By Nick
Catoggio
Wednesday,
May 24, 2023
I come
not to bury Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign but to praise it.
The time
to bury it will arrive soon enough, I suspect.
Today,
though, I feel grateful as the governor prepares to declare his candidacy. The only Republican who threatens
Donald Trump enough to have earned a wacky nickname from him will challenge him
for control of the party after all.
Trump
spent five months trying to intimidate DeSantis into changing his mind about
running, an effort that continued until the eve of the governor’s
announcement. He
failed. If you’re eager for the end of the Trump era, celebrate the fact that
we’re a bit closer to it than we would have been had DeSantis waited for 2028.
Some of
my Never Trump comrades are less enthusiastic about the launch of DeSantis
2024, which I understand. Half of the governor’s fan base is composed of
post-liberals given to warning about “what time it is” culturally in this, America’s
alleged “late republic” period. The other half consists of
hardcore partisans who chronically downplay or overlook DeSantis’ authoritarian
excesses in their desperation to find a Trump-slayer.
Nominating
DeSantis means empowering both groups, ending the Trump era but further
normalizing Trumpism. How much gratitude can a classical liberal properly feel
about “Trumpism without Trump”?
How many
bouquets can I throw, in good conscience, at a guy willing to demagogue
vaccination to serve his political ambition?
Support
for mandating vaccines for public schoolchildren—all vaccines, not just
COVID—is down from 79-20 among Republicans in 2019 to 57-42 now. It may yet become a minority
position, and if it does DeSantis and his contemptible surgeon general will have contributed
considerably to that. Never forget it.
Never
forget that he abused state power to punish a private entity for
criticizing his policies, forced the hand of businesses that didn’t wish to
participate in his anti-vax crusade, and vowed that he wouldn’t help extradite Trump no matter what Article IV of
the Constitution might say. Those aren’t minor failings to be waved away, like
disagreements over tax policy. They’re DeSantis advertising in blazing neon
that, as president, he’ll be more aggressive than Trump 1.0 was in testing the
legal bounds of executive authority to wage culture war against the right’s
enemies.
Half of
his base is counting on it, the other half will rationalize it on “better an
autocrat than a Democrat” grounds. Liberals are right to fear President
DeSantis, who may not be authoritarian in his bones but is plenty eager to
pretend that he is in order to pander to voters who are.
He’s
unfit for office. Just not as unfit as you-know-who, the coup-plotter, a man
who is an authoritarian in his bones and is getting more comfortable with that
fact every day. Such
is the state of the American right that presidential primaries are no longer a
contest of classical liberals or even of classical liberals versus aspiring
autocrats but rather a choice among figures with varying propensities toward
autocracy.
Having
never attempted a coup, and lacking any cult of personality that he can easily
direct toward mayhem, DeSantis has the lesser propensity of the two Republican
candidates who might plausibly become the nominee.
So I’m
grateful, with many reservations, that he’s taking on Trump.
I should
elaborate on that gratitude. Consider the following.
DeSantis
didn’t need to run this cycle.
I think
the governor did need to run this cycle. But thoughtful
arguments have circulated for months, some as recently as yesterday, that he should step back and
reconsider.
As dawn
broke on Wednesday morning, Trump was polling at his highest level and DeSantis at his
lowest level since Election Day 2022. In late February, DeSantis nosed above 30
percent, shrinking Trump’s lead to less than 13 points; today he’s at 19.4
percent, trailing the frontrunner by 36.9.
It would
have been trivially easy for him and his advisers to drink that in and decide
that waiting until 2028 made more sense. Flaming out early this cycle suddenly
seems more probable than overtaking Trump. By inserting himself into the race
anyway and forcing Trump to work for the nomination, DeSantis will antagonize
millions of diehard MAGA voters who otherwise might have rallied to him in five
years as a post-Trump leader.
He’ll
spend the rest of 2023 being brutalized by Trump and his many surrogates. He
and his family will be inundated with death threats, as anyone who becomes a
major obstacle to Trump’s ambition inevitably is. If DeSantis falls short of
the nomination, his populist credibility will never fully recover. He’s
gambling a very promising political career on his ability to convince a party
remade in Trump’s image to prefer Trump-lite to the genuine article. No other
candidate is risking as much.
That
takes courage. Or arrogance, if you prefer.
But,
realistically, I don’t think DeSantis had much choice. By 2028, he’ll have been
out of office for two years. More charismatic authoritarians will have emerged
within the party. In five years, he might look back wistfully at his 19.4
percent now the same way Ted Cruz looks back wistfully at his national polling
in 2016.
