The question facing Gov. Ron DeSantis is how much to mix it up with Donald Trump. Trump is coming after DeSantis with hammer and tongs, as is his usual style. DeSantis hasn’t formally announced for the GOP nomination, but it looks like he is running.
Sooner or later he is going to have to fight back, and hard. 2016 showed that Trump systematically picked off his rivals, who mostly tried to get out of the way. There is no getting out of the way. You just have to get in the center of the ring an trade punches.
DeSantis should do this matter-of-factly. He should simply say that he has won his last election, and by a big margin, unlike Trump. He should say he can win in 2024, and that’s what it’s all about. This is a 2024 election. The 2020 election won’t be on the ballot, no matter how much Trump wants to litigate that election.
He should point out that the Democrats are lighting candles in hopes that Republicans nominate Trump, because that will guarantee another four years of Democrats in the White House. And that he, DeSantis, is the Democrats’ worst nightmare, because he believes the same things as Trump but can get elected. And he should point out that with him at the top of the ticket, Republicans stand a better chance of winning down ballot races for U.S. Senate, congress, governor.
The reality is, whether DeSantis pounds on this or not, is that Trump drives Democrats wild. All the marginally attached Democratic voters will flood the polls to vote against him, and vote against other Republicans for good measure.
Now DeSantis has the capability of annoying Democrats too, but not even in the same league as Trump.
DeSantis doesn’t need to get into all the stuff Trump has done that has landed him in a world of legal trouble. Most of the Republican primary voters don’t care or think it’s all a plot by Democratic prosecutors. So he doesn’t have to call Trump a crook. By now, if you are a voter, you either think Trump is a crook and a liar and seditious, or you don’t. I don’t think there is anyone in America over the age of 18 who is on the fence.
The only question right now is if so many candidates decide to run that it will be a replay of 2016, and Trump wins primaries with 30 percent beause everyone else splits the vote six or eight ways. The Republican Party seems incapable of talking anyone out of running. Maybe it will be Trump at 30 and Desantis at 25 and everyone else with 5-10 percent. In that case, it could be a de facto two-man race for a few months as other candidates run out of money and fail to gain traction, and it truly becomes a two-man race. I don’t know how that comes out.
Even though party elites would rather see DeSantis as the nominee, they literally only have money, as opposed to votes, and money is really immaterial to Trump. He doesn’t need much money in the primary, because he gets massive free coverage as a candidate.
Then we get to the convention, and this is where DeSantis may be better positioned. Trump has been increasingly surrounded with chumps. In a convention, you really need good organization and good strategists, not bozos. So if Trump goes into the convention without this thing nailed down, he could lose.
And then all hell could break loose. Trump is not a Republican. He doesn’t give a hoot about the party. And so he could try to run as an independent, or he could just tell his partisans to stay home. He will not be appearing at a unity breakfast the day after the convention, if he loses.