What is this, reset number 9?
Posted on 08/11/2023 1:33:30 PM PDT by conservative98
DeSantis sticking with 'culture war' message after campaign staff reshuffle.
Ron DeSantis largely dismissed his own decision to replace his campaign leadership team as he returned to Iowa in the midst of a weekslong reset. The Republican presidential hopeful also made no mention of the two rounds of campaign layoffs he made recently in response to unexpected fundraising troubles.
Instead, the Florida governor on Thursday leaned into his central message — a self-described “war on woke” — and flashed a big smile as he courted an audience of roughly 200 cheering Republicans gathered at a family restaurant for the first of four scheduled stops on his latest bus tour through the first-in-the-nation caucus state.
“We’re clicking. We’re doing well,” DeSantis told reporters after a fiery speech, dismissing questions about the turmoil that has plagued his White House bid in recent weeks. He said the average voter is far more focused on his plans for the country than his campaign leadership. “This process stuff, I think, is way overblown.”
Whether DeSantis acknowledges his challenges or not, they have not gone away.
Less than five months before the first votes are cast in Iowa’s opening presidential contest, a growing chorus of would-be supporters within his own party is questioning DeSantis’ core message and political instincts amid a prolonged effort to stabilize his campaign that has involved three significant personnel decisions so far — the two rounds of cuts and replacement of the campaign manager. At the same time, new signs of tension have emerged between DeSantis’ formal campaign and an allied super PAC that’s now planning to dramatically increase spending on paid advertising to help make up for DeSantis’ financial challenges.
“It remains to be seen whether or not he can save his campaign. He’s not run a particularly effective one to date, obviously,” said Eric Levine, a New York-based Republican donor who has been calling for the GOP to unify behind an alternative to former President Donald Trump. “He needs to be able to speak to a broader range of issues than the culture wars. To me, that is fundamentally at the core of his problem.”
That message still resonates with many Iowa Republicans, who frequently mention DeSantis as one of their top two or three picks heading into the caucus. But most successful campaigns require steady leadership and donors who are willing to stick out the tough moments — and that’s where DeSantis appears vulnerable.
After cutting one-third of his staff last month, DeSantis this week replaced campaign manager Generra Peck with James Uthmeier, his chief of staff in the Florida governor’s office. Uthmeier, who has never managed a campaign, was a central figure in some of DeSantis’ most controversial moves as governor, including the decision to fly migrants from Texas to an island off the Massachusetts coast last year.
As part of the leadership overhaul, DeSantis tapped veteran political operative David Polyansky, a senior adviser to his allied Never Back Down super PAC, to serve as deputy campaign manager. Some close to DeSantis’ operation believe that while Uthmeier has the campaign manager title and DeSantis’ trust, Polyansky will be effectively running the campaign given his extensive experience in presidential politics, especially in Iowa.
While DeSantis shrugs off his challenges, his allies are aware that multiple rounds of staffing cuts and stagnant polling numbers are undermining the campaign’s central message that DeSantis is better positioned than Trump to defeat President Joe Biden next fall.
Still, the DeSantis campaign tried to project optimism in a memo shared with campaign supporters and donors earlier in the week, which was obtained by The Associated Press.
“During the last few weeks, we have seen great success as a result of the changes we have made to run an insurgent campaign focused on the early nominating states,” the memo says, highlighting an increased reliance on interviews with mainstream media to spread his message and a new focus on smaller, more intimate events organized by the super PAC at no cost to the campaign.
In adopting the new strategy, DeSantis is testing the limits of federal laws that prohibit direct coordination between campaigns and super PACs by leaning more heavily on the Never Back Down super PAC, which can raise and spend unlimited sums of money — unlike the campaign, which is bound by strict fundraising limits.
Never Back Down has effectively adopted the role of candidate travel organizer, having chauffeured him, his wife and children by bus to roughly 20 Iowa events over the past month, including this weekend’s three-day trip. Technically, DeSantis is only a guest of the super PAC, which is paying for the transportation and setup costs.
In another shift, the super PAC is increasing its Iowa advertising investment, which was never the super PAC’s primary function, in direct response to the campaign’s cash crunch. Reports of ad purchases in Iowa for the coming weeks show the super PAC tripling its spending in the state.
DeSantis’ increasing reliance on the super PAC comes as Never Back Down faces the prospect of financial trouble of its own. The organization’s biggest individual donor, hotel entrepreneur Robert Bigelow, told Reuters last week that he would not donate any more money unless the Florida governor attracts new major donors and adopts a more moderate approach.
