The Time For A DeSantis/Trump Fight Is Not Now
The probability that Donald Trump becomes the 2024 GOP presidential nominee is still somewhat high. High enough to make a lot of Republican voters nervous that 2025 will begin with Joe Biden celebrating a second inauguration.
While a very vocal minority of “Trump or no one” exists within the Republican voting bloc, most voters know that despite whatever positive views they have of Trump and his four years in office, he’s also the party’s biggest loser. The GOP lost control of the House in 2018. Trump lost the presidency in 2020 and his twaddle about election chicanery in Georgia cost the GOP its Senate majority. He flopped again in 2022 when a slew of hand-picked Trump candidates lost winnable House, Senate and gubernatorial races across the country.
In various polls, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis bests Trump in the primaries, especially in early primary state races. I ignore national primary polls because a national primary does not exist. Trump sees this too. He’s been upping the attacks on DeSantis recently, calling him a “RINO globalist” among other colorful metaphors.
DeSantis, who has made no announcements about 2024, won’t return fire (for now). When asked specifically about a recent Trump attack, DeSantis said:
“When you’re an elected executive, you have to make all kinds of decisions. You got to steer that ship. And the good thing is, is that the people are able to render a judgment on that — whether they reelect you or not. And I’m happy to say, you know, in my case, not only did we win reelection. We won with the highest percentage of the vote that any Republican governor candidate has in the history of the state of Florida.”
It’s a smart response for someone who hasn’t officially announced he will run for president. Still, I don’t get the people out there pining for a fight and already getting on the “DeSantis is a coward” train because he won’t “fight back.”
Charlie Sykes of The Bulwark recently wrote of DeSantis’s response to Trump’s attack:
But you see what didn’t happen here: DeSantis did not actually hit back or snap back, or punch back.
He just basically came out and said “Scoreboard!” He didn’t even say Trump’s name.
Seriously? We’ve already reached the “Say his name!” level of ridiculousness?
Matt Lewis takes a more measured approach as someone looking at the potential matchup from a strategic point of view, whereas Sykes wants the mud-slinging because it gives him fodder for his half-assed writing.
Lewis writes:
Still, the outstanding question is whether DeSantis (or anyone) will actually whack Trump. So far, DeSantis has avoided any direct confrontations with the former president.
Perhaps this is a prudent and strategic example of keeping his powder dry.
But the fear is that DeSantis might make the same flawed calculation that Ted Cruz and others made in 2016: that Trump will fade on his own, and then you can inherit his supporters.
We all know how that worked out.
He’s right. DeSantis, Haley, Pompeo, etc. won’t win by ignoring Trump and hoping he will go away. Contrary to all the talk about vaccines, foreign policy, taxes, Social Security, and other issues, it is one significant weakness Trump suffers and someone not named Larry Hogan will have to stand toe to toe on it against Trump.
The 2020 election.
I don’t care what issues Trump has cooking with his team. It doesn’t matter what his agenda looks like should he win again. None of that matters because the one thing that Trump cannot do is get away from the 2020 election. The only reason he’s running again is to take back what he believes is rightfully his. In Trump’s head, he didn’t lose. “They” stole it from him.
That moment will probably come in an early debate. Someone will ask the candidates a variation of “Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?” If DeSantis or Haley try to dance around it, that will be a fatal mistake. After all, how could they justify running if they buy into the “stolen election” narrative? If Trump won in 2020, then the nomination is his by rote, so can try to win back what Democrats “stole” from him.
Someone will have to look across that stage and say, “Mr. President, you lost.” It is definitely a risky move because it will light a fire under him and his core supporters, many of whom are already echoing his silly comments about DeSantis as a “RINO” or “globalist.”
But to win a general election, DeSantis will have to do what he did in Florida, which is pull together a coalition of voters that go beyond those who identify as Republican. But first, he has to get through a primary fight, and it’s difficult to see how he does that if he has to spend the entire primary campaign fending off questions about the 2020 election. Trump will attack him no matter what, so DeSantis has nothing to lose by telling Trump to his face that he’s the one thing Trump despises more than anything else: a loser.
