2023-05-29 01:42:36
Ron DeSantis’ long-awaited campaign launch didn’t go as he would have liked, but it would be convenient not to give it up. After months paving the way to run in the Republican primary, the Florida governor delivered his star announcement alongside ultra-conservative fashion mogul Elon Musk during a Twitter Spaces conversation riddled with technical glitches, silences and broken sentences. That earned him the ridicule of his main rivalDonald Tump, who nicknamed him ‘DeSaster’ and sentenced that “his entire campaign will be a disaster”, as well as his future adversary, President Joe Biden, who trolled him falling a link to your campaign with the message: “this link works”.
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But in the United States of America, everything that doesn’t shine is not a fiasco. And just as Trump won the presidency in 2016 on the back of incendiary comments, controversies and the mainstream media against him, DeSantis could follow a similar slogan: no bad publicity, as long as it gives visibility. The proof is that the fiasco of his campaign launch has not prevented him from breaking a record: in the 24 hours after his announcement, he raised more than any other presidential candidate, 8.2 million dollars .
In this way, the Republican managed to raise even more than the current president and the only Democratic candidate with realistic options, Biden, who in 24 hours achieved 6.3 million. And that Trump, who began his campaign with money problems after losing the support of major conservative donors, and raised only $9.5 million in the six weeks after its announcement.
The former president has chained three disappointing electoral cycles and that has earned him internal criticism in his party. But, after losing ground in the polls after the mid-term elections in November, he has returned to rally support – and collection – after his historic indictment in a New York court for the bribery case against actress Stormy Daniels, which marked the first time that an active or retired US president has been prosecuted. Now Trump has 30+ point lead over DeSantiswho, despite his enviable economic figures, will have a difficult time to wrest the Republican leadership from him.
The “American Resurgence”
DeSantis wants to take advantage of the favorable wind that his re-election with a wide advantage for governor of Florida brought. The policies that he has promoted in the southern state are his best letter of introduction as an ultra-conservative candidate on a par with Trump. Your proposal for the country It is summed up in “Make America Florida”, that is, to take to a national scale its abortion ban, its persecution of trans people, its sexual, gender and race education in schools, its ban on books, its criminalization of the peaceful protests, their attacks on the freedom of the press or their extension of the right to bear arms.
“I am running for president of the United States to lead the great American revival,” DeSantis said during his conversation with Musk, on the Twitter Spaces link that did work. That’s his catchphrase, reminiscent of the “Make America Great Again” that Trump has personified and marketed for the past seven years.
The apocalyptic message of presentation video of his candidacy is also reminiscent of the Trumpist style: “Our border is a disaster. The federal government infests our cities with crime and makes it difficult for families to make ends meet. And the president is wobbling,” he asserts, alongside an American flag that fills the entire screen. In the video, DeSantis vows that he will “restore sanity to our society, normalcy to our communities, and integrity to our institutions.” “In Florida we show that it is possible. We choose facts over fear, education over doctrine, action, law and order over riots and disorder, ”he says, alluding to his controversial state mandate.
Although he is avoiding mentioning his Republican adversary, one of the strengths of his candidacy is that, unlike Trump, he arrives in a positive electoral dynamic: in the last elections, he achieved a devastating victory against his Democratic adversary. In this way, he sells himself as the winning alternative to a Trump who has already lost at the polls against the likely Democratic candidate, Biden.
“We must end the loser culture that has infected the Republican Party in recent years. The tired dogmas of the past are inadequate for a vibrant future. We must look forward, not back. We need the courage to lead and we need to have the strength to win,” DeSantis said during the interview with Musk, referring to his book published in February, ‘The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Renaissance.’ .
Trump alone leads the polls
Since he was elected president in 2016, Trump has turned the Republican Party into an organization in its image and likeness, and a part of its voters into faithful adorers, whom it now calls “complete the mission until the final victory”. Despite the fact that a part of the party is openly criticizing his controversial style and his poor electoral results, he maintains majority support, with a large advantage over DeSantis, as well as the other Republican candidates: Nikki Haley, Ryan Binkley, Larry Elder, Asa Hutchinson , Perry Johnson, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Tim Scott.
According to last survey published by CNN, Trump is the first option and maintains the support of 53% of Republican voters, almost double the 26% of DeSantis. The other official candidates are at a great distance and monopolize, at most, 2-3% of the support, according to another survey from Quinnipac University.
While most alternative candidates sell themselves as more moderate than Trump, DeSantis tries to portray himself as the more radical candidate, further to the right. In his speeches, he promotes the prohibition of abortion after six weeks of pregnancy in Florida, which even Trump questioned since some Republicans consider it “too harsh.” In addition, he said that the former president wants to grant amnesty to 1.8 million undocumented immigrants −something that Trump later described as “misleading”− and recalled that during the covid he had less restrictive policies, keeping schools, businesses and public spaces open. , despite nationwide lockdowns during the Trump presidency.
“He’s obviously coming at me from the left,” DeSantis said during a chat with radio host Matt Murphy. “I don’t know what has happened to Donald Trump. He’s a different guy today than when he ran in 2015 and I think the direction he’s taking with his campaign is the wrong one.” This is the path he has chosen to beat his political father and his Republican adversary. And so maintains Sally Goldenberg in Political: “How to confront Trump without offending the base loyal to the former president? Simply by standing to his right.”
Trump’s son-in-law rebelled
DeSantis complements the far-right discourse with the image of a man who is calmer, more stable and firm than Trump, without its media and legal scandals, and smarter than the former president. The Florida governor owes much of his ascendant political career to Trump, his father’s politician, who has now become a rival to beat.
Doctor of law from Harvard University, after serving in the US Navy in Iraq and in the Guantánamo detention center, he burst onto the political scene in 2012, after winning the election in the 6th district of Florida in the House of Representatives. After being re-elected twice, in 2018 he was still a little-known congressman on the national scene.
It was then that Trump, moved by his hard-line speech, sponsored him and gave him his support for the candidacy for the Florida gubernatorial elections. Some elections that he won by the minimum, but that served as a speaker in the last four years, to achieve re-election last November. During the pandemic, he catapulted himself as an icon of the American right, turning Florida into a “Faucism-free” state, in reference to the country’s top epidemiologist during the Trump era, Anthony Fauci. And in the years since, he has moved on with their so-called “culture wars” against “woke culture”.
DeSantis maintained his loyalty to the former president in his years in office, but has begun to shine with his own light and has declared war on him, which has earned him the derisive nicknames that Trump often uses against his rivals − “DeSanctimonium” , “DeSanctum” or “DeSaster”− as well as humorous videos against his figure o laughing at glitches in the conversation with Musk. It remains to be seen if, after the fiasco of his campaign launch and the subsequent collection record, he is capable of beating the Republican magnate in the 2024 presidential primaries.
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