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I have previously discussed Ron DeSantis's prospects of becoming GOP nominee here and probably back on the old sub as well, but events of the past few weeks make me want to revisit the topic. During this period, several op-eds appeared suggesting that DeSantis is already flaming out. The biggest evidence for this is polling, which shows him losing ground to Donald Trump. While I think these reports are a bit premature—after all, polls from a year out aren't exactly the most reliable, especially concerning a candidate who hasn't even announced yet—they seem to underscore a point I had made previously. Ron DeSantis is a great candidate if the goal is to wed the Trump spirit to a candidate that doesn't want to directly invoke Trump. Some call him Trump-lite but that's not really an accurate description. He knows that the Republican party desperately needs to move on from Trump if they want to win national elections, as most Americans find direct MAGA invocations and claims of rigged elections to be distasteful at best and dangerous at worst. There's value in appearing to be the reasonable Republican who might have a shot at winning the general election in the face of an unpopular octogenarian. On the other hand, he knows that Trump has a large base that is now well-integrated in the party and is distrustful of Romney-type moderates who will sell them out to wealthy elites if it puts an extra nickel in their pockets and will play dead in the face of woke excess. RINOs, in other words. The Tea Party and later Trump reinvigorated a Republican party that had been moribund in the wake of Bush's disastrous second term, and the voters who made 2016 possible won't stand for some squish. They need someone who will fight.
DeSantis sought to split this difference. He balanced effective, bland government with culture-war ostentation. He refused to kowtow to Trump but was reluctant to criticize him. He built up plenty of media buzz. The thought among his supporters was that he would have the upper hand on both Trump wannabes and boring moderates in the primary. And then Trump himself announced his candidacy, and started attacking DeSantis directly, even though DeSantis hadn't (and still hasn't) declared. When he finally announces (probably in June), the primary fight will be a bloodbath. And no, DeSantis can't wait until 2028 because his buzz is solely based around his supposed candidacy. If he sits this one out he's a popular governor who no one outside of Florida gives a fuck about, at least not until 2027, when he'll have to compete with whoever the next wunderkind is, assuming Trump isn't running yet again.
The smart money says that DeSantis would have a shot in the general but is hamstrung by the fact that, having to go against Trump directly, he'll have to run further to the right than a general electorate will find acceptable, and will come out of the primary looking like another MAGA extremist. This is the conventional wisdom but I think this wisdom is wrong. First, DeSantis would have a tough row to hoe in the general even if the GOP handed him the nomination on a silver platter. What's the man know for so far? His COVID response put him on the map, but COVID isn't going to be an issue in 2024, and he'll have to do better than pointing out an isolated glory from four years ago. Everything else he's been in the news for has been culture war bait that is of dubious effectiveness, has nearly no national relevance, and is distasteful to moderates in any event. Part of the reason why Republicans were so disappointing in last year's midterms is because they failed to address things voters actually cared about. As much as the GOP would rag on Biden for inflation, they never presented a coherent plan for how to deal with it. No one knows what Ron DeSantis thinks about inflation. No one knows what the thinks about healthcare. No one knows what he thinks about crime, or how he plans to explain how Florida's crime rate is worse than both New York's and California's. When he's on the debate stage with Biden, what's he going to do, talk about the STOP WOKE act and the Don't Say Gay bill?
But then, he had an opening. Earlier this month, "Justice for All", a new single by Donald Trump and the J6 choir, went to No. 1 on iTunes. The single features president Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance over a choir of heavily autotuned January 6th prisoners singing "The Star Spangled Banner" over prison phones. To most people on the left, this was just a hilarious example of how nutty the right is. But it gives DeSantis a chance. This is, for once, proof positive that there's no outflanking Trump on the right. No amount of MAGA-adjacentness is going to cut it here, when Trump represents the platonic ideal of MAGA. DeSantis's culture warring has proven that he's no RINO squish; now he can use this credibility to fight Trump directly. Come out directly and say that Trump's implicit support of the J6 prisoners, most of whom were convicted of assaulting law enforcement, is a disgrace to the idea of law and order and legitimizes left-wing violence. Come out and say that the 2020 election wasn't rigged. Come out and directly attack every MAGA conspiracy theory out there. Run on all the good, boring things he's done in Florida that no one has paid attention to, like environmental legislation, which has greater GOP interest in the wake of the East Palestine debacle. There's little doubt that if he wins Iowa, or New Hampshire, or wherever else, Trump will claim that the election was rigged, so get out ahead of it. He'll lose the Trump faithful but he wasn't winning with them anyway, and the rest of the party will be able to get back to some semblance of normal.