Don’t listen to the charlatans calling for a fight, who want to pretend they care, because they’ll find reasons not to support the GOP nominee, anyway. Their pining for a brawl is all about self-interest, engagement, subscriptions and clicks.
The time for a fight will come. But it’s not now.
I think DeSantis and Haley are doing the right thing for now. The election isn’t about Trump, except for the people on both sides for whom everything is about Trump. I don’t know Lewis or Sykes, so I don’t know if they’re nuts, but Trump has driven a lot of people nuts. You can never praise Trump enough to make his nutty supporters favor you over him, and you can never disparage Trump enough for his nutty opponents to calm down. Nearly everyone today knows whether they’d be willing to vote for Trump. The only exceptions are the people who might say, “I wasn’t sure I was going to support him, but he’s running so strong I think he can win the nomination”. DeSantis or whoever needs to keep them from saying that.Report
DeSantis is in something of a no win situation. Wait too long to declare and to engage, and he may well miss the train entirely. Jump on now as Haley has done, and then spend a lot of time and resources trying to punch between cars until you get to the primary car.
And at the moment neither Trump no DeSantis polls past Biden in a head to head. Heck DeSantis isn’t polling past Trump in head to heads.
And none of this addresses the rot in the GOP that has made its policies deeply unpopular in the US. They have nothing to give but bombast.Report
The strange thing about this whole framing is that nobody can really articulate what policy differences exist between potential primary challengers for Trump because the GOP doesn’t have policy stances any more.Report
The worst thing about Progressivism becoming an aesthetic was Conservativism saying “maybe that’ll work for us?”Report
This is the part of the primary where candidates are picking their gimmicks, like pro wrestlers. This is when the focus is typically on issues rather than policies.Report
As a Democrat, my only interest is to see which way they intend to lead their party, and from the looks of it, misogyny, transphobia and racism seem to be shared goals with democracy and rule of law as speedbumps to be overcome.Report
Heh, possibly DeSantis is working on wordsmithing all this into a good platform…
But in an attempt to build on the baseline principle, my personal ‘salesguy’ hunch is that DeSantis – assuming he runs – will need to run on an actual platform of deliverables. More like a “Contract for America” than vague MAGA.
He *has* to have a foil to talk about what he’s going to do *for* America that exposes Trump/MAGA as so much bluster and failure. That is, RDS won’t talk about what Trump didn’t do, he’ll force Trump to defend what he didn’t do against RDS’s record of doing what he said he’d do.
The danger to this, IMO, is that Trump can always invent new promises: Healthcare better than Obamacare – and cheaper! And that’s what Team RDS points out… nothing Trump promised came to fruition.
Now… I don’t expect Chip to much like what RDS comes up with. I suspect I’ll only like about 33% (not sure which 33% though) … but the only way out of the Trump Trap is exactly this: What’s the Platform of Three Key things RDS promises as a deliverables. If he does a good job with those three things, stays on message, then he forces Trump to campaign against popular things people want, rather than personalities.Report
Why should we think your opinion is shared by the GOP base voters, or even American voters broadly?
Do you think its possible to win elections on nothing more than grievance and culture warring?Report
My opinion is not derived from a Base or from Voters at all… it’s a strategic judgement on *how* you take a solution to market in the face of competition. If successful, the base and American voters broadly will cast a vote for your solution.
A good solution will translate grievances and culture warring into a project that has tangible results that the Base and American Voters more broadly would see as good.
That’s the same challenge for both parties.
Further, I think the Dems are vulnerable to being outflanked on grievance and culture warring not that they are not doing it. The Dems have some really bad grievances and culture wars and have challenges rallying behind a tangible platform to take to the Base that would also be palatable to American Voters more broadly. In the absence of Trump and particularly bad R grievance mongering – this might be a bigger D than R problem.
