Bush and John McCain.Īn all-out attack on a primary rival is easier, though, when you believe the candidate’s nomination will be a grave mistake for the party. Why throw away this golden opportunity? Why flinch every time Trump swipes? Why refuse to win the only way you can against Trump - by throwing the kitchen sink back at him? It’s certainly not as if presidential primaries are conducted with a lighter touch - ask anyone who witnessed the vicious contest between George W. Instead, they pre-emptively neutered their future champion’s most compelling argument to the base: DeSantis won, and Trump didn’t. Had Republican leaders rejected the conspiracy theories two years earlier and admitted (even tacitly) that Trump was a political loser, it could have permanently damaged his standing. Remember, DeSantis’ post-midterm polling bump stemmed precisely from his re-election, in contrast to the serial losses of Trump’s favorites - defeats that went by and large unchallenged. But he also recognized that if Republican voters accepted that he was a “loser,” his brand was done. Trump may have insisted that he won the 2020 election primarily to assuage his own ego. It’s the fault of the whole Republican establishment, and it goes back to the 2020 election. Only in the last couple of days has DeSantis returned to citing his re-election, as he did late last year when his poll numbers were at their best.Īn all-out attack on a primary rival is easier when you believe the candidate’s nomination will be a grave mistake for the party. Then he briefly tried to needle the president over his hush money case. But for the GOP primary, DeSantis’ indecision creates a different problem: Like many other Trump foes, he can’t even settle on how to respond to Trump’s attacks. Such vacillating is largely a problem for the general election - Mitt Romney in 2012 and John Kerry in 2004 are just two recent nominees who struggled to overcome past flip-flops. His recent twisting on the war in Ukraine echoes similar shifts on pandemic restrictions, entitlements and vaccines, to name just a few. “DeSantis looks like a Bush Republican as much as or more than he does a Trump one,” writes The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie - a diagnosis that reveals less about DeSantis’ establishment lean than it does his ideological rootlessness. But take that away, and he twists in the wind, waiting for Republican voters to tell him what they want. If he has a Democrat or media straw man to light on fire, then he plays the angry fighter. Like Derek Zoolander, DeSantis has only one look. But the inaccuracies and distortions only slightly weaken the attacks, because their thrust - that DeSantis’ views and actions are “a mirage” - is accurate. Cohen tweeted, “but it is also a pretty compelling argument against a DeSantis presidential bid.” It also has Trump’s typical spin - of course a president running for re-election got more votes in Florida than a governor running in a nonpresidential election year. “It’s poorly written and has Trump’s usual weird capitalization issues,” as MSNBC columnist Michael A.
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