The 2018 Florida Flamingo ‘Tp of the spear’ for the GOP: The Ups and Downs of DeSantis

But planning competing events inside Florida two days before a momentous Election Day is especially illustrative of how fraught the relationship between the former allies has become. Unlike other potential 2024 contenders, DeSantis has not declined to run against Trump in a primary, much to Trump’s ire. DeSantis, meanwhile, believes such a concession would undermine his attempts to keep the focus on his current reelection race instead of what may lie ahead, CNN previously reported. In a recent debate, he wouldn’t respond if he intends to serve a four-year term if reelected, but his campaign has declined to discuss his plans after the election.

The former president will welcome supporters in Miami, the third stop in a four-city tour that has effectively made Trump a leading player in his party’s fight for control of Congress. Meanwhile, the Florida governor is organizing his own events in three different counties on the state’s opposite coast, steering clear of Trump as he seeks to close out his second term.

“We have two very stubborn, very type-A politicians in Florida that are at the tip of the spear for the GOP,” said one Republican official who asked not to be named. Both of them have their own political operations and that’s what you’re seeing. It’s already exhausting to talk about.”

On the campaign trail, DeSantis doesn’t talk about Trump, but his remarks are peppered with frequent mentions of President Joe Biden in a preview of what a presidential campaign against the incumbent Democrat might look like.

Trump announced his latest presidential bid just a week after the midterms last month. While everyone else is saying nothing about the year of change, DeSantis is allowing speculation to swirl. Several consultants in Florida have said DeSantis likely won’t jump into the race until after state lawmakers meet for their annual legislative session, which points to a May or June announcement next year.

Many Republican donors, politicians and conservative supporters are concerned that Ron DeSantis has overstepped in the fight against “wokeness” as he tries to shore up support for a crowded White House campaign in two years. Several potential rivals for the GOP nomination have seized on DeSantis’ brash approach and top-heavy governing style to draw sharp contrasts with the popular Republican.

DeSantis described himself as a fighter who stood up against medical experts and criticism during the pandemic to reopen the state and ban coronavirus vaccine mandates, echoing a sentiment in a campaign ad in which DeSantis suggests he was created by God to fight for Florida.

The biggest cheers the Florida governor received, however, came when he recounted how he arranged for Florida to send nearly 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, a stunt that has faced intense scrutiny and legal challenges.

The Miami-Dade County Primaries: Why Aren’t The Republicans So Fail in the First-in-the-Nation Caucus State?

If they do go head-to-head in a primary, the two candidates may find themselves on similar financial footing. DeSantis has raised $200 million this campaign cycle through his two political committees and has spent just over half, leaving about $90 million in potential seed money for a Super PAC. At the end of October, Trump was sitting on about $117 million between his three active fundraising vehicles, according to federal election data.

CNN reported this week that the motivation for Trump’s travel was his desire to launch a third campaign for the White House. Indeed, during a visit to Iowa on Thursday, Trump told voters in the first-in-the-nation caucus state to “get ready” for his return as a presidential candidate. Trump stopped in Pennsylvania on Saturday – home to the tight Senate race between his endorsee, Republican Mehmet Oz, and Democrat John Fetterman – and he’ll spend election eve in Ohio, where the former president endorsed Republican J.D. Vance in the Senate race against Democrat Tim Ryan.

The result of the GOP Primary in Miami-Dade County, where RickSantos won 55 percent of the vote, shows that he can communicate with Latino communities around the country. In two decades, a GOP governor didn’t win the county. A CNN exit poll showed DeSantis with an 18-point lead over Crist among Florida Latino voters, a reversal from his first campaign for governor four years ago.

In the last election, President Trump made Florida a stronghold of his agenda by backing endorsed candidates up and down the ballot. Florida is no longer a purple state due to the work of President Trump.

It becomes worse than gold after Biden touches it. A lot of people think that the country has seen its best days, and that is frustrating. They believe that we are on the wrong track. I think Florida gives the best idea to other states.

It was Glenn Beck who made this suggestion after Tuesday’s election but he expressed a desire to linger with the visions of a red wave that wiped out Republicans. The reality – that the party had an unusually poor showing in a midterm that many expected would be a historic blowout – felt too sour to linger on.