I have no particular notion (as yet) whether RDS or anyone else for that matter will pull it off. Plus, while that’s *my* assessment of how an R defeats Trump… there are likely other ways too. Maybe a *Dentist’s* hunch would be different than my ‘salesguy’ hunch.Report
Up until this midterm election, the GOP was able to grab and hold power with pure grievance and little else. Even now DeSantis is railing on grievance – he’s just better at pulling the levers of his administration to inflict that grievance on others then rump was.Report
I don’t think that’s accurate.
2016 was a partial realignment election that introduced new Republican priorities and potential direction.
I think it’s significant that the Trump Presidency fundamentally failed on it’s own project and would agree that the elections in 2018, 2020 and 2022 have exposed how pure Trumpian grievance (with an added dose of unpopular election grievance) has caused Team Red to underperform and worse to calibrate in even worse directions.
So, I can sorta see how you might over-represent a notion of pure grievance with no deliverables.
But, whether or not RDS makes a pivot to grievance *and* deliverables? And will those deliverables be seen as good or as you ‘hope’ merely as inflicting grievances on others? I don’t know.
But, underestimate at your own risk.Report
Where is the evidence supporting your assertion that
“A good solution will translate grievances and culture warring into a project that has tangible results that the Base and American Voters more broadly would see as good.”?
All the evidence I see says that for about half of the electorate, culture war itself IS a tangible good.
Honestly, I want to be proven wrong, that cultural reactionary grievance is a political losing proposition.
But I notice that it consistently pulls ahead in a lot of states like Florida, about even in states like Virginia, and only trails in a handful of blue states and even not by landslide amounts.Report
I don’t think ‘evidence’ is the word we’re looking for here. I have no idea what particular strategy RDS or any other R candidate will adopt to win the nomination. My point is that I think a ‘successful’ strategy will not be the verbal pissing match that a lot of folks seem to crave.
And there’s ‘evidence’ so far that RDS is taking that route… not responding to DJT and referring instead to his record and policies. Further, various actions as Governor are indeed designed to build a potential platform.
It’s fine to question whether he executes this strategy well – the New College stuff, for example, may turn out prudent or it may turn into a disaster (seems mostly performative to me at the moment) – but the weird thing is handwaving culture war issues which are in fact baseline bread/butter/family issues. I think a lot of times the Left just wants to whistle away ‘issues’ it doesn’t want to have pushback as ‘mere’ culture wars.
I agree, though, that absent other parts of a platform that address Whole Life, Euthanasia, Medical Care, and changing Economic (domestic and foreign) priorites — not to mention Foreign Affairs — such an effort would come up short.
At which point, someone is probably informing Presdient Biden that he’s won another term.Report
I posted the latest in the Disney-DeSantis pissing contest over in TSN, but to wit the GOP controlled state legislature is now voting to create an amended Reedy Creek District with a board appointed by DeSantis instead of the current board appointed by the landowners around Disney. The best read of the situation is this keeps the state from having to pay off the Reedy Creek bonds and from having to raise local taxes all the while allowing DeSantis to APPEAR to be putting the screws to Disney.Report
And?
If he’s making a mistake, then let him keep making the mistake. If he’s wasting energy in posing / fake “I’m doing something / I care” projects – then he’s doing what all politicians do. Ignore it and let him try to run on it.
Should be easy to beat faux culture warriors.Report
I want to chime in here to agree modestly with Marchmaine’s analysis (particularly of the right). Trumps nomination and election really did represent an attempt at a sea change on the right. Neocon hawkishness was out in foreign affairs, transactional real politic was in. Overt libertarianism was out in domestic affairs and big government conservativism was in. Most importantly, playing footsie with immigration rationalization was out and full on nativism was in. Trump was, of course, both historically corrupt and incredibly indifferent/incompetent which badly impeded his ability to implement either philosophy. On foreign affairs, where the executive is strong and where the Party elites preferences are more soft, Trump moved the needle significantly. On domestic politics, where the executive is weak and where the Party elites preferences are diamond hard (and brittle), he basically got taken for a ride and ended off signing off on nothing but more republitarianism.
But if you peer past the ink cloud of incompetence and corruption that is Trump qua Trump there is the shape (both benign and ominous) of a new right wing alignment. The right-wing politician who figures out the parameters of that alignment will be very formidable- perhaps historic.