As long
a longshot as DeSantis is today, it’s quite likely that he’ll never again be so
well positioned to win the presidency. Certainly he’ll never again enjoy the
ephemeral vogue he’s experiencing right now among right-wing populists as the ultimate can-do culture warrior.
The
context of declining to run matters too. Had DeSantis announced after his
reelection last winter that he wouldn’t seek higher office in 2024 and endorsed
Trump instead, he would have done so from a position of strength. It would have
amounted to a favor to Trump at a moment when it seemed plausible that the
governor might prevail in a national primary. Trump fans would have rejoiced.
DeSantis would have been a prohibitive favorite for vice president.
Once
Trump began attacking him aggressively, that window closed. For DeSantis to
announce under fire that he wouldn’t run, declining a de facto invitation from
Trump to brawl, would have looked pitifully weak. His reputation as a “fighter”
would have shattered. The “Tiny D” nickname would have stuck.
The base
wants a fighter? Well, here the governor is, ready to fight. In a party teeming with cowards,
there’s some honor in that.
Unlike
every other candidate, DeSantis has a theory of the case.
With one
exception, Trump’s challengers this year seem intent on beating him by
appealing to an electorate that doesn’t exist.
Nikki
Haley believes that a woman who radiates “GOP establishment circa 2012” vibes
is the secret sauce needed for victory. Tim Scott is gambling angry nationalist
movement in a mostly white party will prefer to be led by a cheerful,
dogmatically conservative African American. Mike Pence, whom some Republican
voters wanted to hang on January 6, imagines that evangelicals will break en
masse from the Trump cult they’ve spent eight years assimilating into once one
of their own stands for office.
All of
this is delusional in the abstract. As a strategy in an election in which Trump
himself is available as an alternative on the primary ballot, it feels
hallucinatory.
DeSantis
is the only candidate who grasps that, to beat Trump, a candidate will need to
meet the Republican electorate where it is. That means three things. First,
prove that you’re willing and able to wage culture war more effectively than
Trump is. Second, convince voters that they stand a meaningfully better chance
of defeating the Democrats with you as their nominee than with
him. Third, make
the case that on issues ranging from lockdowns to immigration to foreign
policy, Trump’s presidency failed his populist fans.
This
seems logical to me. It might not succeed, and probably won’t, but it’s the
sort of play you make if you’re serious about succeeding and thinking clearly
to that end.
Never
Trumpers recoil instinctively from DeSantis’ strategy because of what it
entails. Instead of fighting for a more classically liberal Republican Party,
it concedes that Trump’s vision is the correct one and seeks to beat him at his
own game. “Remains pretty amazing to me how disdainfully the Never Trump crew
treats Republican candidates other than Trump,” Nate Silver sniffed on Wednesday morning,
tsk-tsking traditional conservatives who look dimly at DeSantis. But how
enthusiastic should a traditional conservative be about a man running as
“Trump, except more ruthless”?
DeSantis
skeptics don’t need to like his strategy. I don’t. But not liking it and
appreciating that it’s the strongest possible line of attack are two different
things. A Ron DeSantis who stood onstage at a debate and went full Chris
Christie, calling Trump a narcissistic psycho who got bodied by a decrepit old
man in November 2020, is not a Ron DeSantis who’s going to be the Republican
nominee.
Distaste
for the governor’s strategy among his detractors is coloring perceptions of its
potential effectiveness even with respect to how he’s chosen to launch his candidacy. Elon Musk is a conspiratorial
populist troll who’s spent six months doggedly making Twitter more hospitable
to other conspiratorial populist trolls. For DeSantis to reward him for it by
announcing his presidential campaign on Musk’s platform is obnoxious, further
evidence of the moronic edgelord-ification of mainstream Republican politics.
And so his critics are mocking him for being “Too Online,” catering to an
unrepresentative niche of the activist right instead of to “normie” voters.
Once
again, though, DeSantis’ strategy seems logical to me. Especially considering
that no one is more “Too Online” than Trump and that’s worked out okay for him
in Republican primaries so far.
The
governor can’t win the nomination by consolidating normies. There aren’t enough
of them left in a party where Trump is currently polling north of 56 percent. No matter how strong a candidate
DeSantis becomes, some smallish but meaningful number of those normies will
continue to prefer Haley, Scott, Pence, et al. And so the math becomes simple:
To prevail, he’ll need to convince a sizable share of Trump devotees to vote
for him instead.
