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.
How silly. What exactly waa Trump supposed to do? The TDS people think Trump is a man with God like powers who had only to wave his hand to accomplish what no other person could in every state, every district. The claim that the continued fraud shows Trump is impotent.
They fail to realize that it takes everyone to end voter fraud. It’s not a top down solution situation.
As time goes on there will be fewer and fewer DeSantis supporters. Those that are left for the general election will have to follow their conscience or their bile, their choice.
And btw DeSantis started the hostilities. He is passive aggressive so he can pretend he is innocent but those who follow carefully are aware of the truths.
State issue....so your point is moot.
You ignore the commission on election fraud Trump established. The states refused to cooperate so the commission was unable to achieve results.
Which Trump willfully enabled when he signed Pelosi's CARES Act, sending out mountains of untraceable mail-in ballots.
If so I can’t imagine why.
Drew, another sad post.
Yeah, it was pretty sad watching Trump let the Democrats steal away his re-election without lifting a finger to stop it.
What power did Trump have to “prevent” what is the purview of the states (Article 1, Section 4)? I now presume your view of states’ rights, enshrined in the Constitution, has dimmed. And Trump did not have the powers of a king.
And it is equally sad how you fail to detail what power he had/has to do so. With all due respect.
Not to mention the error of omission with respect to the GOP’s complicity in such.
The GOPee in Michigan handed the state to the Democrats in 2018. In perpetuity.
Ricky-Rick Snyder's reward for keeping quiet about it was an indictment by Nazi Nessel a week after the 2020 Michigan electoral votes were in the bag.
Teddy Kennedy has got the satisfaction of knowing that there is a lower, slimier spineless POS than him.
There is not a single other candidate, R or D who would benefit from a DeSantis endorsement or opposition.
Haley has a base... Pence has a base... Christie has a base.
Their endorsement would swing votes in GA, in PA, in other swing states. Of course, Trump has a base...his supporters ARE the base. Unfortunately they are naive amateur fans who don’t understand the game.
The occurs before election day and they were awol. Then, after the game is decided they decided to get involved as players. What amateurs.
If every time you go on vacation, you lazily leave the garage door open, am I on the hook to keep replacing your power tools?
Maybe we should nominate candidates who don't let the Democrats steal their elections.
False comparison.
Drew, yet another sad post!
Candidates who focused on 2020 almost al llost last yaer, at least in the major races we needed to win.
Florida has been a leader in election reform, but obsessing on it as a centerpieceof the campaign will lose the presidency, Senate, and House in 2024.
In 2016, Trump won because milions showed up to vote against Hillary. In 2020, many of htose same people showed up to vote against Trump.
Narrowly, and primarily off gaisn made in Florida with DeSantis at the top of the ticket.
You sound like Stacey Abrams.
You sound like Stacey Abrams.
Did Nixon run around the country obsessively talking about how he was defrauded in 1960? No. He won in 1968 mostly based on policy (and the failures of his predecessor.)
Trump, OTOH, has made "I was cheated!" the centerpiece of hsi campaign.
Andn candidates in 2022 who ec hoed that lost bigly. If Trump wants to win, he needs to focus on his policy record and not on his 2020 loss.
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