Time for Some Speculation
By 
The Republican Party came about 2 inches from having to answer a question:
Who would have become the presidential nominee if Donald Trump had died?
Without having any real idea what would have happened, a couple of speculative comments about various people:
- Another Trump–I imagine there would be some kind of desire to keep it in the Trump family. The problem there is that Don Jr and Eric are Uday and Qusay and just totally unserious. Ivanka is by far the most serious but she is a woman and also might not be dumb enough to try and do it. So I doubt this would happen
- Nikki Haley–the party’s mainstream leaders might have wanted this, but hard to see it passing muster with the delegates at the convention. Plus Trump hates her. Doubt it.
- Ted Cruz–No. Everyone hates him, even his family. And he most certainly does not have the charisma of Trump to somehow transcend that fact.
- Ron DeSantis–lol
- Marco Rubio–not impossible, but no one really takes him that seriously. Yeah, he could be VP here, but even so, I think that’s a maybe at best.
- Tom Cotton–he would love it and might even get some support, but he’s too obviously a fascist to win a single swing voter.
- J.D. Vance–I think this is the most likely answer. He probably will be the VP, he can certainly talk, he has absolutely zero principles, and would serve the Trumpist faction probably more effectively than the master. He’s a smarmy piece of shit and a consistent spotlight on him might be disastrous, but I still think he’s the most likely choice for both VP and in this almost happened scenario, to take over at the RNC.
I may be missing some other terrible humans.