A year ago it seemed like Trump would run in 2024 virtually unopposed. Maybe he’d get a token challenge from the likes of Larry Hogan, but no serious alternative would gamble their political career by taking him on.

A year later it looks as if we might have a dozen candidates onstage a la 2016.

This WaPo piece about Republicans who are eyeing the next primary name-checks no fewer than 10 current or former officials who are weighing their options. (A Politico piece today about Marco Rubio suggests he’s looking at another run as well.) Not all are committed to running, of course, and at least one, Nikki Haley, has pledged not to do so if Trump does.

But it sure sounds like Mike Pence is a go: “Allies are eyeing a spring 2023 announcement.” And once someone shatters the taboo of opposing the Great MAGA King for control of the party, especially someone with the stature of Pence, other candidates will be more inclined to jump in. No one wants to face the full force of Trump fanatics’ wrath by taking him on one-on-one. But if the field is crowded, that’s no longer a concern.

There’s only one Republican who might conceivably beat Trump, though, and it’s not Mike Pence. That guy is also moving towards jumping in, WaPo reports — with encouragement from his family.

DeSantis has been quietly building his fundraising networks while grabbing national headlines for his challenges to the Biden administration and for his focus on culture war issues. Without mentioning Trump, he has told donors, “No one’s nomination is inevitable,” according to a person to whom his comments have been relayed.

Beating Trump’s 2020 margin of three percentage points in Florida has become a key campaign goal, according to three people familiar with the conversations. They said DeSantis’s wife, Casey, a former television host and among a small circle of confidants, wants him to run for president. The couple believes that the governor’s skills are uniquely matched to the current political climate, and are wary of waiting six years, by which time the tides may have shifted. DeSantis has not indicated if he would defer a campaign if Trump runs…

Behind the scenes, DeSantis and his team think they’ve overtaken Trump with the party’s major donors, according to an ally in touch with the governor. A former aide said DeSantis has spoken about wanting to expand his dominance in that realm, including by getting a contribution from Peter Thiel, the billionaire investor who backed Trump in 2016 and has put nearly $30 million behind a pair of Republican Senate candidates this year. The two have spoken, according to two people familiar with their interactions.

I’ve written here a hundred times that the wider DeSantis’s margin of victory is in Florida this fall, the better his chances are of defeating Trump in a 2024 primary on electability. I’m glad to see Team Ron shares that analysis.

Different candidates are at different stages of preparation for 2024, WaPo notes, just in case the king decides he’s done with politics. Tom Cotton has developed an elaborate PowerPoint presentation explaining why he’s well-positioned to become the nominee. (He isn’t.) Haley is calling donors. Chris Christie continues to trash-talk Trump, arguing that Republicans are tired of the endless “rigged election” drone from you-know-who when the country’s struggling with inflation and stratospheric gas prices. Which is a fair point: In an alternate universe where Trump dropped the “stop the steal” nonsense after leaving office, I wonder if so many potential challengers would view him as vulnerable in a primary. We’ll be nearly four years on from the 2020 election when the next primaries begin; if Trump is still mumbling about it then, which is likely, even some Trump-friendly Republican voters may begin to view his obsession as unhealthy.

Apart from Pence, the likeliest person to run seems to be … Mike Pompeo, whose aspirations continue to mystify me, especially after he declined an easy run for a Senate seat in Kansas. Pompeo has impeccable credentials and on paper he could be a sort of establishment/MAGA hybrid candidate capable of building a broad base of support. (That’s also Pence’s strategy, I assume.) But he lacks the shallow charisma and theatrical lib-owning that Republicans crave in their heroes. Who’s supporting him over, say, DeSantis?

Trump isn’t worried about Pompeo or Pence. He understands that a contested 2024 primary will boil down to a brawl between him and Trump 2.0. For that reason, he’s reportedly thinking of announcing his candidacy in … Florida:

People who’ve spoken to Trump say that one reason he’s eying the Sunshine State is to assert his dominance over an ascendant DeSantis, who — if they both run in 2024 — would likely be the former president’s most formidable competitor in a primary fight for the GOP nomination. One of the sources said Trump’s motivation is to show the governor “who the boss is” in the modern-day GOP.

Trump, the sources say, has even asked some associates if they had opinions on any good venues or event spaces — that just happen to be located close to the Florida’s Governor’s Mansion in Tallahassee.

“One time that he did bring up the Florida [launch] scenario was quickly followed by him commenting on how terrible DeSantis was at public speaking and commanding an audience … [and that he’s] lacking in so much charisma and he’s so boring that Florida Republicans would leave Ron immediately for Trump [in a 2024 match-up],” says a person who has spoken to Trump about DeSantis on multiple occasions. (There is evidence that this may not be true, with some polling showing that more Florida Republicans would back DeSantis over Trump in a hypothetical primary.)

“Very overrated” is how Trump has allegedly described DeSantis to confidants. There’s a certain type of sweetly naive political activist who believes that all of their heroes are buddies linked arm-in-arm against the forces of evil, like some sort of culture-war Avengers. They’ve got another six months or so to savor that illusion about Trump and DeSantis before it’s shattered, I suspect.

One final point, at the risk of stating the obvious: The more crowded the field gets, the better it is for Trump. I think DeSantis could be in a position to beat Trump by early 2024 if Republican voters are forced to make a stark “Crazy Guy vs. Someone New” choice. But a multi-candidate field in which the “Someone New” vote splits 10 ways is a death blow. Crazy Guy wins.