I’m 99% sure my relatively liberal, Trump-hating, rich, business owning FL friend voted for DeSantis because he did “a good job with the economy (during COVID)”. I’m also pretty sure he doesn’t find DeSantis to be charismatic.
Locally DeSantis was moderate in policy. He gave teachers raises and pushed environmental policies. His abortion policy is 15 weeks instead of completely banning it. COVID let him win over the right wing.
It’s hard to take that kind of stuff national though because there’s no moderate national teacher policy.
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I actually think his peak time would have been 2012 (but he rightly avoided GOATbama). In 2016, he ran into the deplorable nuts (i.e. Trump) so it didn’t really matter how popular he might have been.
“Charisma” is a weird thing here. Like Trump is just obviously a rambling buffoon and uncharismatic in an objective way but also being an obnoxious idiot is kind of the point. It’s possible that his reptilian, patent bad-faith personality actually resonates with cruel assholes.
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iJeb!
Same problem as Christie. We need someone who didn’t run into the MAGA-GOAT. Trump is kryptonite to republicans who would otherwise be popular. If not for Trump, I think Jeb wins 2016 nom easy. In some alternate reality where Trump doesn’t exist, I think Jeb is more than fine nationally.
No matter what you think of Trump’s speaking yourself, he gets, or at least used to get, people going at his rallies, and he could dunk on people at the debates. DeSantis has to have at least one of those qualities to win, and he has to hope he does not run into someone with both if he only has one. I haven’t been impressed with his rally energy, and we haven’t had the debates yet for dunks on likeminded opponents. Maybe I will end up eating crow here, but at the very least I think there is room for a candidate, Trump or otherwise, to exceed him there.
Does Trump know how to run against people without just calling them fucking losers though? Like that’s been his strategy against everyone so far. In a recent Economist/YouGov poll, DeSantis had 82% favorability among Trump 2020 voters and only 10% unfavorable. He’s seen by the MAGA base as a guy who is putting runs on the board. I don’t think Trump can just do to him what he did to Jeff Sessions or Mike Pence or Chris Christie. If he gets up there and says “Ron DeSanctimonious here is a bitch and I gave him everything he has today” I think that is going to play really, really badly to a base who are already getting a little skeptical that Trump is an asset.
I’ve been of the opinion for a while that, as I put it in March '21:
Trumpism in the GOP can and will be divorced from Trump himself.
Even given the conflict with Trump, DeSantis is clearly a torch-bearer for the MAGA stream of the GOP. And there’s a reason Breaking Bad called it quits after 5 seasons. No matter how good a show is, the shine comes off it when it has been running for long enough. I think Trump’s schtick is going to look glaringly old and tired when the base see it turned on someone they like and respect.
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I kind of agree about the lack of charisma but I don’t think it’s an issue in the primaries, maybe in the general.
“advice.” He’s so close to using quotation marks properly and yet so far away. I give him a D+ here.
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DeSantis already has something of a national profile though. I mean it could happen. I think it’s hard to predict what voters will like. There was Scott Walker, sure, there was also Trump whose campaign announcement was met with open ridicule from the media.
There may be room at the table for everyone! Milo is Ye’s campaign manager.
Well said. A better case than I was making.
Ronnie Dumb Dumb is pretty boring, I mean how can the MAGA true believers spend a decade whipping themselves into a frenzy cheering for Donnie Dumb Dumb and then settle for someone so bland. They very last thing that a R Presidential candidate can do now is be boring. MAGA deplorables want blood - they want insurrections, they want cops kicking down doors and killing black people, they want liberal journalists lynched. They may get a chuckle out DeSantis doing his culture war performative stuff, but at this point what they crave is the thrill of real or potential violence. They want someone to tell them the War For The Soul Of America nigh and if they line up behind Dear Leader they will win.
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I am not sure how important either of those really are. If someone already has a decent amount of name recognition and support (as DeSantis does) it might be enough to not embarrass themselves during the debates and get their 10 second soundbites in that will be amplified by mainstream and social media.
Media fawning is all that matters. A tiny fraction of voters ever have any real contact with them. Whoever Fox, OAN, Sinclair and Newsmax supports wins.
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In the general, yes. In the primary, Trump disproved this in 2016. He didn’t even have the support of Breitbart initially. I’m old enough to remember when he got into a shoving match with a Breitbart reporter.
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There’s got to be a solid chunk of Republican primary voters that don’t use Fox, OAN, Sinclair and Newsmax as their primary sources of information anymore, it’s Facebook all the way and they get fed a steady stream of ultra-deplorable content all the time. Of course having the support of the “mainstream” conservative outlets help, but there will be a lot of Republican primary voters that show up expecting to hear from their candidates about their concrete plans to deal the the Great Replacement, the Jewish Space Lasers, Woke Trans Pedophile Groomers at Disney, etc etc etc. Power hungry Marco Rubio types do nothing for them. Ranting Racist Uncle candidates are right up their alley though.
The counterpoint to this is Donald Trump, who the media hated and tried to submarine before they had to relent due to his charisma with the base.