DeSantiss soft start to 2024 race makes Trump happy but battle not over | Ron DeSantis

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Never work with animals, children or egotistical billionaires in space. There’s a lesson there that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis learned the hard way when he used Elon Musks’ Twitter Spaces social media platform to announce his run for US president.

Thousands of listeners were greeted by long silences, strange music snatches and the sound of Musk, the soon-to-be kingmaker of the American right, muttering that the servers were struggling a bit. The glitch was soon described as a DeSaster, one of the most embarrassing campaign failures in memory.

No one was happier than Donald Trump, who views DeSantis as his main rival for the Republican nomination in 2024. But for those in the party seeking a successor to the disgraced former president, it raised concerns about his formidable opponents. compatible behavior and encouraged them to look for other options. No one is writing DeSantis off, but he entered the race weak and in a wide, scattered field of lesser candidates now dominated by Trump.

DeSantiss’ launch was terrible; Trump’s comments are crazy, tweeted Bill Kristol, a founding director of Defending Democracy Together who served in the Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush administrations. Doesn’t every normal Republican elected official and donor think the party could (and should!) do better?

The Grand Old Party has changed since the moment Trump staged a rather lo-tech campaign launch by descending an escalator at Trump Tower in New York in 2015. supporters, shook the Republican establishment and prevailed in the primary election against a divided opposition.

Eight years later, Trump, now 76 and facing a slew of criminal investigations, has re-established himself as the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination. He has spent the months since he launched his own campaign working to destroy former-ascendant DeSantis, 44, who has tried to stay in the fight.

Trump ultimately failed to oust the man he dubbed Ron DeSanctimonious from the race but sowed doubts about his record, personality and integrity. The governor himself did himself no favors by giving mixed messages on US support for Ukraine, picking a thankless fight with Disney and failing to impress in personal meetings.

Last month, when DeSantis went overseas on a trade mission and met with business leaders in London, the Politico website cited attendees as saying he appeared bored and stared at his feet and described him as obnoxious -loathing and low wattage. One said: It’s a bit like we’re watching a state level politician. I wouldn’t be surprised if [people in attendance] came out thinking it wasn’t the guy.

Far from closing the gap with Trump during a book tour, DeSantis has seen it widen to 30 percentage points or more in some opinion polls. Some of his potential donors expressed buyer’s remorse and deferred their financial support.

Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman from Illinois, said: Everybody thought it was a two-horse race; it’s a one horse race. The Republican establishment, the Republican donors, the Republican media, everybody wants Trump gone so they’re all counting on DeSantis and now it’s kind of shaking in the last four months because more and more people who know him, they don’t like him.

Added Walsh, who challenged Trump in the 2020 primaries: You’re going to see a bunch of people come in now because they think DeSantis is weak and so they want to be number two.

This week, the shambolic campaign launch only reinforced the view that DeSantis was overhyped as a Trump slayer and prematurely. But there is a constituency of Republicans who don’t want to go back to the twice-impeached, once-indicted Trump, especially after the disappointing midterm election results. They are hungry for another option to take on Joe Biden.

Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times in Iowa, which holds the first Republican caucuses early next year, said: I was talking to a moderate retired Republican teacher this morning from western Iowa and he doesn’t like snobbery. by Trump and DeSantis, so he’s looking for an alternative. Whether that’s Tim Scott or Asa Hutchinson or Chris Sununu, who knows?

Ambitious Republicans smell blood. This week Tim Scott, the only Black Republican senator, saw his hat in the ring with a brand of optimism that contrasted Trump and DeSantiss dark rhetoric. But Scott, 57, has just 1% support among registered Republicans, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

He joined fellow South Carolinian Nikki Haley, a former governor of the state and Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations. The 51-year-old emphasized his relative youth compared to Biden and Trump as well as his background as the son of two Indian immigrants. He gets about 4% support among Republican voters.

Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley have been reluctant to denounce Trump, keeping the parties’ base locked in place. Photo: Evan Vucci/AP

Notably, DeSantis, Scott and Haley have been reluctant to directly denounce Trump, preferring to let allies do the dirty work or make oblique statements about the need to end a culture of loss or embrace the greatness rather than grievance. Their reticence is a striking insight into Trumps lock on the parties base.

But one candidate, former Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson, has been more outspoken in calling on Trump to drop out of the race to face his hush money criminal case in New York. Hutchinson, 72, touted his leadership experience in the deeply conservative state but has limited national name recognition.

Other potential contenders include Mike Pence, 63, a former vice-president who split with Trump in the Jan. 6 insurrection; Chris Christie, 60, a former governor of New Jersey who is a harsh critic of Trump; and Chris Sununu, 48, the governor of New Hampshire who said he doesn’t believe Trump can beat Biden.

Glenn Youngkin, 56, a hedge fund manager turned governor of Virginia who made much of the parents’ rights in schools, is said to be reconsidering a bid to the White House after it was ruled out. Meanwhile, Vivek Ramaswamy, 37, a former biotechnology investor and executive, is already running a quixotic campaign.

The bigger the field, the more Trump benefits. As in 2016, a group of candidates can split the anti-Trump vote while his base remains. That could put pressure on DeSantis to distance himself by taking the gloves off against the former president, a risky strategy that backfired for fellow Floridians Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio in 2016.

Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: The only way Ron DeSantis can get rid of Trump voters is if he fights as hard and dirty as Trump because they’re looking for a champion to break the boundaries, break the rules and really do it. That’s what they’re looking for: are you willing to go toe-to-toe and stand up to Trump all the way?

DeSantis is still relatively well placed. He polled in double digits and boasted a war chest of over $110m even before he entered the race. His team said he brought in $8.2m in the first 24 hours after his campaign launch, breaking the $6.3m record held by Biden.

DeSantis can also point to a list of rightwing legislative accomplishments to declare that he is effectively Trump without the drama. His opposition to coronavirus pandemic restrictions and his anti-woke agenda have guaranteed favorable coverage from Rupert Murdochs Fox News network and other rightwing media.

He has many friends in the Florida Republican party despite Trump making the state his adopted home. Christian Ziegler, the state party chairman, said he had a good relationship with both men. The organization will remain neutral and I encourage all our party leaders to do the same because, no matter who wins the primary, we have to make sure that we go so that the voters of whoever loses go over and shake hands and vote for whoever our Republican nominee is.

We need to keep our eye on what is the truth and what is the real goal. The real enemy here is the Democrats and what they are trying to do to our children, our communities, our state, our country.

Democrats, for their part, hailed DeSantiss’ disastrous campaign launch and are rooting for his candidacy.

Antjuan Seawright, a party strategist based in Columbia, South Carolina, said: He has a problem with math, which means he will always be considered the runner-up to Trump, who is the leading candidate in their party. He has a policy problem because in many cases he tries to out-Trump Trump when it comes to policy.

He has a political problem: he’s never checked his hood or kicked his tires outside of Florida and so he’s never been battle-tested. He has a constituency problem because of the large number of people in the race, where are his followers coming from?

Seawright added: The Republican primary, in fact, has calcified the idea of ​​re-electing Trump.

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