I fear, more in agreement with Chip alas, that for any such new alignment to be workable it’s going to use culture grievance, rank nativism and hatefulness as an integral strategy of bringing along the right wing.
Where I really part paths with Marchmaine is in his analysis of the left where I think he, like most right wingers, is literally believing his own press. The right shouts from the rooftops that the twitter/internet left is the base of the Democratic Party but this propaganda simply isn’t supported by facts on offer. The identarian lefts contingent in Congress, for instance, is a bare half dozen congressfolk- that’s barely anything. The identarian lefts candidates for President came in as distant fifth/sixth place finishers behind Biden (a centrist establishment Democrat), Bernie (an economics/class-first leftist) and both Buttigieg & Klobuchar (who, frankly, were simply running as Biden alternatives/understudies). No. The identarian left is partially to the Democratic Party what the (true) libertarians are to the Republican Party; a very noisy internet community that is overrepresented in the party’s monied and connected elite apparatus but who can’t muster enough actual voters to fill a school bus.Report
But, in the Conservative Fusion era, the Libertarians without the votes won. They won in the area they demanded control. Not an ideologically pure win, but wins nonetheless.
As you yourself note, I don’t think Biden is capturing value for things that he’s attempted to do that could be construed as ‘common good’ policies – partly because he himself can’t manage the identitarian faction to his own detriment.
So, no, I don’t think Joe is up to the task of charting a better course for Team Blue that would keep the “overrepresented Monied and connected elite apparatus” in check. Just like Team Red didn’t keep the Libertarians in check.Report
The libertarians didn’t really exist though. Or at least the ones who still hold onto any OG lib beliefs. It was always just a nice label that was a mile wide and an inch deep.
I’m not sure culture warriors have ever been easy to defeat. They mostly grow old, rich and/or crazy then fade away as times change.Report
Trump managed to complete two things while president.
1) Judges
2) He built the wall border control asked for. It was pretty cheap, all things considered.
Did he really do anything about “bathroom issues”? About Racism? About the attempted insurrection of National Guard? Nope.
Weak President. Lotta bark though.
If you asked most libertarians, “Is this a good president?” They’d probably say… “eh?”Report
Sure, that’s what we both mean by ‘no votes’
There are no actual libertarians and no actual identitarians that could win a broad election.
We could, as North is taking me to the woodshed would suggest, call them both figments of our political hallucinations… but are they?Report
Both exist as intellectual groups of people who talk a lot on the internet and in political forums.
Both lack a large numerical voting constituency.
At that point the two groups diverge.
Libertarians are internally coherent, they know what they want and they know what policy choices would be required to get it.
Identarians have a nebulous cloud of desires and little to no practical idea as to how to get there.
Libertarians have profound practical influence over the elite of the Republican party when it comes to setting policy and commanding performative communication.
Identarians have very little practical influence over the elite of the Democratic Party for setting policy but have considerable clout for certain limited kinds performative communication.
They are real, for sure, and I would argue that libertarians by and large are what the Dems tend to say they are. I would argue Identarians aren’t what the GOP say they are. They’re neither the base of nor do they command the elite of the Democratic Party.
They’re closer to a kind of third column and their greatest power lies in their influence over “mainstream” media, left wing non-profits and corporate HR areas. There’s some overlap in those areas with Democratic Party interests but there’s some severe disconnects.Report
Yes, whereas in contrast the Identarians keep losing within the Democratic Party. Most of their candidates crash and burn in the primaries and those few who win don’t win the general. The Party’s policy wing mostly ignores them.
I’ll grant this is partially due to an significant difference between the identarian/twitter left and the libertarians- libertarianism is internally coherent whereas the identarian left is internally much more incoherent- it’s a lot of emotive thinking and mostly performatic/communicative gestures.
Say you want to institute libertarian government and the libertarians could have a 50 point plan on your desk by the afternoon (99.999999% of the population would HATE that plan but it would be a real concrete policy plan); the identarian left can’t even agree on how something like reparations would actually be done. Their ask is typically more like “start studying the question”.
