Posted on 11/24/2022 9:36:26 PM PST by SeekAndFind
So, I told someone hardcore that I would be writing a column called “The Case Against Ron DeSantis 2024,” and he asked “Oh, will it be blank?” Amusing, and not unexpected because we are still at the DeSantis infatuation stage. As I wrote in my previous column, “The Case For Ron DeSantis 2024,” there is a lot to like about the Florida governor. But this is not time to go moon-eyed over The New Shiny Thing. We need to be ruthless in our vetting of the candidates. I was when I wrote “The Case Against Donald Trump 2024” (he sent me a nice note about it, BTW), and I will do the same for Ron DeSantis here.
Understand that the case against Ron DeSantis is not a case against Ron DeSantis personally any more than it would be against Donald Trump as a person. For our purposes, his objective goodness is irrelevant. We are not going to be asked to elect him buddy or nice guy or whatever. His one job would be to win the presidency. It’s pretty clear he meets the basic qualifications to be president, which used to be that he won’t bankrupt us or get us nuked, and since those two things are apparently not qualifications anymore, DeSantis is certainly good to go. This is really about electability, whether or not he can get the voters to put an X by his name in numbers greater than those for Grandpa Badfinger or whatever other pinko nimrod the Dems put up in 2024. The case against DeSantis is really the case against him winning the general election. And there is a case to be made for that.
First, who is Ron DeSantis? He’s got the credentials (the Yale one is not a good one) and he’s not a drooling mutant – which is another thing that used to, but no longer, disqualifies a candidate – yet does anyone outside of Florida or off of Twitter really know him yet? Some polls lately have him doing well, but others have Trump far ahead. That’s not a shock. Trump is known (maybe too known) and it’s only a couple weeks into the cycle. Maybe it’s early and voters are unaware of him, but he has yet to demonstrate that he’s the No. 1 guy in the GOP race, much less the general.
And what is his path in the general? His lane is competent and conservative, just like Kemp or Youngkin, and in 2022 that lane did well while based and belligerent had a tougher time. But guess what won in 2016 and came within less than 50,000 votes in three states from winning again in 2020? B&B.
Can DeSantis generate giant rallies, to the extent they matter? He’s a good speaker who has markedly improved over the several years and half-dozen speeches I have seen in person. But he’s no Trump. Of course, no one is Trump. Hell, judging by his listless announcement speech, it’s not clear Trump is even Trump anymore.
DeSantis will have to show some fire, and he does overlap into the based and belligerent lane. He fights, and he wins. Further, his fighting is disciplined and targeted. Trump took on the media – yah! But he also took on Rosie O’Donnell – ugh. DeSantis does not get into personal beefs. His tweets are not mean, and while a lot of us dearly love the mean tweets, a lot of voters are exhausted by mean tweets. And remember, the goal is to own the libs by winning power, not just by mocking their pinko behinds on the tweet machine (Trump being allowed back on Twitter might be a mixed blessing).
But can Heavy D win over the people who used to vote Republican then stopped because they were too sissy to deal with Trump’s in-your-face vibe? Look, these kind of soft, mostly suburban moderate people are tiresome, and the men are impotent figuratively and probably literally while their wives are awash in Chardonnay and SSRIs, but we need their votes. Can DeSantis get them to vote for him, or will his toughness make the wine women squeal and the wine males ashamed? The evidence is that in Florida they came around, but that’s one state. How does he play elsewhere?
Here's the question DeSantis needs to answer: “How do you win in Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Hampshire, Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin?” Those are the real battleground states, and if he wants in the game, we need to know the plan to win these electoral votes away from the Democrats.
How does DeSantis play outside of the Land of Swamps and Falling Frozen Iguanas? We have no idea. Can he get the suburbans? The white working class? Heck, can he get the Trumpers?
That last one is key. You cannot win the presidency as a Republican with only Trumpanauts, but you cannot win it without them either. DeSantis has dared defy the Great Orange One by failing to take himself out of the running. Some of the Trump people are ticked off, though on social media it is hard to tell which accounts love the Donald and which are repurposed Democrat bots that just last week were calling us insurrectionists.