Various polls have suggested that Trump’s hold on the Republican Party may be weakening and that DeSantis is picking up support. A University of New Hampshire poll of the first-in-the-nation primary state released last week showed the Florida governor leading Trump 42% to 30% among likely GOP voters in the state. A CNN/SSRS poll in December found that about 6 in 10 Republicans and Republican-leaning independents wanted their party to nominate someone other than Trump in 2024.

It is believed that a losing streak could break the base’s loyalty to Trump, even if a violent insurrection could not break it. DeSantis is certainly better positioned than any other Republican in the country to challenge Trump for the nomination, especially since he has attracted broad support from Republican elites and right-wing media. Trump, however, has an exceptional track record against such odds. With Tuesday’s red wave, the dream of a victory in 2024 may become just as elusive and illusory.

Although he stayed mostly in the battlegrounds, Ron DeSantis avoided states where appearances can cause presidential buzz. The chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party is Stephen Stepanek, and he stated that the GOP has had no contact with the governor. Despite the hype around DeSantis, Stepanek predicted it will be difficult for the Florida governor to overcome Trump in the nation’s first primary in New Hampshire. Trump’s victory in the 2016 New Hampshire primary served as the launching point to him winning the GOP nomination.

The strong arming of corporations by the Florida governor was defended by the traditionally business-friendly conservative audience. He criticized CEOs as being “just weak” for giving in to what he described as the “woke mob” that pushes environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) policies, among other “leftist” issues.

Meanwhile, unlike the national party, the Democratic Party in Florida is in tatters, struggling to field and support candidates and to organize and mobilize voters. And Florida has a specific mix of Latino voters that is unlike most other states, weighted heavily toward immigrants from Cuba and Venezuela who respond favorably to DeSantis’s attack on Democrats as socialists.

Then there is the issue of fellow Florida resident Donald Trump. The Dump Trump crowd does not seem to comprehend the extent to which the cult of personality around Trump still exists within parts of the party.

Just two years ago, the party failed to pass a policy platform, instead issuing a statement of loyalty to Trump. The insurrection that followed after the election of Donald Trump did not bring the party with it. The vast majority of Republican voters believe that the election was stolen, and the majority of Republicans in the House voted to overturn the election.

“There’s no way to deny Donald Trump got fired Tuesday night,” Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican who has been critical of Trump, told “CNN This Morning” on Thursday. “The search committee has brought a few names to the top of the list and Ron DeSantis is one of them. I think Ron DeSantis is getting rewarded for a new thought process with Republicans.

The timing of a campaign launch in the future is uncertain. When reports first surfaced that Trump was going to start his campaign in mid-November, the people in the circle were prepared for the chance of a quick transition from the election to the primary. According to several consultants in Florida, former congressman Ron DeSantis won’t jump into the presidential race until after the legislative session ends. That would put DeSantis on a timeline of a May or June announcement.

A long time Republican with knowledge of the operation said to build anticipation. I think DeSantis is in charge of the time frame. Everyone anticipates things. You want to move quickly. He is now calling the shots.

A Republican consultant said that the legislative session was going to be red meat. They will pass it, and it will become law, regardless of what he proposes.

The Republican said that financial institutions would be targets this spring and that they are going to do that.

One Republican consultant said that if he went into a presidential primary with Donald Trump and think he would be kicked ass he would have another thing coming.

“I don’t know if he is running. If he runs, Trump thinks that he would hurt himself very badly. I think he would make a mistake. I think the base wouldn’t be happy with it and it wouldn’t be good for the party.

In 2020, Trump got more votes than DeSantis in Florida. Trump had a margin of victory over Biden of 3 points, which was higher than in presidential races.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu makes one thing clear: His vision for the future of the Republican Party does not include former President Donald Trump.

Taking it a step further, Sununu – who just won a fourth two-year term in the Granite State by 15 percentage points – said it’s “un-American” to “be a country where the best opportunity for our future leadership is the leadership of yesterday.”