So the identarian left doesn’t have policy or popularity, they just have some elites (who mostly like them because they’re cheap dates) and a lot of messaging.Report
Much of the Id Left could be mollified and made even more powerless by giving them commissions to study issues and propose all the gestures in the world. Give them more money to keep studying and theorizing= nothing gets done. It would the clever Machiavellian move by a devious Dem.Report
Genius! I mean it definitely worked for the Libertarians – gave the Hawks all the money they asked for.Report
Eh, I suspect this would both A) be inadequate for the identarian left which is, by its nature, performative, decentralized and aggrieved
B) be a huge ignition point for the right which shares all those characteristics.
So no upside and all downside. Remember, the identarian left doesn’t command any big mass of voters who’ll turn out when mollified whereas the identarian right has a considerable cachet who’ll turn out when outraged.Report
Ack…You’re being reasonable and thoughtful again. Heavy sigh.Report
Sorry!Report
Under DeSantis a salesguy, is a ‘slesu’, because you can’t say ‘gay’.Report
::chuckles along in twitter::
Warning to Team Blue: a certain amount of ‘devastating’ off the cuff critiques of culture war items aren’t devastating, and worse, they are kinda popular — especially when the Team Blue spin proves overwrought if not outright false.
Your friend,
MarchReport
Happily Team Blue has lots of substantive stuff to campaign on whereas the twitter warriors who spin up over this culture war have only a modest Venn overlap with the actual Team Blue.Report
In Florida they sing “Take me out to the ball’m” and remember great players like two-time Cy Young winner Lord Perry. And sometimes they listen to reg music.Report
I think the time to root for injuries is now!
That being said, I have a hard time imagining why DeSantis is a value-add from a prospective of the electoral college. Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 but one the electoral college thanks to being a bit of an unknown factor, his celeb status, and a thirty-year hate campaign against HRC. This allowed him to nab PA, WI, and MI. All of these states switched back to the Democratic column in 2020. All of these states were largely decent to great for Democrats in the 2020 midterms. PA easily elected another Democratic governor and Fetterman’s victory was called on election night despite wondering that it would be close. Fetterman received slightly more than 300,000 votes compared to OZ. Democrats also gained a slight majority in the lower house of the PA legislature (which was quickly ended because of deaths and vacancies).
In Michigan, Democrats gained the trifecta. Wisconsin was more of a mixed bag.
Arizona and Georgia switched to Democrats in 2020. Arizona was good for Democrats in 2022. Georgia was more mixed but the Trumpian Senate candidate lost again.
I really don’t see how Trump or DeSantis going more all in with “anti-woke” culture war redmeat stuff combined with sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, and anti-abortion extremism is a winning proposition in 2024 and so far it is only the true believers that think it is.Report
I, like you, only have one horse in this race and that’s the horse where one candidate is obliterated but devastatingly cripples the other. I wish both of them all the ill.
Complacency towards the blue wall states is ill advised, though. Trump is enormously mercurial and DeSantis seems to be anchored to very few concrete principles so they could run nativist non-libertarian campaigns and be serious threats even in PA, MI and WI. Really it seems that, so long as they keep the libertarinism at arms length, they can run pretty strongly on cultural grievance and nativism. But if they are seen as in thrall to the right wing clowns who want to cut Gramma’s Social Security, look out!Report
Anything is possible but you also have to base your analysis on results and what happened. Based on 2022, I think a lot of people think DeSantis’ culture wars have a lot more legs than people think they do. Florida is basically a red state now and actually has issues with decreasing birth rates but benefits by getting lots of old retirees. Michigan throughly rejected culture war candidates in 2022 as did PA. Wisconsin is more of a mixed bag but I would state it is flawed democracy at the moment along with North Carolina and Florida.
