DeSantis' Presidential Campaign May Be Brief

In his quest to charm and thrill the evangelical/Christofascist and white supremacist base of the Republican Party, Ron DeSantis - aided by Republican extremists in the Florida legislature - has turned Florida into a quasi-fascist state to such an extent that the NAACP and other civil rights groups have issued travel advisories to black, Hispanic and LGBT citizens (I myself have severe reservations about visiting Florida again).  How DeSantis thinks he can pivot toward the center in order to win a nationwide general election seems nowhere in the calculation.  Moreover, to date his tactics seemingly have done nothing to improve his prospects against Donald Trump, a man who more Republicans are belatedly whispering  cannot win the 2024 presidential contest, according to recent polls.  Indeed, DeSantis' poll numbers have only worsened as he continues his vendetta agaist Disney and has Hispanic truck drivers talking of boycotting the state and farm and construction workers are disappearing.   A column in the Washington Post looks at DeSantis' seemingly flagging campaign which has not yet even formally begun.  Here are highlights:

Most great politicians have the skin of an elephant and the memory of a flea. After all, today’s adversary might be tomorrow’s ally.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has it the wrong way around. That means his quest for the Republican presidential nomination, which he is expected to announce this week, will be interesting. And, unless he evolves, it could be brief.

Polls still show DeSantis as having the best chance to defeat Donald Trump in the GOP race. But they also show his prospects rapidly heading in the wrong direction. RealClearPolitics found in its average of polls that in late February, DeSantis trailed Trump by just 13 percentage points. On Monday, however, Trump led DeSantis by 37 points, with much of the gap having grown in recent weeks.

This trend line is hardly encouraging for DeSantis’s theory of the case. His bet is that Republican voters want a nominee who has a proven track record of enacting conservative policies and who models Trump’s pugnacity but is not burdened with the former president’s mountain of baggage.

Using GOP control of the Florida legislature as though it were a campaign billboard, DeSantis has loosened the state’s gun laws; lowered the threshold for imposing the death penalty; expanded school vouchers; and imposed “anti-woke” restrictions on teachers and administrators at every level of public education, including in the state’s universities. He has made it illegal for doctors to provide gender-transition care for minors. To top it off, he signed a bill establishing a six-week abortion ban, which — if allowed to take effect by the Florida Supreme Court — would be one of the most draconian in the nation.

Ta-da! Yet his poll numbers keep going down, not up.

DeSantis is not helping himself with his obsessive crusade against the Walt Disney Co., which offended him last year by criticizing his “don’t say gay” law banning discussion of gender and sexuality in public schools. Trying to punish a company for statements that had no practical impact — except, perhaps, on DeSantis’s brittle ego — seems wildly at odds with traditional conservative values.

It also seems really stupid. Disney CEO Bob Iger announced last week that the company is canceling plans for a new $1 billion office campus near Walt Disney World that would have created 2,000 jobs. Earlier this year, Iger said at a shareholders’ meeting that Disney had long-term plans to invest $17 billion in the Disney World complex — which means that Iger has 16 billion more cards to play in this poker game. How many does DeSantis have?

The Disney thing would just be a loopy sideshow if it didn’t highlight traits that could hold DeSantis back as a presidential candidate — and that would be dangerous for the nation and the world if, heaven forbid, he ever became president: paper-thin skin, a propensity to hold grudges and a tendency to go way too far.

The abortion legislation is a prime example. . . . . DeSantis could have left the issue alone. But he apparently determined that no potential competitor should outflank him on abortion, so he demanded that the legislature give him a six-week ban. Lawmakers complied last month. But it is clear from polls and election results that setting the deadline for terminating a pregnancy at a point before many women even know they are pregnant goes far beyond what even many “pro-life” Americans are prepared to mandate.

DeSantis argued that he should be the nominee “based on all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him.”

But how does he imagine his six-week abortion ban, his law letting Floridians carry concealed firearms without a permit, his attempts to squelch free speech on college campuses, and his death-match against the Magic Kingdom will play in those swing states? Why would suburban women who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 vote for Ron DeSantis in 2024?

Great politicians learn from their mistakes and course correct as necessary. DeSantis seems not to understand that going full-speed ahead is a bad idea if you’re approaching a cliff.

Things can change quickly in politics, but it appears that DeSantis will be hard put to escape the extremist agenda he has forced on Floridians if he survives the GOP primary against a man who has a cult following rather than a traditional political base.