“Extremism isn’t going to get you elected,” Bigelow said.
Billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin, who told Politico last year that he was ready to back DeSantis if he ran for president, has not met with DeSantis or donated to his campaign since its May launch, according to a person familiar with his thinking who requested anonymity to disclose private deliberations.
Griffin has been unsettled by DeSantis’ policies about teaching gender and sexuality in Florida schools and his ongoing fight with Disney, according to the person. The Republican mega-donor is also concerned that DeSantis has been pursuing policies that undermined individual rights and liberties.
Griffin declined to comment on any particular campaign, but said in a statement that he was “assessing how the policies of each candidate will strengthen our democracy.”
Meanwhile, DeSantis is showing no interest in backing off his focus on culture wars, which are popular with the GOP’s most passionate voters and remained a central focus of his stump speech this week in Iowa.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, he said he gets a lot of questions about culture and made a direct connection between cultural issues and the economy. Specifically, he pointed to his opposition to ESG — or environmental, social and governance investments that are guided by corporations’ policies.
“That is taking an ideological agenda and using the economy to try to advance it,” DeSantis said. “That’s bad because those policies are things that most Iowans don’t support and that I don’t support.”
DeSantis allies are also divided about his primary strategy.
The super PAC continues to stress its commitment to winning or finishing a close second in the first three states — Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — while they spend big to build out a pro-DeSantis political organization in several of the so-called “Super Tuesday” states that vote on March 5. Yet DeSantis’ campaign has shifted sharply toward Iowa in recent weeks.
By the end of Friday, DeSantis will have appeared at more than two dozen separate events in Iowa since mid-July. That’s compared to just two events in New Hampshire and South Carolina over the same period.
On Thursday, DeSantis noted that he was touching down in his 31st Iowa county and promised to campaign in all 99 on Iowa’s sprawling checkerboard before the state’s Jan. 15 presidential caucuses. But when asked, he avoided predicting a clear victory over Trump, who is the early heavy favorite.
“What you have to do is you have to win a majority of the delegates, you know,” DeSantis told reporters after a brief stop in Cedar County’s Tipton Family Restaurant. In Iowa, he added, “I think we’re ahead of where we thought we would be, thus far.”
Reboot Ron!
“DeSantis is resetting his campaign again. Some Republicans worry his message is getting in the way” | AP News https://t.co/IL6X5lbCeY— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) August 11, 2023
perpetual reset
reset ronny
The DeSantis campaign’s frequent “resets” and “reboots” are nothing but a sad joke now. Nobody with two brain cells trusts the establishment reptiles behind the DeSantis campaign..
A reset won’t help a Bush, Cheney, Paul Ryan candidate..
Seems like a weekly ritual at this point.
DeSantis sticking with ‘culture war’ message after campaign staff reshuffle.
_______________________________________
Good. Trump as all but abandoned conservative culture war proponents.
Looking around FR and you see many only Trumpers, for instance, crying that the the GOP pro-abortion victories have hurt the brand.
At this point, RDS may be struggling, but Trump and his supporters are making terrible mistakes as they insult DeSantis and his culture war messages.
It’s strange that he thought it was a good idea. I mean, it seems like there must be outside influence, aka the GOPe wanting anyone but PDJT. That said, he probably knows there’s nothing he can do and is just happy to spend the campaign money.
Unfortunately, it does tell you something about him, even if he’s been a good governor I’m skeptical to support him now in 2028.
“A reset won’t help a Bush, Cheney, Paul Ryan candidate..”
...but it will put them on the A list for some really cool parties in the Hamptons. lol
Photo in nostalgia store.
Woman: “Don’t tell anybody but I would vote for you if you changed your hair part. Try a little farther in from the side. Just a thought.”
I’d question the sanity of anyone who makes a face like that.
RE: What is this, reset number 9?
Maybe more like....
I held my nose, I closed my eyes, I took a drink
I didn’t know if it was day or night
I started kissin’ everything in sight
But when I kissed a cop down on Thirty-Fourth and Vine
He broke my little bottle of Love Potion Number Nine
Love Potion Number Nine
Its over Ron. Go home.
He’s been toast since he snubbed trump in Oct 2022
Go home to Florida and reset your political career Ron!
Culture war...true, but it’s much more now than just two sides fighting a culture war.
Trump is right in that our whole country is going to hell. And as the U.S. goes, so goes...?
Culture is important but at this point it’s just one aspect of a multifaceted, seemingly existential internal conflict.
Every number has 2 components
N = a + Ib
Where I = square root of -1
For de sanctimonious b>>>>>a
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