The Dean Obeidallah Show: The F**** & the Flavor of the Florida G”oboldmath: Trump’s First Campaign Event at the Los Alamos Park

However, the survey also found that if Trump wins the party’s 2024 nomination, a likely majority of Republican-aligned voters would back him in the general election.

The Dean Obeidallah Show is a daily program on SiriusXM radio. He can be reached at Dean obedahli@mas toai. His own opinions are expressed in this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.

As the former President kicked of his first presidential campaign event on Saturday, Lake, a failed GOP Arizona gubernatorial candidate, had a message for the “fool” who runs against him.

The scene from the film where Clubber Lang is asked by a reporter if he hates the character of Rocky Balboa is unforgettable.

Trump said that governors made the decisions about whether or not to close a thing. He said the Florida governor had changed his tune a lot when it came to vaccines.

In March 2020, in response to the rapidly spreading pandemic, the Florida governor issued an executive order closing bars and nightclubs, and urged people to follow US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines limiting gatherings on beaches to no more than 10 people.

Apparently Marco DeSantis hasn’t won a presidential primary in 25 years. But he can’t keep ducking his barbs

His recent remarks and statements have deviated sharply from sensible government imposed Covid-19 protections in what appears to be a desperate bid to appeal to the GOP’s Covid-denying base voters ahead of an anticipated presidential run.

A number of measures intended to combat the spread of the coronaviruses are against the will of DeSantis. Many political watchers think that the about-face has been motivated by an impending White House bid.

But any potential run inevitably means a face-off with Trump, who is, as yet, the only Republican to have formally announced in the race. The 40th anniversary of Creed’s release was last year, making it possible that the GOP nomination campaign in 25 years would be about Clubber Lang again.

But barring prosecution of the former President, if DeSantis wants to win in 2024, he can’t keep ducking Trump’s barbs. Even though Clubber Lang was able to take the title away from him in the beginning of “Rocky III,” the Italian Stallion prevailed in the end.

Polls show that many people in his party would prefer someone else be the GOP nominee, so if the former President is not a serious contender, he has been on the ropes recently.

When he first got to it, he did not attack Trump directly. With little time to make up ground ahead of a March 2016 primary in his home state of Florida, it was no longer possible for Marco Rubio to catch up with Donald Trump and Ted Cruz in the delegate count.

That was when the gloves were finally put on by Rubio who branded Trump an embarrassment and a demagogue. It was not enough for him to win the Florida GOP primary, he ended up dropping out of the race the next day.

Wearing a flight suit and seated in the cockpit of a fighter jet as the “Top Gov,” DeSantis revealed his “rules of engagement,” declaring, “No. 1 — don’t fire unless fired upon, but when they fire, you fire back with overwhelming force.” He said: “No. 2, never ever back down from a fight.”

Perhaps DeSantis — a Harvard Law School graduate and former federal prosecutor — is waiting to see if Trump is criminally indicted, in the hopes he doesn’t have to meet him on the field of battle. The Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney told a judge last week that decisions were imminent about her investigation into attempts by Trump and his associates to influence the election in Georgia.

There’s also special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump over the January 6, 2021, attack and the trove of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago that might yield charges. While Trump can still legally run for president while under indictment — or even if convicted of a crime — as a practical matter it would likely be devastating to his election prospects.

On the politics of the late-term South Carolina president, Mark DeSantis, and the outcome of his one-term term in office

To prevail, you must put in a fight. There could come a time when GOP voters view DeSantis’ refusal to defend himself and punch back as a sign of weakness.

The longer he remains silent in the face of Trump, the more people will ask themselves why he won’t fight.

It was strange to see the former president campaigning and being embraced by his supporters as if nothing happened after he tried to steal the election.

There is also a clear sense that Trump believes he is owed the Republican nomination and feels that certain sections of his party are not sufficiently grateful for his turbulent one-term presidency.

The attack on evangelical leaders that Trump said showed disloyalty came just days after the president lashed out at them for refusing to support him in his bid for the White House. The comments were a reminder of Trump’s transactional view of politics – and also that a man who dumped aides, staff and Cabinet members at a fearsome clip in office often tends to view loyalty as a purely one-way allegiance.

