Ron Desantis is Fox News' golden child, and he has recently announced that he is running for president. This did not come as much of a surprise given his rising status and the general feeling that he can deliver Trump like policies without all the extra baggage and indictments that Trump will be bringing to the Republican primaries. I have a long list of qualms with the Florida Governor, however, today I will ignore most of those. Rather, I would like to discuss his presidential campaign and explain how his campaign will either fall victim to the Trump machine in the primaries or his efforts to defeat Trump will ruin his general election hopes.
It would be impossible to analyze his presidential ambitions without talking about Trump. This is not because Trump claims to be responsible for his initial Gubernatorial victory, a fact I will not waste my time checking, but rather because Desantis has latched himself to the Trump political brand and only recently has half-heartedly decided to go against this. So, why will Donald Trump beat Ron Desantis in the Republican Primaries, and why do I hate Desantis more than Trump?
In 2016, Trump was able to emerge from the crowded republican field by appealing to a new type of Republican voter. He successfully brought in people who had previously felt like they were being left behind. They supported Trump because they felt he was the only one who would fight for them. This is a belief that many still hold. This loyalty does not belong to the party, it belongs to the man. This is why despite his tumultuous 4 years in office Trump received more votes in 2020 than he did 4 years prior. Desantis' plan to win the primary is reliant on taking these same voters who came out for Donald Trump, and present himself as the cleaner, indictment free, Trump lite. Meaning he will be implementing the same policies but promises to actually get them implemented through competent governance. He goes beyond the traditional Republican frame, see his anti-business covid policies and extreme abortion views, and is seeking to appeal to the most extreme wing of the party, attempting to peel away support from Trump. If politics is a game of addition, where successful candidates bring in new supporters to win elections, Desantis is using subtraction, by simply trying to take voters away from Donald Trump. His current platform and strategy are not bringing new people into the Republican party the way Trump did in the past. This will work to some degree as some Trump supporters tire of his antics, however we already can see the cap on his base simply by polling the number of Trump supporters.
The argument that Desantis will bring back traditional republican voters is overblown. The policies that he has backed and often implemented in Florida are extreme and will similarly dissuade people in the center right. He may bring back some on the far right who did not like Trumps behavior and baggage, however the true numbers who left Trump behind are small and far smaller than those who ultimately will support Trump. This means that Desantis needs to compete for the voters who like the extreme policies and go further to the right.
By flanking Trump to the right during the primary Desantis would be setting himself up for failure in the general election. The more extreme positions taken during the primary to secure the base would only further dissuade the suburban voters that will be critical in 2024.
Let's look specifically at abortion. This issue it could be argued prevented the red wave in 2022 and will prove to be a problem for Desantis going forward. Trumps views on abortion are unknown, before running for president all signs pointed towards him being pro-choice. To curry the Republican vote, Trump became pro-life and governed in this way. He went so far as to appoint three justices who would eventually cause the overturn of Roe vs Wade. However, reports show that this decision made Trump furious, and he correctly called that this would be a losing issue for Republicans. With a fair examination of Trump's beliefs, it seems he would not take any action on abortion. Desantis on the other hand recently signed a controversial 6 week ban in Florida. In the primary on the issue of abortion Desantis will tout his commitment to the pro-life movement and I suspect Trump will stay mum pointing to his judicial appointments to avoid providing a true answer on his views. This could pull support from Trump to Desantis, if you are a single-issue abortion voter this would be the logical thing to do. At the same time, it is hard to pivot away from this in a general election. The positions that win the primaries move you so far from the general electorate that this issue alone could make Desantis unelectable on a national stage.
In the midst of this entire discussion, it should be asked how Desantis got elevated to this position in the first place. Desantis and his team will claim that it is because of his handling of Covid and the effective governance of his state. In reality it happened overnight in the wake of the 2022 midterms. Leading up to the election a massive red wave was predicted. As many will remember almost the exact opposite ended up happening, when democrats greatly overperformed. The one exception to this was Ron Desantis who won the state of Florida by a massive margin. This was supposed to kick off the wave, as Florida has historically been seen as a national bellwether. If Florida went so strongly for Desantis, it was destined to be a great night for Republicans. When this did not come true, TV pundits continued to tout Desantis accomplishment and proclaim that he outperformed the more Trump like candidates in other races. It seemed that his style worked, and Trump was losing relevance. In reality, as we later began to learn (albeit to less viewers), Florida was no longer the bellwether we all used to know. Rather in the past few years Florida's demographics had dramatically switched turning Florida solidly in the Red. Republican new registrations in the years prior to 2022 nearly doubled democratic affiliation. This reality wasn't fully recognized early on, on election night. Meaning that Desantis got a lot of screentime, ironically for performing exactly how one would have expected an incumbent republican to perform under those circumstances.
Throughout this election cycle, a close eye will be paid to Florida itself. His pitch of competence will be tested by the performance of Florida from now till the election. If a crisis emerges, Desantis will be forced to put aside his culture wars and general grievance politics to prove that he knows how to govern. This could become a large internal conflict amongst the campaign. On one hand he must reinforce his competency and prove that he is a workable Trump alternative to maintain support from the center right. On the other if this crisis requires real governance this will mean that Desantis will have to put on hold his campaign against wokeness. This will likely weaken his Trump right flank. I personally do not envy having to balance the attacks from Trump with the governance of the State of Florida, it will require exceptional political maneuvering to pull this off, something that seems to not be Desantis' strong suit.
June 19th 2023