The DeSantis Delusion

Ron DeSantis' campaign launch yesterday was anything but what the would be authoritarian wanted as the Twitter platform had numerous glitches that made the campaign launch more akin to a rocket that explodes on takeoff.  A piece in Politico sums up the mess as follows: 

The Florida governor announced his presidential campaign on Twitter Spaces, in an appearance meant to be a veritable launch hosted by an actual rocket man.

But within seconds, it was clear that Tallahassee had a problem.  The feed broke, connections got cut off, the hosts seemed confused. It was inauspicious. It also was a black mark on the candidate’s supposed trademarks — expert organization and a comfort with the vanguard of modern media.

“It was bold. It turned out to be a mistake,” radio host Erick Erickson emailed supporters about the mishap. “It is recoverable. But it is a reminder that some things should be under full control of the candidate, particularly the launch day.”

The risk for DeSantis is the prospect of the botched rollout forming a narrative and cutting against the very argument he is making to Republican primary voters — that he is a competent alternative to the chaotic presidency of former President Donald Trump. . . . But on Wednesday, DeSantis — who fiercely values control — was the picture of disorder. . . . in corners of the conservative press, including outlets pining for an alternative to Trump, there was little willingness to sidestep the face plant. The National Review’s Philip Klein called it a “disaster.”

Frankly, the disaster could not happen to a more deserving individual and one can only hope DeSantis has a hard time escaping from the negative narrative.  The debacle is emblematic of much of DeSantis' campaign to date which has sought to thrill and excite the ugliest elements of the Republican Party base but seems to have no vision of how his authoritarian, racist, homophobic and censorship filled agenda can shift to appeal to general election voters.  A column in the New York Times looks at an issue which hopefully will smother DeSantis early on in his formal campaign. Here are excerpts:

If Ron DeSantis is supposed to be more electable than Donald Trump, why did he sign a ban on most abortions in Florida after six weeks of pregnancy? That’s manna for the Christian conservatives who matter in Republican primaries, but it’s a liability with the moderates and independents who matter after that point. It steps hard on DeSantis’s argument that he’s the version of Trump who can actually beat President Biden. It flattens that pitch into a sad little pancake.

If DeSantis is supposed to be Trump minus the unnecessary drama, why did he stumble into a prolonged and serially mortifying dust-up with Disney? Yes, the corporation publicly opposed his “Don’t Say Gay” bill, and that must have annoyed him. He’s easily annoyed. But the legislation was always going to pass anyway, and he indeed got what he substantively wanted, so there was no need to try to punish Disney and supercharge the conflict — except that he wanted to make a big, manly show of his contempt for the mighty Mouse. He wanted, well, drama. So there goes that rationale as well.

And if DeSantis, 44, is supposed to be tomorrow’s Trump, a youthful refurbishment of the 76-year-old former president, why does he seem so yesteryear? From his style of hair to his dearth of flair, from his emotional remove to his fugitive groove, there’s something jarringly anti-modern about the Florida governor.

On Wednesday he’s expected to rev his engine and make the official, anticlimactic announcement of his candidacy for the presidency. I just don’t get it. Oh, I get that he wants to be the boss of all bosses — that fits. But the marketing of DeSantis and the fact of DeSantis don’t square. Team DeSantis’s theory of the case and the case itself diverge. In many ways, he cancels himself out. His is a deeply, deeply puzzling campaign.

But do Republican voters want an alternative to Trump at all? The polls don’t say so. According to the current Real Clear Politics average of such surveys, Trump’s support is above 55 percent — which puts him more than 35 percentage points ahead of DeSantis. Mike Pence, in third place, is roughly another 15 percentage points behind DeSantis.

There’s an argument that Trump’s legal troubles will at some point catch up to him. . . [but] genius of his shameless shtick — that the system is rigged, that everyone who targets him is an unscrupulous political hack and that he’s a martyr, his torture a symbol of the contempt to which his supporters are also subjected — lies in its boundless application and timeless utility. It has worked for him to this point. Why would that stop anytime soon?

But if, between now and the Iowa caucuses, Republican voters do somehow develop an appetite for an entree less beefy and hammy than Trump, would DeSantis necessarily be that Filet-O-Fish? . . . Despite DeSantis’s braggartly talk about being the only credible presidential candidate beyond Biden and Trump, the number of contenders keeps expanding.

Most of these candidates are in a pickle similar to DeSantis’s. It’s what makes the whole contest so borderline incoherent. Implicitly and explicitly, they’re sending the message that Republicans would be better served by a nominee other than Trump, but they’re saying that to a party so entirely transformed by him and so wholly in thrall to his populist rants, autocratic impulses, rightward lunges and all-purpose rage that they’re loath to establish too much separation from him. They’re trying to beat him without alienating his enormous base of support by beating up on him. The circus of him has them walking tightropes of their own.

In trying to show the right wing of the Republican Party how aggressive and effective he can be, he has rendered himself nearly as scary to less conservative Americans as Trump is.

And as mean. The genius of Scott’s announcement was its emphasis on optimism instead of ire as a point of contrast with Trump, in the unlikely event that such a contrast is consequential. . . . . But DeSantis is all about grievance and retribution, and he’s oh so grim. He sent two planeloads of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. He exults that Florida is “where woke goes to die.” How sunny! It’s the Trump negativity minus the Trump electricity.

His assertion that he wants to end Republicans’ “culture of losing” is an anagram for the accusation that Trump has prevented the party from winning, but I doubt the dig will resonate strongly with the Republican base. As Ramesh Ponnuru sagely observed in The Washington Post recently, Trump’s supposed toxicity is a longstanding part of his story and his brand.

The campaigns of DeSantis and the other would-be Trump slayers rest on the usual mix of outsize vanity, uncommon ambition and stubborn hopefulness in politicians who reach for the upper rungs.

But their bids rest on something else, too — something I share, something so many of us do, something that flies in the face of all we’ve seen and learned over the eight years since Trump came down that escalator, something we just can’t shake: the belief that a liar, narcissist and nihilist of his mammoth dimensions cannot possibly endure, and that the forces of reason and caution will at long last put an end to his perverse dominance.

DeSantis is betting on that without fully and boldly betting on that. It’s a hedged affair, reflecting the fact that it may be a doomed one.