“He comes to New Hampshire, and, frankly, he gives a very mundane speech. Sununu told Bash that he received a response that the man read his teleprompter, stuck to the talking points, and went away. “So he’s not really bringing that fire, that energy, I think, that a lot of folks saw it in ’16. I think, in many ways, it was a little disappointing to some folks. … So I think a lot of folks understand that he’s going to be a candidate, but he’s also going to have to earn it. And that’s New Hampshire.”

Judging by his remarks about DeSantis and evangelical leaders, Trump is not yet ready to acknowledge that reality. He went to an ice cream parlor in South Carolina late in the day for political vendetta and first-person contact with voters.

When many of the election-denying candidates Trump promoted in swing states lost, this may have led to voter defections and costing the GOP control of the Senate.

The campaign will be about the future. The campaign will be about issues. Trump said at the South Carolina State House on Saturday that he would make sure that Joe Biden does not receive four more years.

But he hasn’t forgotten his standard rhetoric. On Sunday evening, he called into a rally for one on his favorite election-denying midterm candidates – failed Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, who is still falsely insisting she won in November. The former president took aim at the institutions that are revealing the true course of events in 2020, as he was facing criminal investigations by the Justice Department and a district attorney in Georgia.

The Justice Department was going to be trying to enforce accountability over his election-stealing activity, and Trump indicated he would use his campaign to try to prevent that.

“We’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. This is the most modern justice system that has ever existed. “It is all investigation, investigation”, Trump said. He believed that his resistance to such probes was more proof of the very quality that many Republicans embraced in 2016 and that helped propel him to the White House.

“There’s only one president who has ever challenged the entire establishment in Washington, and with your vote next year, we will do it again and I will do it again,” he said Saturday.

He has built his political persona around protecting freedom. He dubbed his 2022 spending plan the “Freedom First Budget” and rebranded this year’s financial blueprint as the “Framework for Freedom.” The slogan “Vacation to Freedom” was the one he used to promote tourism, as well as “Freedom over Faucism”. He stood victorious behind the podium with a sign that said “Freedom Lives Here”.

Chris Sununu of New Hampshire was against the power grab which gave Ron DeSantis new authority over Disney World.

Sununu is considering a bid for president and said he is a free-market conservative. For others that think that the government should penalize your business because they disagree with you politically, it isn’t very conservative.

The Foundation For Individual Rights in Education is an organization that supports the right of white supremacists to speak on Florida campuses and is associated with the anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion group. Nevertheless, the group has repeatedly criticized Florida’s heavy-handed approach to forcing conservative beliefs on universities and is suing the state over the Stop WOKE Act, a DeSantis-backed measure that legislated how professors teach certain topics.

“You cannot censor your way to freedom of expression,” said Will Creeley, FIRE’s legal director. “You cannot trade one orthodoxy for another. In recent times, we have seen a troubling willingness to do that in Florida.

Speaking at the National Conservative Conference last year, the Florida governor said capitalism is not the same as free enterprise and that Republicans have seen limited government as best for the economy. “My view is, you know, obviously free enterprise is the best economic system, but that is a means to an end.”

A Libertarian View of the Democratic Candidate Ted DeSantis, whose public opinion of the ‘Penrose’ isn’t a lie

Being perceived as racially offensive is not a good place for DeSantis to be in the long term, said a republican supporter of the candidate, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The supporter pointed to the fight over the Advanced Placement course on African American studies and the College Board skirmish as examples that the governor could be alienating some voters who would otherwise support him.

But Republicans voters have yet to be introduced to many potential contenders for the party nomination. Meanwhile, outside groups such as the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity have signaled they intend to get involved in the primary.

A man who is planning a campaign is not going to launch it as he prepares to promote his book. He will be going to a private retreat in Palm Beach for the anti-tax Club for Growth.

“I’m a genuine libertarian; I’m kind of a live-and-let-live kind of girl,” Levin told CNN. She said she has no problem with candidates that hold personal beliefs on social issues but that she doesn’t like that DeSantis puts the power of his state behind his socially conservative views.

“DeSantis is always talking about he was not demanding that businesses do things, but he was telling the cruise lines what they had to do,” former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a fellow Republican, said of DeSantis last year. Hogan has criticized the Florida governor for entering the race for the Republican nomination.

