[dmurray]

There's always lots of people who want to be President. Certainly way more than the 20 or so who showed up in primaries.

The issue was that a relatively large number of them had financial support and sizeable backing within the Republican party until late in the campaign. That's less likely to happen if there's one outstanding candidate. For example, it didn't happen in 2020, not because nobody else wanted to be President, but because the GOP overwhelmingly agreed that Trump was their best bet.