Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on early 2024 campaign messaging from GOP leaders

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• Judy Woodruff:

  Republican Party leaders converged on Las Vegas this weekend, delivering speeches to the Republican Jewish Coalition on the future of the party.

  For many, including former President Donald Trump, who participated virtually it's an early chance to test possible 2024 presidential campaign messages. Here's a sampling of what some of them said.

  Nikki Haley, Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations: We have to choose candidates that can win not just a primary, but also a general election.

• Gov. Chris Sununu (R-NH):

  Let's stop supporting crazy, unelectable candidates in our primaries and start getting behind winners that can close the deal in November.

  Mike Pompeo, Former U.S. Secretary of State: Personality and celebrity just aren't going to get it done. We can see that.

• Fmr. Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ):

  The reason we're losing is because Donald Trump has put himself before everybody else.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Here to discuss this and more, Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

  Hello to both of you, Politics Monday.

  So, Amy, you hear what these Republicans are saying with, let's stop supporting crazy, unelectable candidates, and Donald Trump puts himself in front of everybody else. So what's the message?

• Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

  Yes, it's really subtle, wasn't it, very, very subtle.

  (LAUGHTER)

• Amy Walter:

  Hey, guess what? If we keep nominating Donald Trump, we're going to keep losing races that are winnable.

  That's certainly the message from some of those candidates. But the person who probably got the most attention and will continue to get the most attention is Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, who basically went up in front of these same voters, didn't mention the name Donald Trump, didn't talk about candidates that were unsuccessful.

  He talked about why he was so successful, how he overperformed, how he's delivering for Florida. And that was basically the message, was, hey, look, we had a really bad or, what he said, disappointing performance in some of these states in 2022. We didn't have that happen in Florida, so, again, a not-so-subtle reminder to these voters that they do have other choices who have a track record.

  And then he spent the rest of the speech talking about the ways in which he like Donald Trump, going after wokeness, going after those who want to take away freedoms, touching those same cultural spots that Trump does very well with primary voters.

• Judy Woodruff:

  So using some of the Trump message to talk to these Republican movers and shakers.

• Amy Walter:

  Exactly.

• Judy Woodruff:

  How are these messages landing, do you think, with these folks?

• Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

  I think that we are in a phase right now where there are a lot of people who are talking about running, but not yet running.

  And you have some of these very same people talking about Trump being unelectable were talking about Trump being unelectable and really bad for the party back in 2015 and 2016. Some of the people who appeared there were running against him in 2015 and 2016, and ultimately endorsed him or came over to his side.

  And I think what we don't know right now is, is this going to be another really crowded field, like 2015 and 2016, where Donald Trump has a titanium piece of the pie, and nobody can take — break into that titanium piece of the pie? Or is this going to be a completely different year?

  And I think like all of us in politics, both the politicians and the people watching it, have a tendency to fight the last battle or fight the last war and see the last cycle — the next each cycle as being just like the last cycle.

  And I think, right now, we don't know whether we're reliving 2015 and 2016, whether this is going to be a completely different year, and Donald Trump will not be the same factor that he was, or maybe a Ron DeSantis or who knows, a broad cast of promising young Republicans of the next generation.

• Judy Woodruff:

  I'm going to remember titanium piece of the pie, for sure.

  (LAUGHTER)

• Amy Walter:

  That's good.

• Judy Woodruff:

  But, Amy, speaking of this cycle and the remnants of this cycle, this run-off election in Georgia between the incumbent Raphael Warnock, the Democrat, being challenged by Herschel Walker…

• Amy Walter:

  That's right.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And speaking of Donald Trump, where does that look? What does that look like?

• Amy Walter:

  I know. It is fascinating, because it's coming right up right after Thanksgiving. December 6 is the run-off.

  Now, Herschel Walker didn't just underperform compared to, say, where Donald Trump was in some of these places. But he underperformed the gubernatorial nominee and the current governor, Brian Kemp, by about 200,000 votes. So, Kemp got 200,000 more votes than Herschel Walker did.

