How Late Is Too Late for the GOP Long Shots?

CNN offers a new national poll of the GOP field that shows more of the same — Donald Trump is at 52 percent, Ron DeSantis is at 18 percent, and everyone else is in single digits.

At the back of the pack, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum and radio-show host Larry Elder came in at 1 percent, and former congressman Will Hurd and former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson came in at asterisks. Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is at 2 percent, and, alas, South Carolina senator Tim Scott is only at 3 percent.

Any candidate who didn’t make the stage for the first debate is going to have a tough time qualifying for the second debate. The next debate will be held on September 27 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., and it will be aired on Fox Business. To qualify, candidates need to reach 3 percent support in two national polls, or 3 percent in one national poll and 3 percent in polls of two different early-primary states. Candidates also need to have 50,000 donors.

The editors of National Review have already urged Asa Hutchinson to withdraw from the race.

I would ask those who are at the asterisk or 1 percent levels . . . What’s your plan? What are you going to do over the next couple of weeks that will garner attention and build support and be different from what you’ve done for the past few months? Because what you’ve been doing is not working. Despite what you insist in interviews, the American people are not clamoring for you to run. Maybe they ought to be clamoring, and maybe it’s unfair that the GOP electorate never gave you a hard look. But your job as a candidate is to convince people to support you in this primary, and, so far, you really haven’t succeeded in doing that. Maybe your friends and family are telling you that you’re remarkably charismatic and appealing and people are just itching to vote for you. The evidence suggests that your friends and family are just being polite. I’m sorry to be the one to break it to you, but, so far, you’ve been just another face in the crowd.

I’m not saying that these men have to drop out. But if they keep doing what they’re doing, they’ll keep getting what they’re getting.

It’s one thing to launch a long-shot bid; it’s another thing to insist, after a couple of months, that some magic sudden surge in support is just around the corner. Everybody’s been doing this for at least two and a half months. Hutchinson announced his bid on April 2; Elder announced his bid on April 20; Christie announced his bid on June 6; Burgum announced his bid on June 7; Hurd announced his bid on June 22.

Yes, it takes great confidence to run for president, maybe even defiant cockiness in the face of long odds. But at some point that becomes delusion, and the rest of us are not obligated to play along with these candidates’ fantasies of being the next president of the United States.