Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on the latest shakeups among GOP presidential contenders

Geoff Bennett:

The 2024 presidential field is continuing to take shape. Former Vice President Mike Pence exits the Republican race, and President Biden gets a new Democratic challenger.

Time for a check-in with our Politics Monday team. That's Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

It's great to see you both.

So, Mike Pence is out of the race. He staked his entire campaign on Iowa. He was making overtures to white evangelicals, his natural base of support. But he was never able to gain any traction.

You could argue his departure, Amy, doesn't really change the contours of the race. But what does it signal?

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

It shows that there just is not much appetite in the Republican electorate for an anti-Trump candidate, or at least someone who openly criticizes Donald Trump, especially when that person also happened to be in the administration as the vice president.

It also goes to what we know about campaigns since the beginning of time. When you run out of money, there's just not much more you can do. Now, some of these candidates are having trouble raising money, but they have a super PAC that has an ability to spend. They can raise it in different ways and spend it in different ways.

Geoff Bennett:

And Pence never had that?

Amy Walter:

And Pence doesn't have — didn't have that same level of super PAC support, and his own personal fund-raising was problematic.

So, the other thing it means is, when we look to the debate stage in a week, yes, the third Republican debate that will also not feature Donald Trump once again, there's one less voice on the stage willing to criticize Donald Trump.

Geoff Bennett:

And, Tam, meantime, Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador, she is ascendant, according to the latest NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom, which is out today. She's risen to a tie with Ron DeSantis. They're both tied 16 percentage points.

What this poll doesn't show is that she's up 10 percentage points since August, and DeSantis is actually down three. So she has the momentum.

Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

Well, and this is — this is her moment. She is a former ambassador to the U.N. She's someone who is very comfortable talking about foreign policy.

And with what's happened in Israel, that has given her an opportunity to really make a distinction between herself and some of the other Republican candidates. And I will say that Ron DeSantis' super PAC, which is basically his campaign, has been attacking her in ads, saying she's too close to China, and sort of attacking her on her foreign policy positions.

She stands out in this field as someone who is a more traditional conservative Republican, more traditional defense hawk type of Republican, certainly in contrast to someone like President Trump. So, she is — she's sort of getting all of the anti-Trump people who are concerned about the U.S. continuing to be a leader in the world, because Trump, for instance, has questioned the need for NATO, has praised Putin, has praised Hezbollah, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Amy Walter:

Yes.

And that is, I think, fundamentally the challenge for Nikki Haley getting much farther, which is, she's picking up those voters who already are very committed to a non-Trump choice. Sometimes, they're called never-Trumpers, or they are folks maybe who did vote for Trump in the past, but don't want to vote for Trump again.

So she's consolidating that group of voters, but that's still not enough. You need to be able to win over the voters who say, I like Donald Trump, I have supported Donald Trump, but I'm open to an alternative. And that's what that poll finds, is that, even if Ron DeSantis dropped out today, a good 40 percent of his voters said they would support Donald Trump.

And so he is able to move into those voters looking for an alternative, but not someone who is as critical of Donald Trump. They still like Donald Trump. So it is — this needle that she has to thread is very, very challenging.

Geoff Bennett:

Let's talk about the Democrats, namely, President Joe Biden.

He drew a primary challenger this past week from Congressman Dean Phillips. You could argue that Dean Phillips' candidacy doesn't pose much of a threat to Joe Biden right now, but in many ways it does symbolically, in that Dean Phillips being in this race, Tam, raises more questions about Joe Biden's age and all of those things that the campaign would rather not talk about.

How are they dealing with this?

Tamara Keith:

Well, Dean Phillips is in fact raising all of those questions and is in a way in this race as a vessel for concerns of Democrats about President Biden's age.

He gives them, Democratic voters, a place to go. The way that the Democratic Party and the campaign are dealing with it are, for instance, he is staking a lot of his campaign on running in New Hampshire, which is a state that has been basically punished by the Democratic National Committee, because it kept its primary early.

What this means is that he is staking a bunch of his campaign on a state where he cannot win any delegates and where he could actually be punished by the party for running in that state, though what that would do is create headlines, of course. And after the first sentence, you would have the second sentence that says he potentially maybe won a state where Joe Biden wasn't on the ballot and where he will get no delegates.

Geoff Bennett:

The U.S. approach, the administration's approach to Israel, Amy, is also a point of contention among some Democrats, both in terms of policy and in terms of rhetoric, namely, President Biden's response to our Laura Barron-Lopez's question in the Rose Garden this past week, where he said he had no confidence in the death toll coming out of Gaza.

He said — quote — "I have no notion that the Palestinians are telling the truth about how many people are killed."

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal said on "Meet the Press" yesterday that the American people are quite far away, that was the phrase she used, from Biden and Congress.

Based on your research, based on your analysis, is that the case? And how does the White House account for that?

Amy Walter:

Right.

I think, overall, if you look at — and this was a poll taken about a week-and-a-half ago — do you think that — are your sympathies more with Israelis or Palestinians, overall, 61 percent say Israelis. Even among Democrats, though, it's 48 percent, with 22 percent saying Palestinians and another 30 percent saying don't know.

So, if Pramila Jayapal is thinking about the Democratic base, that may be correct, that it's not as strong as it is in the electorate overall. But now look at another crisis in the world, which is in Ukraine. And, there, you have actually more disagreement among Republicans about the importance of Ukraine to the United States, that the way — this is a Quinnipiac poll — do you think that supporting Ukraine is in the national interest of the United States?

Republicans, just 49 percent say yes, 44 percent say no, compared to 87 percent of Democrats, 63 percent of independents. In other words, we're looking at two world crises, one in Israel and Gaza, one in Ukraine, that does divide the two parties internally, even as one party will support the other part of the world almost completely.

Geoff Bennett:

And, Tam, there's a headline in The Post today that says, "The White House scrambles to repair relations with Arab and Muslim Americans."

Based on your reporting, how is the White House doing that?

Tamara Keith:

The president's rhetoric about the conflict has changed.

He has gotten tougher on Israel, has raised more loudly his concerns that he had previously raised privately with the Israelis about ensuring the safety of civilians in Gaza.

But it is a real concern. Michigan is a state that was decided by fewer than 200,000 votes. And the Arab American community is quite large there.

Geoff Bennett:

Tamara Keith and Amy Walter, always great to speak with you.

Tamara Keith:

Thanks.

Amy Walter:

Thank you.