Posted on 08/11/2023 5:24:47 PM PDT by Ennis85
John Davidson asks at the Federalist, “Does DeSantis Know What Time It Is? Didn’t Sound Like It In That NBC Interview.” Responding to DeSantis’s assertion that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and was in large part responsible for allowing Covid-driven rules changes that helped Democrats collect a lot of mail-in votes, this is Davidson’s thesis:
"Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to have lost his way, unable to articulate a clear position on the most important issue of the primaries, which is what happened in 2020. . . . No issue is more important for DeSantis (and the entire GOP field) than the 2020 election, and if he wants to be the nominee he’d better come up with a better answer than, “Yeah 2020 had some problems but they were all Trump’s fault.” As I argued in these pages recently, DeSantis has zero chance of winning the primary unless he acknowledges unequivocally that 2020 was rigged and vows to go to war against the system that rigged it. . . . No candidate claiming to represent Republican voters in 2024 can do less than acknowledge, without the ritual throat-clearing demanded by the regime press, that a coordinated effort to oust Trump — or, failing that, gut his presidency — was underway in 2016 well before Trump even took office."
Now, it is possible that Davidson is right that no Republican can win the nomination without focusing obsessively on relitigating the 2020 election. But what is a nomination for? My own view — and maybe I’m in the minority here — is that the point of getting nominated is to win the general election. But we have copious evidence from the 2022 cycle that candidates who look backward and run on stolen-election theories almost uniformly lost in 2022, even in otherwise winnable elections, and even when the candidates themselves had some talent.
More broadly, in the history of American presidential elections (with the arguable exception of 1828), parties and candidates never win by challenging how an incumbent won his office or what he did before then — whether that “before” is Barack Obama’s birthplace or George W. Bush’s National Guard service. You beat an incumbent by focusing on what he has done in office. Davidson does not even bother making an argument to the contrary, or referring at all to the general election or to how these arguments played in 2022.
If DeSantis runs a campaign built around the 2020 election, it won’t matter if he wins the nomination or not — Joe Biden will be reelected. DeSantis has his own message about why he thinks the 2020 election was poorly managed in other states by contrast to how Florida runs elections, but by giving answers intended to disarm the issue and pivot to other topics, he’s showing that he does know what time it is — specifically, what year it is. It’s not 2020 anymore, and you can’t win elections by pretending that it is.
The neo-cons running NR allow you to print THAT!
Does he know he’s governor and he has the authority to stop illegals, invaders from entering Florida from water, air, etc?
why hasn’t he addressed that?
shipping them around or letting citizens or businesses of his state have to deal with them is no way to be a leader.
they shouldn’t set foot off the boat or plane to begin with.
so far I see desantis is a follower, signs papers the legislature passes but has done nothing good on his own initiative. If it doesn’t line his pocket he doesn’t do it.
Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
Wow! Great article! Thank you for posting.
I have been wearing my figures out trying to type this same message on this board. Trump supporters cannot seem to get this.
Trump has lost three election cycles in row: 2018, 2020, and 2022. And he barely won 2016 to start with.
Trump is more toxic than Hillary, and he will lose again.
I agree. Send the migrants back.
Offer them a cash bonus for signing that they will not return and agreeing that they will be immediately deported with no chance to return.
Shipping them deeper into Our Country is good political theater but a disservice to Our Country and a cynical disregard for Americans & enabling the illegals to present themselves to be supported by the USA.
“2022”
You mean when the Republicans won the house?
You wear your fingers out but that doesn’t make you right. There is no one else with a chance to win or to clean up the stable that is DC.
It is completely illogical to try and disparage the man who has done the most to bring back accountability and opportunity. All this while taking no salary and loosing 1/2 his net worth. There is no white knight waiting in the wings only inept politicians who have already sold their souls.
I am undecided between a few wannabes. Trump is one of them.
The #1 difference that is needed to win is not in the candidate, but in us FReepers and grassroots. We attack each other rather than the opponent.
I’m watching Football right now. We need a good right side of the line....and a good left side of the line.... to win. We need a good back field, a good special teams. A good offense... a good defense.... a complete team effort.
If we expect the QB to win while we act like spectators we will lose. The vast majority of FReepers are spectators on the sidelines critiquing those on the field.
These spectators need to become players, don’t make a fellow player on your team the enemy.
“2022” Why are you posting that to me?
Sorry, what was meant for Beancounter. Don’t know how that happened.
No worries. Thanks for the clarification.
So how do we move forward?
Trump and his supporters have been attacking DeSantis since November.
They are the ones who drew first blood.
They seem to gloat that DeSantis may be falling in the polls, but have they considered that Ron’s supporters have just turned off the set?
How will they win without Ron’s supporters?
Ridiculous article. DeSantis has no intention on focusing on the 2020 election any more than he has to. He was asked a question, who won, and gave the correct answer, Biden was sworn in, therefore Biden won.
Trump is the one who not only wants to stay focused on 2020, but needs to. It's part of his sympathy routine. Which, one has to admit, is working quite well.
So DeSantis was probably targeting that a little, but it won't be a focus of his campaign. He's made that clear, his campaign is strictly about bringing the strong conservative values he's helped implement in Florida, to the nation.
You make good arguments but you miss on the biggest point: Trump will not win the general election.
Let that sink in.
He only won one out of four, and that one was luck.
You should keep posting that like Rainman.
Fraud means he didn't lose.
I am so glad he didn’t lose!!!!
Why isn’t he in the White House?
Hint: because he LOST!
The article was VERY hard to follow, he based it on what someone else had written, then his conclusion paragraph was contradictory unto itself. It appears he finally got to the right conclusion, in the final sentence, but before then, he was all over the place.
Because of massive fraud.
If you cannot see that, you are either willfully blind, or worse.
Oh wise and snarky smart ass, Contrary to what you wish, DJT was not on the ballot in 2018 or 2022. The crap your pushing is like telling me the democrats losing 2016 was Obama’s fault.
GOP ran shit candidates in 2022, most of the incumbent R’s in 2018 decided to not run, led by paul fracking Ryan, and R’s lost a lot of those seats due to that.
And the big factor is the R’s let the dems screw the districts up to their liking with little, if any, push back, which made a lot of R safe districts vulnerable in 2022. In addition to well documented vote machine issues, especially in Maricopa, that the Dem judges allowed to stay. I’m not talking vote fraud, i’m talking straight technical issues and tabulation errors, busted machines, incorrect ballot paper, among others.
Fact is plenty of Trump obsessed losers like yourself fail to remember what exactly happened over the last 6 years, and are more then happy to keep getting abused by the Republicans.
Take your Trump obsessed ass outta here.
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