Even if you are a left-leaning voter skeptical of woke stuff, it is hard to see how the DeSantis crushing of New College and anti-CRT crusade flares people up if Oz and Mastriano did not.Report
Agreed, DeSantis doing those things probably won’t excite the non-right wing voters but don’t count on it being particularly repellant to them either.Report
From what I heard, he is Mr. Negative CharismaReport
I’ve heard it to. I hope it’s the case and he just mauls Trump a bit but we can’t count on that.Report
There is no political tactic that is guaranteed to work perfectly but DeSantis, Trump, and any other Republican aren’t going to tone themselves down for the general electorate in a Presidential election. The Republicans themselves have decided to go all in on their current culture war program. This limits the Democratic response to basically exposing the Republicans to the public and hoping they are reviled. You really can’t keep your head high when your opponents are wallowing in mud and getting it everywhere. A lot of it will splatter on you anyway.Report
Oh indeed, I don’t have a prognosis I just am wary of complacency. I don’t think Trump can tone it down but DeSantis quite possibly could. We also should not forget that bashing on the woke simply doesn’t repel the mid range voters the way it does us so a little toning down can go a long way.Report
I actually think you guys are misreading a bit how DeSantis v. Trump is likely to go. I know it can be hard to grapple with but my prediction is that Trump would run to the left of DeSantis in a similar manner to what he did to Jeb. Trump’s big advantage as a GOP politician is that he doesn’t actually believe in anything, in particular the GOP ideas that are popular among the establishment and important parts of the base but not the wider electorate or even the more populist corners of conservatism. He’s already demonstrating his instincts by advocating against cutting social security and medicare in the debt ceiling fight and conflicted response on Dobbs (as if his own administration didn’t make it happen).
The weaknesses of Trump are of course everything else about him. I think an underrated factor is just how exhausting the perpetual melodrama and self-centeredness his persona brings to politics. It’s a show that might have been funny the first time but no one wants to watch the rerun.
DeSantis at the end of the day has a record as a Paul Ryan style, zombie Reaganite. The fight against him is much more straightforward in that regard. He’s also a complete bore as a personality. The question is can Democrats stay disciplined about how to fight him, which is on the kitchen table economic issues, as opposed to the culture war debate DeSantis is dying to have.
I give Biden as good a chance as anyone against either of them. He isn’t dying to kick anyone off their health insurance and he still comes off like a normal person, despite the best efforts of his ivy league idiots and activists haunting this or that part of the administration.Report
Trump already responded to DeSantis’ war on transpeople by going harder against transpeople.
https://www.them.us/story/trump-desantis-transphobia-health-care-ban
Trump’s lesson from both his 2016 campaign and his Presidential term was that his loyal supporters want their red meat and he will give them their red meat. Trump is not going to run left of DeSantis. He already chosen to go even further than him.Report
I think that is a serious misunderstanding of the issue and the electorate. This way lies folly.Report
An example of Trump running to the left of DeSantis:
Trump posts photos of Ron DeSantis as a teacher, allegedly partying with high school girls, as he ramps up attacks on Republican rival
The ‘groomer’ attack on DeSantis, even lacking evidence, could have added sting, since DeSantis’ office characterized opponents of his ‘don’t say gay’ bill as ‘groomers,’ prompting backlash at the time.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11724111/Trump-posts-photos-Ron-DeSantis-allegedly-drinking-high-school-girls.htmlReport
I know you think this is a witty rejoinder, but again, I see it as a complete misread of the actual dynamics likely to be in play both in the primary and the general. But we can redo this on the prediction thread when it comes, and if you’re right I’ll humbly take my I Told Ya So’s.Report
“DeSantis at the end of the day has a record as a Paul Ryan style, zombie Reaganite.”
I think InMD is right… if RDS is using ‘culture war’ to hide libertarian fusion policies of the old three legged stool, then Trump will have no trouble running to the left of him on economics (and in any other direction he needs to run on Culture War issues – left, right, up, down).
Of course, the only real legislation Trump passed was McConnell’s libertarian fusion tax cuts… but that’s why you can’t beat Trump with Zombie Reaganomics… you have to attack him for not having an actual bread/butter/family platform that moves beyond Zombie Reaganomics.
