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Notes -
And one of those issues is the six week Abortion ban he signed into law. If DeSantis had held the line at 15 weeks he would have had a really good shot but this will be the first post-Dobbs presidential election and there's no way for DeSantis to occupy a more popular middle ground position on abortion with any credibility after that.
I'm not sure that early abortion bans are Kryptonite for republicans in the same way everyone seems to assume. Even granted that they're unpopular, Abbott, Dewine, and Kemp all got reelected with unusually good margins while having recently passed fairly strict abortion laws. In the case of Abbott there is literally polling showing that Texans preferred O'Rourke on abortion and not other issues, while Abbott claimed multiple times on live TV(albeit not widely watched TV) that the most important issue for him was keeping abortion 100% illegal. Dewine had a major news story about a pregnant 10 year old rape victim who couldn't get an abortion because of his policies.
Granted that the electorates in Texas, Ohio, and Georgia are probably more pro-life than average, but they're not that much more prolife. Desantis is also better at message discipline and media control than average.
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"I have no intention of pursuing a federal abortion ban as that matter is best left to the state level legislatures, as the Supreme Court made clear."
Man, that was easy.
I'm sure that's what he will say I just don't think the public will buy it. 'I think abortion is baby murder but you can trust me not to do anything about it' isn't particularly trustworthy after the 'Roe is settled law' judges went mask off with Dobbs.
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"This is clearly a lie, as we can see from his previous behavior, supporters, and party platform" followed by a bunch of clipchimping and scary music.
Anybody who is on the prochoice side is incredibly ready to believe that republicans want a federal ban, because lots of them do and say so.
Doesn't even matter if it's not true; it's republican Death Panels style of thing.
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The problem is of course, I'm sure ole' Meatball Ron has voted for restrictions multiple times on the federal level while he's in Congress, will be endorsed by numerous groups that want pro-life restrictions on the national level, and I'm sure the 2024 GOP convention will endorse national pro-life legislation.
More importantly, there's about .01% of the population cares about federalism - all they'll know is the GOP candidate signed a restrictive abortion law. Plus, the Liberal Media and SuperPAC's will have plenty of time to talk about the GOP's long history of supporting federal abortion bans and basically push the idea, "do you trust what Ron DeSantis says or what the Republican Party has said for 40 years", or whatever a smarter person than me can write.
Plus, there's just a decent chance that to try to win over evangelical voters in Iowa, he'll just go ahead and endorse federal restrictions to try to win a caucus.
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