There is also the argument that he just won in Florida and, damnit, he needs to govern Florida and not abandon the state to…save the country. I don’t think this argument has ever prevailed on a potential winner, and I doubt it will now. It’s not like he would be tossing the keys to Charlie Crist or the naked drug guy.
Then there is the idea that it is not his turn, that he must defer to Trump because Trump got shafted. The idea is often combined with DeSantis running as Trump’s veep then taking over in 2028. This politico-erotic fantasy is less likely than the letter to Penthouse about the two swinging Swedish stewardesses who just moved in next door and came over to borrow some sugar wearing cheerleader outfits. Let’s just say Trump’s record on people close to him is mixed, spanning from terrible to Pence. A big argument for DeSantis is that Trump is … problematic, and therefore why would DeSantis ever choose to make that problem his?
Another knock on DeSantis is some of the people allegedly supporting him — a litany of RINOs, squishes, and cruise crew losers like Paul Ryan and similar establishment fungi. Of course, it is not clear that these unaccomplished amphibians actually support DeSantis rather than hate Trump. The creepy oddities of the Bulwark, Dispatch, and Lincoln Project have already signaled that they despise DeSantis precisely because they fear he will torment their paymasters without the baggage that made Trump vulnerable. Some people – both pro-Trump and anti-Trump, since they share the objective of nominating Trump – cynically push the “Look at who likes DeSantis!” line. It’s unclear if the base will be fooled by this ham-handed ploy.
Another hit on DeSantis is that he cannot unify the GOP. There are people who will vote for no one but Trump ever and that is that. Now, a lot of people say that today but, when the time comes, they will vote for DeSantis over whichever warmed-over communist pill the Democrats nominate. Others will not. Some did not vote before Donald Trump and were brought into politics by Donald Trump and will leave politics with Donald Trump. Others think Trump is owed the 2024 nomination and that if anyone else gets it that is just further proof of the perfidy of the system. Some have bought into the dumb memes like that this founder of the Freedom Caucus is a secret Paul Ryan puppet or that he must be a squish because some people who hate Trump are – shockingly – leaning toward the non-Trump frontrunner. One might observe that DeSantis can be counted on to never hire people like Fauci, Bolton, Wray, or Omarosa, but making that observation kind of assumes that the people you would need to make it to are capable of being convinced. Many are not, and that is a problem for DeSantis. Can he show that the people he loses by not being Trump are going to be outnumbered by the people he gains by not being Trump?
Another point against DeSantis is, “Sure, he’s a good governor, but he has not proven himself nationally and Trump has.” That is true, though with only two nationally elected positions in America there are not a lot of folks who have proven themselves successful nationally. Almost all candidates are trying it nationally for the first time or tried it before and lost. DeSantis needs to show how he plans to get those battleground states in his column. Will a Yale guy with a military background be able to win over hardhats and farmers? Well, two of three Bushes did and they had the disadvantage of being Bushes, but that was a while ago.
And will he have the money to fight? Sure, big donors will be happy to help but how about the little guys, the small dollar donors? Will they pay up? Will they work the phones and knock on the doors? Will they show up?
That’s the thing – DeSantis is an unknown quantity nationally. But most candidates are their first time, and lots of them win. The way for DeSantis to refute the case against him is to show exactly how he intends to do so in 2024.
But Trump won’t be a pushover. If DeSantis wants the nomination, he’ll have to take it.
I don't have any party affiliation as suggested by George Washington in his farwell address.
For the longest time I have identified as being a conservative citizen who votes sans party.
These days when asked, I take the temperature of the person asking, and usually just reply I vote anti-Democrat party.
What would impress me, now that the Donald has officially announced after weeks of taking the wind out of the sails for the midterms, would be a ticket with him at the top and a DeSantis, Nikki Haley, or a Kristi Noem taking the training spot. If Trump is going to be your nominee the only problem with my suggestion is unfortunately his (Trumps) ego can't take pumping up his Number 2 for 4 years.