I don’t know if RDS or anyone on Team Red has moved past this yet — or more realistically if there’s any money/support from the Donor base to move past it — but that’s how you end Trump. And, more important than simply ending the big con, how you transition to a better iteration two party politics.Report
And this is actually where our Woke Press really does itself a disservice, even on its own terms. For all the hubbub and pearl clutching about Florida schools as best as I can tell no one is asking DeSantis about his votes in the House for the really radical Ryan approach to the federal budget.Report
Sure, and to complete my pure two-party cynicism, it’s also why the Right leaning media conglomerates won’t challenge him on where he’d take the party: they *like* Zombie Reaganomics. Performative fights that hide McConnell BAU? That’s a win.Report
I’m confused-
What part of libertarianism allows “You must report your menstrual cycles to the government”?
When did Mises call for the state to seize private property like Reedy Creek? Or force a massive tax increase on the people against their wishes and jail those who spoke out, like at the Villages?Report
My dear Sir, I’d say you are positively bewildered.Report
Your problem, Chip, is that you’re mistaking libertarianism- an internally coherent, debatably moral, intellectually robust and widely unpopular philosophy with its hunchbacked villainous twin republitarianism which is an incoherent, intellectually bankrupt and also widely unpopular (but it lies so it can sortof wriggle through) philosophy. The former is widely and robustly debated against liberalism on the internet and the public square; the latter is the actual operational system of the right and skulks along under its twins coat tails in public debate.
Seizing private property and controlling women’s bodies is wildly unacceptable to libertarianism but it’s not only acceptable to republitarianism but is also laudable so long as it enables tax cuts or wealth transfers to the wealthy.Report
Despite the unjustified snark… as part of the fusion project, that’s exactly the muddle (true) Libertarians embraced and why I phrased it as “libertarian fusion policies of the old three legged stool”
They silently stood-by on both SoCon and Foreign Policy Hawks setting agendas that weren’t Libertarian.
In exchange, they got Tax Breaks, de-regulation and lots of other things. Arguably they got almost all the economic goodies they signed up for. They kinda won the fusion game…Report
If you’re a resident of the Villages, you got a tax increase and more government power and a suppression of liberty in exchange for, well, suppression of other people’s liberty.
See, the reason I push on this is that we are going to hear a lot of blather in coming months about DeSantis’ “principled conservatism” and his “policy ideas” but it’s utter bullsh!t and baldfaced lies.
There is no principled idea other than power, the punishment of enemies and rewarding of cronies.Report
I would agree, the libertarians got the thing their wealthy backers actually wanted (tax cuts) and all the other things that might actually have appealed to anyone other than the wealthy got tossed to the wayside. They definitely won the fusion game, to the long term detriment of their ideology. They got the tax breaks but lost three generations of people (and counting).Report
Trump appears to be going the groomer route: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-suggesting-ron-desantis-pedophile-1234675596/
He has also been going hard on full transphobia so it is “no one can out culture war me!!!”Report
Interestingly enough I think you’re actually a tch too complacent about DeSantis InMD. If he were a true zombie Reaganite his record would look quite different. MOst recently DeSantis has used Covid financial largess under Trump and Biden to go on a spree of spending on Everglades restoration and educational funding. This is both popular and an anathema to zombie Reaganism which would have called for that money to be transferred to the wealthy via tax cuts.
Now, maybe DeSantis has a wooden left foot for politicking and campaigning- I’ve heard it alleged and hope it’s true- but in the policy sphere he looks like he’s far more amoral and mutable than a normal zombie Reaganite and that makes him potentially quite challenging as a GOP Presidential candidate.Report
DeSantis keeps the things that would make acceptable to a more general audience very quiet though. The parts that aren’t going to play well nationally, even for people who don’t have “In this house” sign in their yard are being blared loudly.Report
I hope, genuinely, that you are right LeeEsq my friend. I fear, genuinely, that you are wrong. Time will tell. We should be able to get a pretty good idea if/as DeSantis moves for the nomination which is the case.
