The Official Republican Party Presidential Tier List

Sorting through Trump, Rob DeSanctimonious, and everyone else.

Once upon a time, the Republican Party was absolutely bursting at the seams with talent. If you looked across the state governments and federal representatives of any red state, swing state, and a surprising number of blue states in America in the mid-2010s, you’d be guaranteed to come across at least one intriguing new entry to the political scene. There were moderates, conservatives, Tea Partiers, technocrats, populists, libertarians, even relative liberals—if it was a strain of right-of-center thought, there’d almost certainly be an electorally successful, ambitious politician who represented it. The paths open forward for the party seemed infinite, with so many different philosophies, backgrounds and approaches represented that it would have been difficult to make any true 1:1 comparisons between two different figures.

All of that is gone now. Since the 2016 election, the Republican Party has been completely flattened ideologically by the uncompromising dictates of Trumpism and slowly drained of life by unceasing electoral failures. Led by a man who sees a strong party as a danger to his authority and looks upon primaries as mechanisms for him to install his own loyalists into power, the party has found itself suddenly incapable of recruiting the kind of talent capable of exerting a presence nationally. And that’s just how Donald Trump wants it. His ideal Republican Party is an institution that serves solely as an extension of his own power and is incapable of challenging him. And this, more or less, is the Republican Party he has made.

And because of this, Donald Trump is the Republican candidate for 2024. Following that, he is on track to be the Republican candidate in every election going forward until he wins a second term or dies. So, the purpose of this list is not to spark any intrigue about the possibilities of the 2024 Republican primary, which is an open race in name only. Rather, it is a recognition that the Republican Party will, one day, move beyond Donald Trump himself, if only for the sole reason that he cannot live forever.

So, in what remains of the hollowed-out husk of the modern GOP, who among the candidates with at least a feasible chance of winning a presidential nomination at some point stands out as a strong contender? Who doesn’t? And where does Trump stand relative to them? Once again, all of these questions will be answered here.

F Tier

Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH)

Starting off at the rock bottom of the list, we have the poster boy of one of the most embarrassing ongoing attempts of an ideological “movement” in modern times. That poster boy is freshman Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. This supposed movement is right-wing populism. And there is perhaps nobody else in politics today who has done more to embarrass their faction than this sad, fake, shell of a man.