Any way that is way too much from someone who really doesn't have a dog in this hunt.
Good luck keeping the ever larger growing conservative non party folks running in the same direction as your nominee.
The GOP has always had the propensity to either snatch defeat from the jaws of victory or not being able to create and maintain a consensus in their own ranks.
I hope you’re not a fraud denier. Too many of them around.
When’s Kurt Schlichter going to run for president, eh? He seems to have all the answers from his armchair, doesn’t he . . . oh wait; he also seems to be a fraud denier, so that’s deep state.
How do you win?
1) Take at least 10% of the black vote in the blue cities.
2) Capture the hearts and minds of the suburban women aka “Soccer Moms”
3) And do both without ignoring or taking for granted your red rural base.
The Kamala - Inslee ticket will crush him
Aaaaaaah, it’s too early for this crap, with all due respect to ColonelKurt..
Not sure what a “fraud denier” is so there is a fair chance I am not. Just an old vet painfully watching the demise of the Republic.
Does any of this really matter if the cheating by the Dems isn’t stopped?
I like what I see from DeSantis so far but there are two big reservations.
Firstly, we can’t really be sure how he would be on foreign policy. His statements against pouring ever more of our money down the rat hole of Ukraine and his statements against the WEF are encouraging signs but.....he also supported the Maidan coup when he was in Congress. We need to see him come out more clearly against the deep state and its perpetual wars and the bad trade deals plus surrender of national sovereignty by the globalists.
Secondly, he has not yet earned the loyalty of the Midwestern working class like Trump has. Trump has made it very clear he’s for energy independence, getting rid of bad trade deals, placing tariffs on Chinese goods, in general implementing fair trade rather than pure free trade, and in bringing back manufacturing. DeSantis has not shown them yet that he would do all of the above. Trump had been saying similar things since the early 90s - and people knew it. They knew he really believed in what he said and wasn’t just pandering to them because he thought it would be convenient now.
That is true, but they're more freaked out about Trump. Eventually, as you watch the circus play out, the Dems will tell you who they want to run against, and it's most definitely not Trump.
And that's why you keep seeing Trump falsely described as a "three time loser".
I have reached the point where I do not think either Trump or DeSantis will be elected President.
At this particular point in time, I expect Gavin Newsom to be sworn in to that office on January 21, 2025.
Thanks to the GOPe, they have elections down pat.
Go further left. Masking, lockdowns, big pharma vax shrilling and bumpstock bans with prison reforms didn’t do it. Neither did being homo friendly.
How about just perform an abortion on the lawn of the governors mansion.
Our leftist “conservatives” have costed freedoms we will never regain.. why not keep going left to win.
How far left are the covid policies… well they included mail in ballots. More of that to win, eh.
Moot point since electoral math is now a lock for Socialists with takeover of PA and MI at all levels. No way to counter.
Of course, none of us ever reads the actual posted article - unless it's a Kurt Schlichter article.
Read the article.
Trump has set a really high bar for candidates. If Trump had never arrived on the scene there would be quite a few very qualified candidates in the upcoming election of 24. Kinda like when we picked Bush because he was a good governor.
Read later.
To my mind there is only one fact that matters dhen it comes to DeSantis.
That Florida still uses RCV-enabled voting machines, early voting, mail-in voting.
Until DeSantis does something about that, I’m not supporting DeSantis.
And I’m wondering if he won because Deep State permitted it.
You are right, it doesn’t make sense to demand answers to hypothetical questions. It also doesn’t make sense to pose a hypothetical question toward Trump and demand the answer, while stubbornly failing to even consider the same question posed toward any other candidate, hypothetical or real.
Which is my point.
Here’s the context:
https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/4111441/posts?page=87#87
FRegards
Good observation & I agree.
My case against Ron DeSantis is that as soon as Trump is gone. Everything they say against Trump plus other scandals will come at Ron DeSantis. They are just waiting to attack him for real when Trump pulls out. That is the way of the media.
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