If the time has finally arrived that the rights incoherence and hatefulness has made them incapable of competing effectively on a national scale no one will be more happy than I. But I fear intensely that it’s not here yet.Report
I’ve read about that too, and at the risk of being complacent, I believe that the nature being a governor, even a Republican governor, lends itself to creating a perception of moderation on these issues that rarely translates to federal office, even if it’s just by virtue of national GOP priorities. As I see it he took some free money in a surplus moment and was willing to spend it on some locally popular stuff. I’m not convinced that says a whole lot about Ron D the president or even Ron D the presidential candidate.
Keep in mind he already has a record at the federal level, it’s just that no one talks about it. He was a representative from 2013 to 2018, as part of the Freedom Caucus, in lockstep with the the Republican majority and agenda at the time. He also has his endorsements from the Club for Growth from his FL Senate run and a history of support from the usual Republitarian interest groups.
Now, I don’t want to under estimate the guy either, and I think any Democratic victory is still going to fail to be as comfortable as I would wish for. And maybe DeSantis really has learned a thing or two from some of the currents Trump blindly wandered into. But for now I am still skeptical that he really is something new. My read remains that he is at heart a fusion Republican, gesturing at the culture war stuff as a means to get power for his actual ends of blowing up as much of the welfare and regulatory state as possible. Again, I will happily take my I Told Ya So’s if time proves me wrong, this is just how I see it currently.Report
I agree with this general analysis, but I also think you dismiss the culture war impacts too lightly.Report
Will that stuff help him in a primary? Probably, at least to the extent it gives him a bunch of positive PR on Fox News and other conservative media outlets watched by conservative voters and influential conservatives. There’s certainly no world where it hurts him.
However, I don’t think the particulars of what’s taught in FL public schools is going to carry the day with enough of the voters he will need to win a general in PA or MI or maybe even WI, if, and this remains an if, he is still just another rich Republican with no answers on the post industrial landscape, and contempt for the things that have kept those issues from biting even harder than they have. Hell, it might not even be enough to win the primary if Trump is saying all the same stuff plus is viewed as more moderate on pocket book issues, especially for older voters.Report
The flaw in your take is that what he’s doing in Florida with respect to schools, transgender rights, and eve Disney is being repeated broadly across the country. Mississippi is likely to pass transgender care bans and similar book banning legislation as Florida has passed. There are 9 GOP controlled states looking to pass new laws that seek to effectively end drag shows by reclassifying them legally as strip shows. SO should he run and should he best Trump in the primaries he will face a general electorate that is filled with people seeing the same legislative outcomes in their states.
Meanwhile Mississippi and 10 other states still refuse to expand Medicaid and Medicare under the ACA, leaving billions on the table that could boost state economies. And the GOP doesn’t suffer at the ballot box for doing this.Report
Well we’re talking about national electoral strategy, not these various policies on the merits. My prediction is that many of them will ultimately fail constitutional scrutiny and the long term impact will be pretty limited. But none of that is really relevant to how these candidates will do in a primary or general election. If your critique of my take is that deep red MS isn’t going to turn blue I’d say well of course it isn’t and I don’t see anything in my analysis to suggest it would or should.Report
That is fair and the difference between national and state politics is very real.
It is also possible that, having been astronomically wrong about Trumps capability to campaign and appeal nationally (vs Hillary- damnit girl you have one job) I may simply be once burned and twice shy.Report
I probably sound more confident in it than I am, and it’s always possible to lose. I told my wife last night after SOU that I am thankful we have Biden kicking around, whatever his shortcomings, and am very hopeful his health holds up. He isn’t the hero we asked for but he may still be the one we need, at least for this particular moment we happen to be living in.Report
From your lips to God(ess?)’s ear!Report
Mississippi’s GOP dominated legislature is debating this very thing at present.Report
Ugh…Report
I wonder if this will come up in the Trump/ DeSantis battle:
How a Grassroots Revolt in the Iconic Retirement Community Ended With a 72-Year-Old Political Prisoner
https://theintercept.com/2023/02/05/ron-desantis-florida-villages-oren-miller/
Corruption, sleaze, and hostility to democracy- DeSantis ’24!Report