In 1910, writer Jack Johnson nicknamed white boxer James Jeffries the “Great white hope” as Jeffries prepared to fight the black fighter Jack Johnson. Apparently, Mr. Jeffries represented something that many fans found discomforting about Mr. Johnson.
Similarly in 2023, Republican elites are desperately searching for a Great Non-Trump Hope, sometimes quietly referred to as “Trump with a brain, “Trump without the crazy,” or “Trump without the chaos.” Most Republicans have settled on the charismatically challenged Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, fresh off his landslide reelection win over Democrat Charlie Crist.
At this point, a lot of Republican voters outside of Florida don’t know much about DeSantis. They know he’s not as undisciplined as Trump, and that he has handily won recent elections at a time when Trump has been regularly rejected by general election voters.
But beyond presenting himself as a stable winner, DeSantis is pushing a set of extremist policies that appeal to anti-“woke” Republicans. That may make sense as a primary election strategy, but how about as a general election strategy? How popular will DeSantis’s Republican-friendly platform be with the all-important swing voters in battleground states?
Here DeSantis faces stiff headwinds, according to a recent University of North Florida survey. Remember, these toxic findings are from DeSantis’s home state, where he just won reelection by 19 points.
These numbers are jaw-dropping. If DeSantis wants to run ads promoting his stands on these issues, Democrats should offer to pay for them.
An overwhelmingly unpopular policy agenda isn’t even DeSantis’s biggest challenge. His more limiting political leg iron is that he can’t begin to match the Trump bombast and charisma that seems to be the primary driver of Trump’s enduring popularity with Republicans. That will become much more apparent as the primary campaign season heats up, once DeSantis and Trump start appearing on the same stage together. The man the former President belittles as “Tiny D” will shrink in that setting.
In other words, the problem with the pursuit of “Trump without the crazy” is that a majority of Republican primary voters adore “the crazy.”
DeSantis’s other problem is that even if he somehow finds a way to defeat Trump in the primary, and I don’t think he can, Trump’s brutal and relentless attacks will drive DeSantis’s unfavorability ratings sky-high, including on issues important to general election swing voters, such as DeSantis’s past efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare. Also, the possibility of a Trump third-party candidacy looms large.
DeSantis won’t look nearly as attractive facing general election voters in the spring of 2024 as he looked to Republican primary voters in the winter of 2023. And if Trump somehow loses the Republican endorsement, he will continue attacking DeSantis long after the primaries are over. All the while, DeSantis’s “anti-woke” policy agenda will further sully him with general election swing voters, particularly suburban women, people of color, and young people.
All of which is to say, it ain’t easy being DeSanctimonius.
So far, Mr. DeSantis is doing a remarkable re-enactment of Scott Walker’s 2016 run. My recollection is that Mr. Walker – who was being touted as the smart conservative from beyond the Beltway who turned Wisconsin red – didn’t even make it to Iowa.
I don’t get DeSantis, truthfully. He may be smarter and more disciplined that the Fat Man of Florida but so is your average five year old. If that’s his lane to run in, seems like it’s not going to serve him well the more people get to know him. As you note, he’s wrong on the issues and if he has anything like charisma or even an authentic personality, I’ve yet to see it.
The Walker analogy is a good one — Koch-anointed pink state personality-less faux wonk.
It would have been fun to see what variety of emasculation Trump would have chosen for Walker. “Little Scotty Talker. Low-energy bureaucrat with loads of talk but no job creation in his life. Sad.”
Remember when Walker made a long weekend trip to London to … “burnish his foreign polict cred”? Who thought that was going to impress anyone?
Well, the Brits don’t have nukes pointing at us now, do they? I suppose you think Walker’s visit had nothing to do with that?
“I don’t get DeSantis, truthfully.”
Well, Jon, clearly you are not in the same league as the WSJ Editorial Board and other conservative elites…and that may not bother you in the least!
The problem DeSantis had (and Walker, too), is finding some set of issues that will:
1. Excite the conservative base (win the primaries)
2. Serve to disguise their real agenda (tax cuts, spending cuts, etc.)
3. Get them elected (win the general election)
If you do a Venn diagram, you don’t get much overlap there…or at least not so far. Trump did it the one time, but he also broke the tried and true formula that got W elected by bringing far more older, racist white people into the party. Sure, Trump expanded their base, but he also alienated the general voting public (basically by doing the same things that excited the base!).
Abortion might be the best example–Trump did more than pay lip service to the pro-life movement, and the general public doesn’t like the results. Roe allowed lots of people to ignore pro-life judges…not any more!
Exactly. Those are the right Venn circles, but the overlap doesn’t exist.
I’m puzzled about how DeSantis won so overwhelmingly in Florida this year. Is FL that far gone, or is Crist that bad of a candidate?
Gee, is there anyone reading this who lives in Florida, or who knows Florida Man personally?
Crist was such a hapless disaster. But then the Demsa dream candidate in 2018 turned out to be, what?, a drug felon?
The faithful persist in believing that Crist will rise again.