South Dakota Gov. Noem compared her Covid19 record against DeSantis to that of Florida because she thought it was too hands on. Noem said that it was her state that showed the way to freedom by refusing to shut down. Florida, which is called a Citadel of Freedom due to its closed schools, bars and theme parks, restrictions on other economic activity during the Pandemic.

Introducing Trump into the Media: Bringing Down the Incivility of the State and Implications for Democracy, Politics, and Business

His approach includes more government programs, such as an office to pursue voter fraud and a new program to conduct missions to surveil, house and transport migrant workers from border states to Democratic jurisdiction.

DeSantis’ allies have pushed back against the growing chatter. Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contended on Twitter recently that the governor was using his power as an elected leader – a job he was reelected to with a historical 19-point victory in November.

Rufo was hired by the governor to the New College board, a small liberal arts school that the governor wants to make into a more conservative university.

“The complaint about using ‘state power,’ meaning constitutionally-mandated democratic governance, to correct the ideological corruption of public universities, i.e., state institutions funded by taxpayers, is ridiculous,” Rufo tweeted. “Amounts to ‘the people can’t regulate the state.’”

He said at the time that he doesn’t appreciate the governor going after tax status for Disney. “It can be portrayed or feel or look like retaliation. I believe that the people who serve our nation should rise above these times in a timely manner.

The Republican Party and a lot of the conservative media empire were built on the same idea as the Rolling Stones: giving the party base exactly what they want to hear, whether it is true or not.

CNN’s Stephen Collinson puts it perfectly: “Fox News is the latest example of opinion formers on the right exposed for being held hostage to the fury they helped to incite. … Key players of the right feel they have to appease, satisfy and further inflame the voters and viewers of whom their profits or hopes of political power depend.

The new details underscored how key players on the right feel they have no choice but to appease, satisfy and further inflame the voters and viewers on whom their profits or hopes of political power depend.

Murdoch’s model of business has evolved from using television stations in his native Australia and tabloid newspapers like The Sun in Britain to feeding political anger, according to a group of media commentators. Murdoch has switched sides when his business demands arise, such as when The Sun endorsed Tony Blair over the fading Conservative Party in a 1997 general election.

There are also signs that the billionaire publisher may finally be getting buyer’s remorse over Trump given the headline in his New York Post after the ex-president’s low energy 2024 campaign launch in November, which read, “Been there, Don that.”

Dominance in the White House: Why Kevin McCarthy and the Fox News Editors write about the Dominion Case & how Trump Defended the GOP in 2021

As he said in a deposition made public in a court filing on Monday in the Dominion case: “It is not red or blue, it is green,” referring to the color of a dollar.

The Republican politicians who appear on Fox are influenced by a similar calculation of what the political market will bear. The adoption of the doctrine favored by conservative grassroots stretched American democracy to the limit.

Catering to the base helped fuel the rise of Trump as he shattered the Republican establishment presidential field. GOP lawmakers that held power depended on not crossing Trump, now allowed him to run riot. In the US Capitol insurrection in 2021, it was that which helped foster an unstoppable radical tide. Republicans acquitted him in two impeachment dramas, and in the US Capitol insurrection in 2021, it was that which led to a radical tide.

After 15 rounds of voting in the conference, Kevin McCarthy became the new House Speaker because of the power of the Republican base. McCarthy had earlier watched as two predecessors, former Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, tried to resist the GOP’s far right insurgency and lost their job. As McCarthy showed by giving the Fox host access to Capitol Hill security footage, his speakership is a completely owned subsidiary of the GOP’s most extreme elements.

McCarthy’s dominance by the same GOP base that Murdoch worried about driving away is one reason why a coming showdown with the White House over raising the government’s borrowing limit has so many financial experts fretting about a possible default that could rattle the global economy.

The reason that Trump gained the attention of the American people was because he saw what other Republican candidates failed to do – that their winning coalition was angry and frustrated by years of foreign wars and globalized trade policies that many blamed for sending industrial jobs overseas. These voters did not like the way politicians were treated in business, politics and the media. They also balked at political correctness and a wave of social and cultural change, permissive immigration policies and the diverse coalition that secured two terms for President Barack Obama. They wanted to send someone to Washington to break all the rules and get rid of what Trump referred to as the swamp.

