The Age of Ron DeSantis: Trump’s Democratic Challenge to O’Dea’s Bias and the Supermajority Watermark
Trump referred to theFlorida governor as “Ron DeSanctimonious” at the Pennsylvania rally, in reference to his lead over the other potential Republican 2024 candidates.
It would seem, then, that Trump would rehash the playbook he used against Cruz in his potential fight against DeSantis. The idea is to undermine the notion of DeSantis as a principled conservative by portraying him instead as someone who talks down to average people and thinks he’s better than them.
Trump labeled the recorded call for Colorado Republican Senate nominee Joe O’Dea a “big mistake” last month. O’Dea had drawn Trump’s ire by saying in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash that he would “actively” oppose the former president if he ran for the White House in 2024.
It is just as likely that the next few weeks will be the high water mark of his presidential ambitions. The spotlight can very quickly become the hottest seat, and it’s very difficult for a new candidate to prove themselves as a national candidate. Those who see an easy pivot from the era of Trump to the age of DeSantis are likely in for another wave of disappointment, both because of the particulars of DeSantis’ victory and the persistence of Trump’s power.
The Night of the Red Tsunami: Donald Trump’s “Paint” Before the November 4 Semi-Real Florida Decay
Trump predicted in February 2016 that Cruz would go down. I think a guy cannot be because I am a Christian and Ted holds up the Bible. He lies about a lot of things.
Trump, in this formulation, is the real man of the people, who would never dare think he is better than anyone. It seems that Trump’s ego and the fact that he casts himself as special doesn’t show up in this equation.
Glenn Beck, the right-wing talk radio host, was half-joking when he made this suggestion the day after Tuesday’s elections, but he voiced a longing that a number of Republicans had after the midterms: a hope to linger with the visions of a red tsunami that wiped out Democratic power across the country. 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.
For one Republican, though, the night got better and better as it went on. The one-time swing state of Florida switched into red on a night when Gov. Ron DeSantis won reelection by nearly 20 points. As GOP losses piled up over the course of the evening, it was clear that he did not have to share the spotlight and anyone on the right looking for a beacon of hope would have to go to Florida.
At the DeSantis victory rally, supporters made clear that they saw his winning platform as a springboard. There was a chant of “two more years!” in the room, signaling that they would rather see the new governor in the White House than in the mansion.
During his time in Florida: His legacy as a governor, a man politician, and the cult of personality around Donald Trump
He has married that political style with a strongman persona. As governor, he has targeted protestors, universities, public health workers and corporations for opposing his policies. He has sent police to round up voters with felony convictions who, confused by the state’s efforts to strip their voting rights after voters reinstated them a few years ago, mistakenly voted in recent elections. He bent the legislature to his will, authoring anti-gay laws, new boundaries, and a punishing legislation against Disney after it criticized the state’s anti-gay bill.
Success in theory is not going to translate into national victory, as Sen. Marco Rubio knew when he was a Republican candidate for president. The ones in Florida are responsible for part of that. The electorate there has been trending more conservative in recent years, even as the country as a whole has coalesced around center-left policies (note how even many red states now vote for Medicaid expansion, abortion protections and higher minimum wage laws).
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. Immigrants from Cuba and Venezuela make up a large part of Florida’s Latino Voters, who respond favorably to DeSantis attack on Democrats as socialists.
Donald Trump is a Florida resident. The Dump Trump crowd, though bigger at the moment than at perhaps any time since 2016, does not seem to fully understand how deep and unquestioning the cult of personality around Trump still is within parts of the party.
The party didn’t pass a policy platform, and instead issued a statement of loyalty to Trump. The insurrection that followed after the election loss of Trump did not bring the party with them. Instead, the majority of Republicans in the House voted to overturn the election and the vast majority of Republican voters clung to the belief that the 2020 election was stolen.
The Dean Obeidallah Show: Opinions on the Republican Party Candidate for a White House Run in the era of Covid-19
Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him @[email protected]. The commentary is his own and he has his own opinions. You can get more opinions on CNN.
It is not certain who Lake was referring to but my guess is that it was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who seems to be getting ready for a White House run. DeSantis appears — at least for the moment — to pose the greatest threat to Trump’s bid to repeat as the Republican Party’s presidential standard-bearer.
Fans of “Rocky III” will instantly recognize the iconic line that Lake, an election-denying Trump acolyte, borrowed as the same famous phrase uttered by James “Clubber” Lang, a vicious, hard-hitting boxer played in the 1982 film by Mr. T.
I had governors that didn’t close things, it was up to them, said Trump. He said that the Florida governor had changed his tune a lot on 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.
His recent statements and comments have deviated markedly from sensible Covid-19 protections in order to appeal to the GOP’s Covid-denying base voters before an anticipated presidential run.
A lot of measures meant to combat the spread of the coronavirus have been opposed by DeSantis. The about-face has been driven by a White House bid, according to many political watchers.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/29/opinions/trump-ron-desantis-rocky-iii-obeidallah/index.html
How Did Ron DeSantis Lose His Job? What Will He Do If He’s Not The First Candidate of the GOP’s 2024 Presidential Campaign?
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 the movie “Rocky III” was last year, and it could be used as a reference point for the GOP’s 2024 presidential campaign.
There’s another moment in the film that springs to mind as I consider a possible Trump vs. DeSantis showdown. Lang had lost his boxing title and was going to goadRocky into a fight.
Polls show that if the former President was the GOP nominee, many voters in his party would prefer someone else.
Is there any liberals who can do anything to make sure Ron DeSantis isn’t elected, other than condemn him and hope his political weaknesses will take him? It would be tempting to write off DeSantis, the bombastic Republican governor of Florida, as another unelectable right-wing lunatic unfit for national office.
At first, he didn’t attack Trump directly. After facing a “do or die” moment, that changed when he found himself in third place behind Cruz and Trump in the delegate count with little time left to make up ground before the Florida primary.
When it was time to call Trump an embarrassment, Cruz took the gloves off and called him a demagogue. But it was too little, too late for Rubio, who lost the Florida GOP primary, and 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 continued: “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. Just last week, Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis told a judge that “decisions are imminent” in her investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to interfere in the 2020 election in Georgia.
There is a special counsel investigating the January 6, 2021 attack at Mar-a-Lago, and the trove of classified documents found at the residence. 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.
The Outburst of the Left: Why Donald Trump is Picking the Oval Office, But Not When You Think he’s Picking It
But to prevail, you have to put up a fight. When GOP voters see a lack of self defense from DeSantis as a sign of weakness, it could happen.
The longer he is silent in the face of Trump, the more likely he is to be questioned as to why he wouldn’t fight.
It’s reliably depressing to revisit 2016 and the misbegotten liberal conviction that America couldn’t possibly elevate Donald Trump to the presidency. We have already catalogued the errors that media coverage has made and gone over what we missed that makes Donald Trump a suitable candidate to occupy the Oval Office. But here we go again. As the Democratic political strategist Lis Smith has remarked, the left’s reaction to DeSantis looks just like its reaction to Trump: “He’s picking these fights. He is saying things that are against the law. And all the same characters — whether in the media, Democratic politics, the punditry class, whatever it is — have the same freakout.”