Of course. I wrote all this before I saw the news last night of the latest developments in the Disney scandal. I thought his move against Disney was stupid at the time, and said so here, but all of the DeSantis supporters assured me that this was the right move. It was clear almost immediately that simply ending the special district wasn't going to work, and I wasn't surprised when he said that the legislature would be dealing with the issue at a date that was conveniently after the election. Around this time, Bob Iger came back as Disney CEO, and apparently realized that a drawn-out court battle wasn't in the company's best interests, and it looked like the two sides had reached the kind of compromise that allowed both parties to save face: The state would get a couple token board members and everyone would forget about the whole thing. Then, at some point, DeSantis got greedy and made a deal that looked too good to be true—the entire district would be replaced with a new one whose board would consist entirely of political appointees, including a self-described children's activist and a self-described Christian nationalist, along with some wealthy donors for good measure. Some even went so far as to suggest that the board could monitor the content of Disney's theme park programs. The new board took over last month with relatively little fanfare.
And then, yesterday, weeks after the crucial documents had been signed, it became clear that the whole thing was one big setup, and that Disney had completely outfoxed DeSantis. It turns out that, back in February, the existing RCID board had entered into an agreement with Disney that devolved almost all of its powers. At least the powers that would have given DeSantis any leverage over the company. The board will still oversee infrastructure, but won't have any ability to influence development. Florida officials are obviously livid and the new board is seeking legal redress. I won't comment on the legality of the whole mess because I don't know, but even if the state has a good case against Disney, it doesn't really matter. First, the RCID was a public body and thus subject to sunshine laws. The whole thing was done out in the open—the agreement was posted online so you didn't even need a records request, the meeting adopting the agreement was public, etc.—so the only excuse DeSantis has for getting into this mess was not anticipating some kind of funny business and not noticing that anything was wrong until weeks after the deal was done. Second, it doesn't matter because any litigation won't be resolved until well after the election is over, and I doubt anyone will be issuing preliminary injunctions enabling the board to operate as it desires. One of the centerpieces of DeSantis's culture war has been delayed significantly due almost exclusively to the incompetence of public officials. Who knows, maybe this will blow over, but it significantly damages any attempt by DeSantis to run on competent administration.
You've misjudged the politics. Trump was already the leftward turn on policy for the Republican party. He's against cutting Medicare/Medicaid, wanted to tax the rich heavily to pay for infrastructure projects, was by far the most pro-gay GOP candidate ever, and made a big deal of signing major reductions in criminal justice efforts. He also was exceptionally dovish by GOP standards.
There is no outflanking that on the left, and Trump wasn't getting criticism because he was too far right on policy - he got attacked as the boorish tribune of declasse plebs; all those rural white men ... YUCK! Can't be any less cool than that. Didn't anyone tell them the Future is Female? And takes a train in a big city to an email job? Deviating significantly from a Trump-ish attitude signifies that the candidate isn't with the base, and that's no way to win a primary.
No, the way DeSantis attacks Trump is on details. DeSantis can sell himself as the type of executive who actually can do things. This means culture war stuff about defunding woke educational bureaucracies, sure. But it also means basic good-governance stuff like public order, disaster recovery, COVID management, firing rogue prosecutors, etc. (Whether or not DeSantis can make good on this is another question - he's benefitted mightily from having good connections with the friendly legislature in FL while governor; he's significantly less well-connected or -liked in Congress, and there's no guarantee that a Pres. DeSantis would have majorities in both houses).
The RCID thing is not as big as you make it out to be. I'm not even sure people remember why they were mad at Disney in the first place over this.
Desantis seems like he has the ability to pull friendly appointees from high profile state positions(both Florida and elsewhere) a lot more easily than trump, helped along by just being a better boss/personnel manager.
Being a disastrous people manager and completely unable to assemble a working team is the source of the most Trump's failures. In fact, he was the one who hired the lawyer on whose words the current accusations against him are based, didn't he? DeSantis would do well to be much better at this - and there's not much space to be worse.
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Yep, MAGA has it's visionary, it needs someone who knows how to govern and implement it. I'm not sure DeSantis is that guy but there's room for someone to be.
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