This was why Trump, an apparently unlikely clarion of the people after spending his life in Manhattan and flying around the country on a private Boeing with gold-plated fittings, was the perfect candidate for the moment. He was condemned by liberals for his extreme, racialized and sometimes profane rhetoric. Trump’s early rallies were a lot of fun for his fans, like stand-up comedy shows. There was a person who was yelling out loud what millions of Americans had believed for years but felt constrained from saying because of social convention. Many commentators decried Trump’s demagoguery but fewer examined the social, economic and political reasons for his rise.

The theme of Republicans in Washington failing to represent the values of the people who elected them played a part in Donald Trump’s candidacy, according to an article written by Ron DeSantis.

“The chasm between the aspirations of the GOP voter base and the behavior of party leaders in Washington would continue to grow wider in the ensuing years.”

Politicians who go to Washington forget where they came from, and eventually become instruments of a political system that works against their own interests. Yet issues like the need to raise the debt ceiling to keep the government solvent and the economy running or key foreign policy questions, like US support for Ukraine, sometimes require leaders to take a different view of the national interest than prevails back at home.

This marriage of convenience between Trump’s presidency and the conservative media infrastructure was evident in an appearance by Trump at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City.

Don’t leave with us. Don’t rely on the fake news from these people. He said that what you’re seeing and reading is not what’s happening.

What is the fuss about Fox News? The case of Murdoch, Fox News execctroins, and the future of Fox News

Every TV anchor and media executive learns that email and text messages can be public information, which is sad because it’s the truth about email and text messages.

It’s especially painful if, as is the case for Fox News anchors and executives, the messages appear to show you are knowingly allowing false information on the air.

Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems released portions of unflattering messages and depositions in court filings as part of their $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox for broadcasting conspiracy theories about Dominion’s role in the 2020 presidential election.

Carlson forwarded a request to Sean Hannity, an anchor for Fox News. “Seriously … what the f**k? I am actually shocked, because it needs to stop immediately. It’s measurably hurting the company.”

He said the company. The Fox leaders and top talent were focused on the company, not the country. Democracy was at stake, but the larger concern at Fox News appears to be that rival Newsmax was gaining traction after Trump lashed out at Fox News for his 2020 election loss.

According to court records, Murdoch said in a deposition that he didn’t mind politics of putting MyPillow CEO on Fox News.

Darcy notes that Ryan was grilled by a conservative commentator last week over his decision to remain on the board of directors of Fox News’ parent company.

“Because there isn’t a bigger platform than this in America,” Ryan said. I don’t like where the conservative movement is at right now, it’s going through a lot of turmoil.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/politics/fox-news-republicans-what-matters/index.html

The Fox News Show: Donald Trump in Florida vs. Nikki Haley, DeSantis, and the Freedom Caucus

If Russia had invaded the country, Fox would have been one of the biggest supporters of military aid. That perspective is still evident on the network, where many guests talk about the importance of Ukraine aid.

But its top stars, like Carlson, are mimicking Trump and questioning whether the US should be opposed to Russia’s authoritarianism and invasion of Ukraine.

A major stop for potential Republican candidates, Trump will be at the Conservative Political Action Conference this weekend. The other major announced candidate, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, will also attend.

According to CNN, two dozen or so legislators were interviewed that were hardcore Trump supporters and part of the Freedom Caucus, who were basically his staunchest defenders during his four years in office.

The biggest concern among Republicans is Trump’s viability as a candidate. “After he underperformed in the last three election cycles, they’re worried that he could give Joe Biden another four years in the White House.”

Multiple members of the Freedom Caucus actually traveled to Florida not to meet with Trump, but instead to talk to DeSantis, according to Raju. They were impressed.

The conservative Club for Growth event was held at The Breakers Palm Beach resort. Some of the Republicans allow the media to define the terms of the debate and sit back like potted plants. The terms of the debate were defined by the left. They are not making any changes, so they take all this incoming. And I said, ‘That’s not what we’re doing.’”