Some Tough Love for the DeSantis CampaignGuy Benson
July 28, 2023
My 2024 cards have always been on the table, whether you agree or disagree with my views. I believe it would be a self-destructive act for the Republican Party to nominate Donald Trump for president again, for multiple reasons, some of which I laid out in a recent post. I have not claimed Trump has no chance of winning a general election next fall; he could pull off a win under certain circumstances. What I have argued --- based on the outcomes of recent election cycles, a raft of approval and favorability polling, the repeatedly-demonstrated preferences of swing and independent voters, and mounting legal woes -- is that he would make the party's task of defeating an unpopular, stumbling incumbent much more challenging than it should be. Needlessly, and quite possibly quixotically, so.
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For these reasons, I've been openly opposed to Trump's 2024 candidacy and have been generally supportive of the man public opinion surveys have shown to be Trump's most formidable challenger for the GOP crown: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. He has been, for the most part, an excellent governor. He's put lots of conservative wins on the board, and has done so while fending off an exceptionally antagonistic national media every step of the way. I disagree with DeSantis on a number of issues, and truthfully, he doesn't represent my ideal sort of Republican. But I understand that there's limited appetite for my ideal sort of Republican in the current moment, and that anyone with a prayer to topple Trump would need to command significant appeal within the hardcore-MAGA, quasi-MAGA, and non-MAGA wings of the center-right coalition. My calculation has been that DeSantis fits that bill better than anyone else in the field -- quite a few of whom I like and respect a great deal, and would vote for in a heartbeat over Joe Biden.
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My observation in response was fairly simple: Under all the previous scenarios, DeSantis had the base unified in his corner. Now, he does not. Many of the voters whose support he could absolutely bank on in previous races are supporting other campaigns in this one, including and especially Trump's. When Ron DeSantis has the red bloc behind him lock, stock, and barrel, he's proven very adept at using the politics of addition and multiplication to build winning coalitions. You don't accidentally win Florida by nearly 20 points; that's a massive achievement. But I suspect having a splintered base, and especially a base that hasn't started to migrate in growing numbers toward his cause in the way his team hoped and expected they would, has been disorienting. This seems to have put the DeSantis campaign's 'get to everyone's right, on everything' play (potentially negating some general election viability) into overdrive. Others have noted that staking out very right-wing and Very Online (Twitter, specifically) stances hasn't necessarily attracted support from the intended targets -- while also alienating non-Trump Republican voters, who prize normalcy and winning. 'What is he doing?' texts from so-called normie Republicans have become more frequent, while grassroots defections from Trump evidently have not. This week's RFK, Jr. flirtation may exemplify this phenomenon more than anything I've seen thus far.
The purpose of acknowledging all of this is not to join the gleeful pile-on seen in certain predictable quarters. The campaign understands changes are needed, and they're making some. He's got talented and smart people around him. But my job isn't to wish-cast or cheerlead; it's to analyze. And this is what I'm seeing. I'm not alone. The Wall Street Journal's editors published a strikingly similar essay earlier. I'd written this piece before I saw it. Granted, running against Donald Trump in a Republican primary is really hard. A bevy of talented politicians discovered that reality in a series of rude awakenings, starting in mid-2015. It's even harder today, now that Trump is a former president with an even larger base of totally- or mostly-solid support. I still believe DeSantis is the best bet for a fusionist Trump-alternative candidate who could bridge the gap between Trumpy and more traditional conservative voters. He did so to great effect in Florida, pulling in many independents and some Democrats, to boot. I also believe he would be a very effective, conservative president -- particularly if he were to govern like the Ron DeSantis of 2019 to late 2022. Perhaps he should also campaign more like that man -- because whatever his campaign is doing right now (bleeding-edge right-wingery, Twitter-brain pandering, etc) just isn't working:
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Source:
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2023/07/28/tough-love-for-the-desantis-campaign-n2626296