  And the governor went out and campaigned with Herschel Walker over the weekend. The goal is to get some of those people who voted for Kemp back on the Herschel Walker train.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Yes.

• Amy Walter:

  Now, that would have been a lot easier if this were the race to determine control of the Senate.

  You make the case to those voters, you may not really like this guy, but he's the difference between Democrats being in charge and Republicans being in charge. They don't have that same message. So, trying to figure out how you get those voters, especially when you look at the map, where did Walker underperform? Not surprisingly, Atlanta, the Atlanta suburbs, did well enough in the red parts of the state.

  So he still needs to turn out that base. But he did well there. He's got to get those suburban voters that went for Kemp. And it's not clear that he has the message to do that.

• Judy Woodruff:

  There's just not the incentive for Republicans right now.

• Amy Walter:

  That's right.

• Tamara Keith:

  Right.

  You have a situation where there were a lot of people who were lukewarm enough on Herschel Walker to not vote for him or to either vote for Raphael Warnock and vote for Brian Kemp or just not vote at all in the Senate race. Are those people going to show up to an election where they have to go out of their way to vote, when there's no one else on the ballot except this person who they feel sort of lukewarm about?

  And the question the Democratic side is the same incentive question, where, if Senate control isn't at stake, are they going to be as motivated as they were earlier in November? And, clearly, the heavy hitters are coming out, because former President Obama is coming to rally them.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Yes.

• Tamara Keith:

  And, as we have talked about before, there is no one who rallies Democrats quite like the former President Obama.

• Judy Woodruff:

  So, a test of who's got — who's got the greater incentive building, which party.

• Amy Walter:

  That's right.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Something that we hate to even talk about, think about, Amy, but this latest tragic shooting, another LGBTQ club. We — 20 — a few years ago, you had the shooting at Pulse in Orlando, Florida.

• Amy Walter:

  Yes.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Now this one.

  I — it's just — we don't even like to think about it, talk about it. But there has been a lot of conversation in the air in this political season about gay issues, about same-sex marriage, about transgender.

• Amy Walter:

  Yes.

• Judy Woodruff:

  To what extent do we think that plays in?

• Amy Walter:

  Judy, I was thinking about this today and how these places in this — especially recent times — quite frankly, it's horrible to say — even just in the last couple of weeks, places that are supposed to be havens for safety and security schools, obviously, Uvalde being one of those, but University of Virginia, university in Idaho.

  And, of course, now this nightclub, where every one of the patrons said: This was our sanctuary. This was a place where we felt safe.

  So, the fact that now our places of safety and comfort and security have been breached, that's where you just feel, and so many Americans feel this way, just that the country, our system, whatever it is, is so off-track. And if we can't enjoy these places that should be peace and safety, then nowhere is safe.

  And that's a really sobering and pretty depressing thought and reality

• Judy Woodruff:

  It is.

  And no solutions clear?

• Tamara Keith:

  Well, certainly, there is talk again of trying to have — among Democrats and the president to have an assault weapons ban. But that seems unlikely.

  I would just say that there's this disconnect that's happened between Congress, the Senate passing bipartisan legislation, strongly bipartisan legislation, in support of same-sex marriage just days before this attack happens on this nightclub. There's a disconnect between the politics, where there's growing acceptance of LGBTQ communities, and yet, at the same time — and it's not clear what the motives were, but the sense of backlash at the same time.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Ugly, ugly language still out there coming up in different — in dark corners of our of — of where these conversations come from.

• Tamara Keith:

  Ugly.

• Amy Walter:

  Right. Right.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Tough subject, but it's something we're all trying to live with right now.

  Amy Walter, Tamara Keith, thank you both.

• Tamara Keith:

  You're welcome.

• Amy Walter:

  Thanks, Judy.