And – BOOM! – all of a sudden, the fight for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination is engaged in full force.

Allowing the defeated a few days to bury their political dead is apparently another Washington tradition we no longer observe.

Tuesday's demolition of the GOP, followed by Vice President JD Vance's extraordinary Wednesday morning post about the Iran war, has turned the contest to succeed Donald Trump into an immediate, bruising struggle. Just over a year before the first nominating contests, Republicans are shopping for their first presidential nominee who isn't Trump since 2012.

Vance's chances of becoming the nominee appear to have diminished in the blink of a day. What is emphatically clear is that if he wants to be elected president in 2028, he will have to fight fiercely for it.

'The reason we lost is the war,' Vance wrote on X Wednesday, citing a pollster's findings about Trump voters who defected to Democrats. 

Sources say the Vice President had given some colleagues in the White House a heads up before posting but others, at a senior level, were shocked and alarmed when his tweet popped up on their phones. 

His prescription: end the conflict, address living costs, put America first and reconsider the relationship with Israel. This was an election autopsy with an obvious purpose: put Vance on the record on the side of the voters, his head and his heart.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page accused Vance of weakening Trump's negotiating position with Tehran and overlooking other reasons for defeat. Columnist Kimberley Strassel ridiculed his analysis, emphasizing tariffs, Washington's misplaced priorities and other conspicuous omissions. Ari Fleischer, George W Bush's former spokesman, offered a pointed amendment: the problem was the unsuccessful ceasefire Vance negotiated, rather than the decision to fight.

On X, Vance received both applause for frankness and the reasonable question of where this candor had been hiding while he defended the administration.

Donald Trump Jr approvingly reposted Vance's statement; President Trump himself said he thought it was good. Even so, it was widely understood as an attempt to establish distance from the President. Even a family-approved separation is still a split.

Democrats noticed, too. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a prospective 2028 candidate in his own right, accused Vance of trying to escape Trump's shadow almost before the polls had closed, delivering the less-than-gubernatorial verdict, 'JD stinks, man,' and warning that tweeting wouldn't rescue him. Shapiro, like other Democrats, loves being part of open season on the incumbent vice president.

Then came Texas Senator Ted Cruz's lengthy X post, describing the dimensions and causes of the Blue tsunami, faulting Republicans for failing to address the cost of living. He criticized tariffs and the prolonged Iran conflict while prescribing free-market conservatism. Cruz is offering Republicans a familiar product, repackaged for customers who have recently discovered that faux populism can be expensive.

Ron DeSantis, the living embodiment of the colorful maxim about how folks who run for president once don't usually get it out of their systems until they are dead and buried, also made clear that 2028 is very much on his mind.

At a press conference in Tallahassee on Wednesday, he described something approaching Republican extinction while presenting Florida as evidence that sincere conservative government can survive after MAGA flames out or its fervent supporters feel betrayed.

On Fox News with Laura Ingraham, DeSantis faulted both congressional Republicans and the White House for losing voters' trust. The implied comparison required no subtitles: Washington talked; Tallahassee delivered.

Waiting in the wings is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose post-election silence has spared him membership in the Republican circular firing squad. The secretary offers experience, polish and appeal to Republicans uneasy with Vance. He also shares responsibility for the administration's foreign policy. There is no diplomatic passport out of that problem.

My sources still believe that if Vance runs, Rubio won't and that Rubio might pass on the chance, even if Vance is a no-go. Both men are aware of how many times they have been captured on video celebrating the historical excellence of a president who has now been labeled by the electorate as failed and unpopular. Not the best positioning for 2028.

My working expectation is a Vance-DeSantis-Cruz battle, or a Rubio-DeSantis-Cruz battle if circumstances change, with the former still more likely than the latter but neither a sure thing.

Being vice president helps enormously until you need to explain what, precisely, you were doing there. George HW Bush, VP to Ronald Reagan, won the 1988 nomination after an embarrassing third-place Iowa finish and much derision. Al Gore emerged from Bill Clinton's shadow and ultimately swept his 2000 contests but first endured a serious challenge from New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley.

Neither Bush nor Gore were given an early endorsement from the president under whom they served nor were they given the nomination on government stationery. They both earned it.

If Vance runs, he will have to claim the successes, explain the failures and establish independence without provoking the man whose voters he needs. His boss, meanwhile, is unlikely to discover a late-life passion for staying out of the news.

Before Trump, Republicans in the modern era generally nominated men who had climbed recognizable party ladders, although Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan certainly challenged the establishment. Trump smashed the machinery. The 2028 question is whether voters want another MAGA champion or someone promising to repair the place and restore something of the Bush-McCain-Romney wing of the party.

Vance's advisers see him as closer to, and more popular with, the grassroots than elites recognize. Their argument has force: part of Tuesday's sweeping defeat reflects extreme disappointment felt by voters who expected fewer foreign entanglements and less deference to powerful interests.

Iran, Israel, data centers, Epstein, and the expectations surrounding Make America Healthy Again form a combustible collection of grievances, even if they cannot all be assigned equal electoral weight, but it is undeniable that opposition to the war and AI data centers, in particular, has reached deep into Trump country.

Vance wants to represent those disappointed voters despite being the vice president of the administration that disappointed them. Pulling that off will require considerably more than a well-written post on X.