With Joe Biden’s current approval rating at 40.2%, the 2024 presidential election is looking like it will be a close one. So who will Biden’s Republican challenger be? There are currently nine candidates running, including controversial figures like former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron Desantis. Of these nine candidates only three have any real chance of winning, but only one or two could actually make a good president. Of the major candidates I would say DeSantis is the best of the bad options, but when it comes to all candidates running for this nomination, I would have to say Ryan Binkly is the most promising candidate.
We need a president who understands that democracy thrives when we compromise and when we work together, not against one another. We need someone who will unite the country and will work to unify the country instead of driving us apart. We need someone who has morals and won’t lie just because it suits them.
The most likely candidate to win the Republican nomination is former president Donald Trump. Donald Trump should not win this nomination. First of all, most Americans do not want him to run, with about 70% saying they would not like to see him run for re-election. Not only is he under investigation for everything from inciting an insurrection to fraud, he is not a good influence on our nation. When he was president, he divided our country. This all eventually culminated in the attack on the capitol by his supporters on January 6, 2021. Trump is also dishonest, lying over 30 thousand times according to the Washington Post fact checking team. Before even looking at his policies, I can tell you Trump is the kind of polarizing figure we do not need.
Trump’s major adversary in this race is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Governor DeSantis is also a very polarizing figure. He is a popular figure in Florida politics holding a near 60% approval rating. However, on the national stage, his fights with Disney and the Parental Rights in Education Act, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay Bill”, make him a controversial figure. He also banned books in school because they covered topics that he didn’t support teaching children, such as LGBTQ+ rights and racism in America. We need a president who is going to lead our country, not a president who wants to rewrite history.
The third major candidate is Nikki Haley. Nikki Haley is the former South Carolina Governor, she served from 2011 to 2017. She was then the US ambassador to the United Nations(UN) for two years under President Trump. She is far right, adamantly anti-abortion, anti–corporate income tax, anti-Medicare, and anti-Medicaid. She supports the right to secede and a Confederate history month. She compared Confederate history month to Black history month saying it is “part of tradition”. She says it can be done “in a positive way and not in a negative way, and it doesn’t go to harm anyone”. How can you support a group that is centered around hate in a “positive way?” There is no way that a person that supports something like Confederate History month can unite our nation.
Outside of the major contenders is Vivek Ramaswamy. He published an anti-wokeness book and is a biotech entrepreneur. Ramaswamy supports some contradictory policies. For example, he claims to “make political expression a civil right” in one sentence and in the next says “ban addictive social media under age 16”, which not only makes political expression harder for teens, but makes any expression hard in this increasingly technological world. He also says he wants to crack down on crime, and shut down the FBI whose mission is to “uphold the Constitution and protect the American people.” He also supports some morally questionable policies like wanting to use drones to secure the US border with Mexico. Killing innocent people with machines should never be the solution to any of our nation’s problems.
Then we have South Carolina senator Tim Scott. Tim Scott is also far right, being admittedly anti-abortion, anti–Critical Race Theory (CRT), anti-Medicaid and Medicare, and pro–border wall. He believes that Biden won the 2020 election but criticizes Biden for not doing enough to support Ukraine in their defense against their Russian invaders. While Tim Scott does have experience in national politics, he is not close enough to the center to unite the country.
Former talk radio host Larry Elder is also running for president. He makes campaign promises like “achieve economic growth” and “crush inflation” but he has not mentioned how he will do this. Similar to most of the other candidates, Larry Elder is far right. He believes in a border wall, wants to be hard on crime, and wants to ban CRT. Larry Elder was accused of pointing a gun at his partner during an argument. He denies this allegation. During a column for Capitalism magazine in the year 2000, he said “women know less than men about political issues, economics and current events.” Between these comments and the lack of plans for what he will do to achieve his goals for the country, I don’t believe he is the right candidate.
Also running is former governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson. Hutchinson was a congressman from 1997 to 2001. He was then the Border Security Secretary during the Bush administration. Finally, he was the governor of Arkansas from 2015 to 2023. Hutchinson is a more moderate candidate. He does believe in the expansion of Medicaid, but believes that it should be up to the states to do this as he believes the federal government should not be the sole provider of healthcare. He expressed that he would be open to raising the age requirement for the purchase of assault rifles after the Sandy Hook shooting. He has also expressed a moderate stance on trans rights, vetoing a bill that would have banned gender affirming care for minors in Arkansas. However, he also supported a bill that prevented trans athletes from competing in women’s sports. Hutchinson also expresses a desire for unity, making him an appealing candidate for president.
Perry Johnson of the book “Two Cents to Save America” is running for president. He is running on his “Two Cents Plan”. Basically the plan is that he will spend two cents less per dollar on every bill. This will obviously cut government spending, and Johnson claims it will decrease the debt and fight inflation while not hurting any government programs. In addition to the Two Cents plan, Johnson wants to stop illegal immigration but make it much easier to legally immigrate into this country. He believes that this will improve programs like social security and Medicare because you will have more working Americans paying taxes to fund these programs.
The final candidate in the Republican primary is Ryan Binkly. Ryan Binkly’s first campaign promise on his website is to fix the divide in our country by seeking bipartisan solutions to the problems in our country. In addition, unlike many other candidates, he gives solutions to the problems he brings up. For example, he wants to revitalize cities. While most other candidates would say that and move on, he offers ways to do this such as creating better programs in schools to increase civic duty and getting kids involved with their city and their county. He also believes that we need to increase all energy production, including green solutions and not so green solutions like fracking.
Of the major candidates in the republican primary, DeSantis is my choice because while I don’t agree with most of the things he does, at least he has some semblance of morals. He doesn’t compulsively lie and doesn’t believe in a confederate history month making him the best of the major candidates. Among all the candidates, Ryan Binkly is the best because he believes in compromise. Even though he is not close to the center of the political spectrum, he still sees the value of working with the other side and unlike so many other candidates actually seems to have some idea of how to fix the problems he sees.
