Why The Right Should Choose Trump Over DeSantis
Donald Trump may be an embattled man, but he is still the best of what the Republicans have.
By Paul Ingrassia
October 6, 2022
Donald Trump is the kingmaker of the Republican Party, and for that reason alone, he remains the best choice for 2024 despite the firestorm of negative media coverage, censorship, and the looming threat of indictment, which have haunted him since being forced out of office in January 2021. In the time since Trump has been gone, Americans have watched their economy tank, their freedoms attacked, and we are now disconcertingly close to an out-and-out ground war with nuclear Russia. Meanwhile, Democrats plan to do irreparable damage to institutions (like the Supreme Court) that have checked the worst excesses of liberal hegemony. The military industrial complex, having been subdued in the Trump years, is now back with a vengeance not seen since the Bush-Cheney years. For their part, the Republicans have reverted to their preferred disposition: that of lovable losers.
The concerted efforts of many Republican establishment types to elevate Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over Trump is in keeping with that disposition. It would be a grave mistake for many reasons. At the top of the list is DeSantis’ failure to outcompete Trump from the Right on any meaningful issue. This was revealed early in the pandemic when DeSantis imposed some of the strictest lockdowns in the country, only to roll them back months after it became obvious that, for most people, COVID-19 was no worse than a severe flu. To his credit, DeSantis learned from his mistake and now presides over one of the freest states in the country, all things considered; a feat made even more impressive by Florida’s size as the third largest in the union. That said, DeSantis’ stardom has also benefited from a number of serendipitous circumstances: as liberal states shut down one by one, DeSantis didn’t have to do much to make Sunny Florida an especially attractive place for expats. That, combined with a red-hot real estate market and the desire to rechristen Miami as the decentralized technology alternative to Silicon Valley briefly advanced Florida as a beacon of freedom in contrast to a world that had gone dark under Biden.
DeSantis’ ascendancy, however, may have reached its peak—or the very least, the favorable conditions which gave rise to his national stardom on the Right may soon buckle under the pressures of a weakening economy and the upcoming midterms, which feature candidates many MAGA candidates who could steal a bit of DeSantis’ thunder. The bottom line is that DeSantis distinguished himself on a rather weak playing field: His closest gubernatorial competitors, Kristi Noam and Greg Abbott, are distant seconds in levels of competence and political aptitude—themselves unable to break decisively from the Republican establishment on transgender issues and immigration.
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https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/06/why-the-right-should-choose-trump-over-desantis/
