Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 07:02 pm
It appears that right-wing Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol has finally settled on a ‘Never Trump’ candidate to be a third-party alternative to Donald Trump. His name? David French.
Wait, who?
French, not exactly well-known, is a writer for National Review, a constitutional lawyer and an Iraq war veteran.
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What’s surprising is just how underwhelming Kristol’s choice is, particularly given the fact that he turned a lot of heads with this tweet over Memorial Day weekend:
Just a heads up over this holiday weekend: There will be an independent candidate–an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 29, 2016
That Twitter post came after months of Kristol teasing anti-Trumpers with potential third-party candidates like Sen. Ben Sasse, former Sen. Tom Coburn and retired Gen. James Mattis.
Now, in typical Bill Kristol fashion, he comes up short by hitching his wagon to David French, an unknown conservative writer who once defended a colleague for saying “downscale communities deserve to die.”
French also set strict rules for his wife before he left to serve in Iraq, telling her she couldn’t drink, use Facebook or have phone/email discussions with other men regardless of the topic. He certainly seems like a real ray of sunshine.
It’s unclear why Kristol thinks French is a formidable candidate, even up against the uniquely unqualified Trump, but it’s certainly a sign that the neocon is running out of options in his crusade to find someone, anyone to be the Trump alternative.
To make matters worse for third-party advocates like Kristol, it is incredibly unlikely that an independent candidate would even have ballot access in all 50 states, meaning it would take a massive write-in effort to win the highest office in the world – a nearly impossible task even with a well-known figure, which French is not.
Bill Kristol is just desperately grasping at straws now, and it’s probably safe to say that the so-called ‘Never Trump’ movement is whimpering to a halt.
Sean Colarossi currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and was an organizing fellow for both of President Obama’s presidential campaigns. He also worked with Planned Parenthood as an Affordable Care Act Outreach Organizer in 2014, helping northeast Ohio residents obtain health insurance coverage.
