this move is consistent with what I would expect if he were positioning himself to be it: Hedging his bets, putting a little bit of distance between himself and the administration so as to be outside of the blast radius in case public sentiment turns

The sentiment won't turn. It's the same sentiment that's been building since the Bush Administration, and one of the big reasons the GOP fell apart in 2006 and then again in 2012 and 2020. The GOP can't afford to be moderate on immigration, on social politics, or on social welfare programs. Because as soon as you stop delivering the red meat, the knives come out.

Republicans aren't going to run a milquetoast moderate podcaster face for the party like Rogan the next time the top spot opens up. Look at the line up in 2024 against Trump - Nikki Hailey, Ron DeSantis, Asa Hutchenson, and Vivek Ramaswamy are the party's future. These are the people piling into the governorships and congressional seats under Trump and they're going to be the pool that dictates his replacement.