(The Hill) President Trump is dominating the political stage for now. But attention will shift soon enough toward the 2028 race.

Trump has at times entertained the idea of seeking a third term a notion encouraged by some of the most combative voices in MAGA World such as Steve Bannon. 

The near-universal expert view is that such a quest would be flagrantly unconstitutional. Trump would also be 82 by Election Day 2028.

Assuming Trump indeed exits the White House for a final time at the end of his second term, the battle to succeed him will be fierce.

Tomorrow, The Hill will publish similar rankings for Democrats in 2028. For now, here’s where the Republican field stands.

1. Vice President JD Vance

Vice President Vance is the most obvious inheritor of Trump’s mantle.

Part of the reason is simple: He is the much-younger vice president to an incumbent president.

But there are more Vance-specific factors as well.

The vice president has long ago abandoned the criticisms of Trump that he once leveled. Despite the vigor of those critiques he mulled to a friend in 2016 whether Trump could end up being “America’s Hitler” he appears to have been forgiven by the MAGA base.

Vance is helped in connecting with Trump’s working-class supporters by his famously difficult upbringing, as memorialized in his book “Hillbilly Elegy.” 

The vice president also shares Trump’s isolationist instincts on foreign policy a tendency most obviously seen when the duo berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office earlier this year. 

Vance is often combative with the media but he has not made many enemies within the Trump-era GOP. Figures like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FBI Director Kash Patel are all much more controversial within the party.

There are still question marks over some of Vance’s political instincts. During last year’s campaign, a 2021 jibe about “childless cat ladies” came back to haunt him.

But for now, there’s no real doubt that Vance is the Republican front-runner to succeed Trump.

2. Donald Trump Jr.

Donald Trump Jr.’s lofty position on this list is rooted less in his political skills which are unproven, at best than in the plausible possibility he would benefit from his father’s hold over the party.

The elder Trump has been able to survive numerous furors two impeachments, Jan. 6 and felony convictions on 34 counts because he inspires such fervent personal loyalty from his base.

The question is whether the father’s supporters would transfer their allegiance to his eldest son.

The younger Trump for now mostly confines himself to aggressive social media posts, an equally fiery podcast called “Triggered” and tending to his business interests.

One doubt around the younger Trump is whether he would bring the same negatives as his father both men are widely loathed by liberals without the same positives with the GOP base.

Still, a second Trump candidacy would automatically have to be taken seriously.

3. Sen. Tom Cotton (Ark.)

Sen. Tom Cotton’s decision to take a pass on the 2024 race for the GOP nomination looks wise in retrospect.

Trump would almost certainly have been the victor whomever he ran against and Cotton’s image with the MAGA faithful has not been besmirched by any perceived disloyalty.

Cotton, an Army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, has a sure touch for the kind of political positioning that has a visceral appeal for many Republican voters.

One recent example is his insistence that former special counsel Jack Smith should be investigated for in Cotton’s view improperly seeking to influence the 2024 election by his criminal probes of Trump. Smith, through his lawyers, has emphatically denied this.

Cotton is a strong speaker and media performer, with a more hawkish view of foreign affairs than Vance.

He would be an immediate top-tier contender if he runs in 2028.

4. Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas)

The 2016 GOP primary seems a very, very long time ago. But back then, Sen. Ted Cruz was by far Trump’s most serious rival for the GOP nomination. 

The 2016 campaign was also a bitter one, with Trump making bizarre allegations against Cruz’s father and wife, and the Texas senator hitting back in kind.

Cruz called Trump a “pathological liar” and famously declined to endorse him at that year’s Republican National Convention.

Cruz has positioned himself in a far more Trump-friendly way since then, and he is one of the best-known Republicans nationwide.

There’s no doubt about the Texas senator’s fervent conservatism, on cultural and economic issues alike.

The bigger question is whether he is too distrusted in some MAGA quarters to win.

5. Secretary of State Marco Rubio

Marco Rubio suffers from some of the same problems as Cruz, though his current position at the heart of the Trump administration could help him.

Rubio, like Cruz, ran against Trump in 2016 and threw plenty of verbal barbs the president’s way. Trump derided his then-rival as “Lil’ Marco.”

Now, Rubio is a frequent presence on television fiercely defending Trump’s foreign policy approach.

Yet Rubio is also capable, at least to some degree, of bridging the gap between the “America First” isolationism of the MAGA movement and the more old-style hawkish Republicanism he previously embraced.

Still, there is often a sense that Rubio has never quite lived up to his promise. 

First elected as a senator representing Florida 15 years ago, a 2013 Time magazine cover billed Rubio as “The Republican Savior.”  

Republican voters have never quite agreed.

6. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis

Gov. Ron DeSantis has helped rehabilitate himself with voters loyal to Trump in recent months by his championing of Alligator Alcatraz, the highly controversial immigration detention facility in Florida’s Everglades.

Trump visited the facility during the summer, but it’s actually run by the state of Florida and thus, ultimately, by DeSantis.

A judge has ordered the facility closed amid a case that DeSantis has fiercely contested. The governor also announced earlier this month that his state will open a second facility, which he has christened “Deportation Depot.”

It’s the kind of move that saw DeSantis emerge as Trump’s most serious rival in the 2024 nomination process.

But in the end, that campaign was very underwhelming and clearly hurt DeSantis’s standing and future ambitions.

7. Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.)

Sen. Josh Hawley could pull a surprise in the 2028 race, if he were to run.

Besides Trump himself, he is the Republican who courts working-class support more ostentatiously than any other.

Hawley is a vigorous critic of stock trading by members of Congress, for example, and he made an unlikely alliance with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to try to cap interest rates on credit cards.

He is also more pro-labor than most Republicans, a stance reflected in moves like him pushing a bill that would have pressed employers not to use delaying tactics when negotiating union contracts.

Critics on the left see Hawley’s efforts as a pose, especially given his staunch social conservatism. He is also regarded with some suspicion by some members of his own party.

But a Hawley bid is one of the more intriguing possibilities for 2028.

8. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene would be the most controversial possible choice by the GOP a title for which there is stiff competition.

The Georgia congresswoman has been an inflammatory figure in American politics since she first won her seat in 2020. She has tangled with numerous Democrats, once getting into a particularly heated contretemps with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) just off the House floor.

But Greene has also mixed it up with fellow Republicans like Rep. Lauren Boebert (Colo.) and MAGA influencers like Laura Loomer.

Greene, intriguingly, has been to the fore among the GOP in expressing opposition to Israeli actions in Gaza. In July, she became the first Republican member of Congress to call those deeds a “genocide.”

The following month, she caused another stir by accusing her own party of having “turned its back on America First, and the workers and just regular Americans.”

Is she electable nationally? Many people would say no, and it would be a huge gamble on the GOP’s part to even consider nominating her.

9. Sen. Tim Scott (S.C.)

Sen. Tim Scott, a famously affable presence even in an increasingly acrimonious Senate, is well regarded by Trump, and by virtually every faction in today’s GOP.

He’s also the sole Black Republican senator, a status that could perhaps help the GOP make further inroads with Black voters if he were to somehow make it to the nomination.

Scott never really got traction as a 2020 candidate, however; and there’s no obvious reason to believe he would vault past the people higher up this list in 2028.