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That's a possibility that I didn't consider, but on the whole I think it's actually worse than the third possibility I outlined above. The possibility I outlined above of Trump loyalists dropping off is certainly mitigated, though probably not eliminated entirely. The real problem here is that by branding himself as a more effective purveyor of the Trump agenda he alienates himself from anyone who explicitly voted against the Trump agenda in the previous 3 elections. This is what I alluded to when I brought up the DeSantis supporters whom I know personally; they complained about Trump but they still voted for him and all his loser candidates (except maybe Mastriano). For the Republicans to win in 2024 they would have to flip either Pennsylvania or Michigan. Neither state has elected a Republican in a statewide election since Trump and Toomey in 2016. Regardless of what you think about his cognitive abilities post-stroke, John Fetterman is much further to the left than I would have previously thought possible for PA. Josh Shapiro's win makes this the first time since the '40s that one party has held the governor's seat for longer than 8 years consecutively. Flipping PA means convincing people who voted for Wolf, Casey, Biden, Shapiro, and Fetterman that it's worth taking a chance with the GOP. DeSantis made a name for himself by loosening up Florida's COVID restrictions, but Michigan just reelected Gretchen Whitmer by a large margin, whose COVID policies were, shall we say, a bit different. Lose both of these states out and it's lights out for the Republicans in 2024, regardless of how many other swing states they manage to flip. I doubt a message of "Trump policies but more effective" is the way to do this.
If he's able to do this then he's also able to ignore the whole hornet's nest entirely and say nothing. But I doubt that will be the case. With Trump beating the election fraud drum a journalist is bound to ask him directly whether he thinks the election was stolen, and unless his answer is an unequivocal "No" his chances at winning the general are pretty much sunk. If he says what you suggest then any decent journalist would follow upo with something that doesn't allow for that kind of answer, like "Do you think Mr. Trump won Georgia?" or "Do you think there was any fraud in Pennsylvania?" or "Do you think Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election?" or "Would you have supported attempts to prevent certification of the election in the Senate?" then no one gives a shit about what evidence Trump had or what DeSantis did in Florida. Even saying "I can't comment on Pennsylvania because I wasn't supervising that election" is enough of a dodge that it looks like he's unwilling to say anything one way or the other. Theoretically he could equivocate during the primary and be more direct about it once he has the nomination locked up, but that's such an obvious move that the swing vote he needs to secure would see right through it. Trump already called him out on not admitting that he'd been vaccinated, so I have no doubt that he'd respond to any equivocation by hammering DeSantis relentlessly for it. The only chance I see DeSantis having is if he goes hard anti-Trump and anti-MAGA, but I wonder if he's too afraid of losing the hardcore base to have the stomach for it. But anything else and he has to spend the entire general election retracting everything he said during the primary, and that doesn't seem like a recipe for success.
I mean have you seen DeSantis's very first campaign ad when he was running for governor? He is committed to the Trump agenda in broad strokes and there's no undoing it (although he can still play around the edges). And he has proven that he's electable in a swing state nonetheless.
Besides, what else would a GOP nominee run on? Back to the Romney playbook of calling to defund social security? Trump won where Romney lost in part because his agenda is more appealing to the electorate than the traditional GOP agenda.
This is a general argument that it's hard for a Republican to win, not a specific argument that Trump is better able to do it than DeSantis. Trump won those states in 2016, but he lost them in 2020 after they had seen what Trump is like in office.
This is not that difficult, really. Responding to this journalist during the primary: "Trump says the election was stolen, and a lot of good people are in jail right now because they believed him. But he never came through. He never showed up with evidence, not with all the power of the executive branch at his disposal. His own Attorney General said he was wrong. The best he can do is complain that he was victimized by Joe Biden. Well, I'm a doer, not a complainer. My record shows that much. I promise you that Joe Biden will never steal an election from me." And then in the general, give the same answer but leave out the last three sentences. It's really easy to pivot from that question to hitting Trump for failing, for letting himself be victimized, for failing to even keep the support of his own cabinet. That kind of answer projects strength to the GOP without coming close to participating in Trump's election denialism.
Trump's whole winning shtick in 2016 was that he's a winner, that he knows how the game is played and can out-play the Democrats, that he'll be too busy winning to worry about their political correctness and BS. But now he's a loser and a complainer, and the best that he can argue is that Joe Biden victimized him, that he got swindled and played by Sleepy Joe, which undermines his whole shtick. It's totally doable to call him out for that without getting dragged into the object level of whether Trump was right in his complaints. It just takes a modicum of political talent, which DeSantis has.
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