Ron DeSantis, prepared to enter the melee against Trump

2023-05-21 12:27:02

This week, finally, the governor of Florida, the Republican Ron DeSantisgoing to officially launch your candidacy to seek the presidency of the United States in 2024 with the presentation of documentation before the Federal Electoral Commission, advanced by various sources to the US media. DeSantis himself all but confirmed the move in a call he had with donors Thursday. And the combative conservative will thus give the formal starting signal to a race in which, in reality, he has already been involved for months.

This step, which according to various reports could be accompanied by the launch of a video and which could be followed by a public campaign launch event the following week, promises shake up American political life in the coming months. Because it allows anticipating a intense internecine warfare in the Republican Party that threatens to make pale the one that was fought in 2015 and 2016. And in no case is that fight predicted more bloody that in the confrontation between DeSantis and the former president Donald Trump.

First direct attacks

With the clear objective of not alienating the faithful bases of Trump, clear favorite for the nomination of the conservatives and with a 30-point lead in the polls, the governor has so far been avoiding, for the most part, responding to the provocations and attacks launched against him by the former president, or being especially harsh with him. But little by little he has begun to show signs of being prepared to enter the melee.

On a recent trip to Iowa, the first caucus and primary date for the Republicans, he threw a dart at Trump for having canceled a trip due to the threat of a tornado going very close to where the former president should have been. He also assured that “governing is not about building a brand or talking on social media but of win and produce results“, another poisoned hint. And in the call this Thursday he questioned Trump on multiple fronts and directly.

A bloody Republican war is predicted before choosing the candidate who will face Biden in the next presidential elections

He criticized him, for example, from raise funds just for him and not for the game until they have not kept promises or for not having focused on achieving spending cuts during his tenure. “There are basically three people in this who are credible right now: (the president and Democratic candidate, Joe) Biden, Trump and myself. And of those three, two have a chance to be elected president, Biden y yobased on all the data in the hinge states, which are not good for the former president and are possibly insurmountable because people won’t change their opinion about him“DeSantis also told donors, to whom he assured that” too many voters do not see Trump as a vehicle to leave Biden behind.

overcrowded race

Observers and analysts advise against minimizing, as DeSantis does, the possibilities, and above all the impact, that other candidates already in the running may have on the race, such as the former governor of South Carolina and former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, the former governor of Arkansas Asa Hutchinson or the black senator from South Carolina Rick Scott, who formalized his candidacy this Friday, to which, in addition, in the coming weeks it is taken for granted that the exvicepresidente Mike Pence. Because the overpopulation of applicants in the Republican field already favored Trump in the last presidential primaries. And although this time the surprise factor that was then Trump has disappeared, the division continues to favor the former presidentwhich also now has a unwavering loyal base.

DeSantis will try to win them over with his promise to bring the radically ultra-conservative and ‘antiwoke’ agenda to the entire US that he has managed to implement in Florida, where he has stamped his signature on 80 laws that go from the prohibition of abortion beyond six weeks from gestation to relaxation of gun control lawshe veto vaccine and mask mandates or limitations to teaching about raza or questions of gender and sexual orientation. He’s been revving up in recent weeks, with legislation being signed almost every day.

It is an offer whose effectiveness will be much more questionable if you become a candidate and have to search independent and moderate votes in the national contest with Biden. and for now has made potential donors doubtful, especially due to the growing confrontation with Disney, which breaks with the traditional Republican alliance with the corporate world and which this week became evident again with the suspension of a 1,000 million dollar project that would have created 2,000 jobs in Florida.

Others, however, are waiting on the sidelines, and the formal launch of the campaign will demonstrate DeSantis’ potential to mobilize them. From Wednesday to Friday, she has called a meeting with donors in Miami, to whom, once her candidacy is made official, she will be able to directly request funds. And she can reinforce hers already phenomenal economic situation: the Political Action Supercommittee that supports him, ‘Never Back Down’ (something like “Not a step back”), already has in its coffers 30 million of dollars, to which you can also transfer other 80 million of his state campaign.

The secure media coverageand one planned tour of states relevant to the primaries, it is assumed that they will allow DeSantis to regain some of the momentum he has lost in recent months, when the stellar rise that his re-election had given him has been halted. What remains to be seen is whether that momentum will be enough to face a rival like Trump. Because the former president, despite his legal problems, continues to be a rival formidable. And as he recalled in his controversial appearance on CNN, willing to go down into the muda place where it continues cheered and applauded by his faithful.