There’s
no harder task in modern electoral politics, which is why DeSantis has been
willing to champion policies that he knows will prove
unpopular in a general election for the sake of endearing himself to voters in a Republican
primary. Overcoming Trump is his greatest challenge, greater even than
overcoming an incumbent president. And so he continues to execute a strategy to
that end, aligning himself with a figure in Musk who’s become a sort of icon to
the redpilled droogs who create and consume right-wing media. The governor
needs the support of major populist influencers to reassure Republican voters
that they’re not committing ideological treason by preferring him to Trump. So
he’s courting Elon.
Pretty
logical. And in DeSantis’ defense, the online component of his campaign rollout
is just a small, if heavily hyped, part of the whole. He has a live interview
scheduled with Fox News tonight at 8 p.m., after his conversation with Musk.
And his team is planning a mammoth door-knocking operation in the early primary states,
aiming to make face-to-face contact with every persuadable voter in Iowa, New
Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina at least four times.
He’s not
neglecting normie voters. He’s just meeting reality where it is, recognizing
that winning normies is a necessary but by no means sufficient condition of
prevailing in a party as abnormal as this one.
DeSantis’
candidacy will set the worst elements of the right against each other.
The
GOP’s post-liberal bloc has gotten entirely too comfortable since 2015.
For
eight years, populists who sought war against the left and the diminution of civic
niceties that stood in their way had one option on the ballot. Which may have
contributed to the cultish dynamic in Trump’s support: When there’s only one
champion available to do battle with one’s enemies, little wonder that
enthusiasm for that champion might be unusually intense and unified.
A
DeSantis-less field in this cycle would have extended the streak further. The
only other figure I can think of who might plausibly divide the grassroots
right over whether Trump should continue to lead it is Tucker Carlson, and
Tucker is adamant that he’s not running.
Without
the governor of Florida in the race, a Mike Pence or Tim Scott might have
vacuumed up a swath of the “Anyone But Trump” vote in the end and finished a
distant second with a gentleman’s 25 percent, but no one would have threatened
Trump’s dominance with populists. He would have remained the undisputed hero of
the revolutionary right, unified as ever.
With the
governor of Florida in the race, that changes. Populist influencers in
DeSantis’ and Trump’s camps are already at each other’s throats on social
media. And the infighting will grow significantly nastier as the race wears on.
For
instance: Kari Lake, for whom Ron DeSantis campaigned
last year, is Team Trump. Jenna Ellis, who represented Trump in court, is
Team DeSantis. Lesser figures unknown to well-adjusted human beings but quite
well-known to brain-poisoned Twitter junkies began taking sides months ago. (“We have CatTurd, they have
Cardillo. We have Jack Posobiec, they have Bill Mitchell.”) Inevitably diehard
2020 election truthers will gravitate toward Trump while more reality-based
populists who fear Trump’s baggage will swing toward DeSantis. Longtime cronies
whose political relevance depends on Trump’s continued success will aim to
destroy DeSantis; aspiring cronies who failed to gain relevance under Trump,
now sensing an opportunity to ascend with the governor, will rally to DeSantis’
defense.
The
campaign will be dumb, dispiriting, grifty, and vicious—everything the modern
online right is. It’s already well on its way.
All of
this is good for America. It’s long past time for the Jacobins to start guillotining
each other.
One way
it’s good is that it’ll divide and weaken the right’s pernicious post-liberal
vanguard. Either Trump or DeSantis will prevail in the end, at which point
there’ll be half-hearted chatter about coming together behind the winner. But
the scorched-earth tactics practiced during the primary will produce enduring
grudges. The MAGA right will never be quite as unified as it once was.
A few
days ago, I saw one Twitter user who’s backing DeSantis note with alarm how
much venom has been sent his way by Trump backers since he announced his
support for the governor. It really is a cult, he said with
inadvertently comic surprise. There will be more of that.
A Trump
victory will also alienate some of DeSantis’ traditionally conservative
supporters from the GOP, maybe irreparably. Some Republican voters have hung on
since 2016 with growing exasperation, I suspect, hopeful that the governor’s
emergence will finally break Trump’s spell. They rationalized Trump’s first
nomination on grounds that he was sui generis and his second nomination on
grounds that he was an incumbent. With DeSantis now offering Trumpism without
Trump—Trump, but smart and capable!—the GOP electorate is all out of excuses.
If they
insist on nominating Trump again despite having a perfectly good alternative
available, some of those conservatives will finally confront what the party has
become. “But the media” won’t cut it anymore.
The
divisions and disaffection from all of this might be so intense as to render
Trump or DeSantis unelectable as president. Which, since
they’re both unfit, would also be good for America.
No one
would bet on feral partisans boycotting a general election due to lingering
bitterness after a primary in an age as polarized as ours. Most disgruntled
Trump or DeSantis fans will talk themselves into turning out against Biden, but
not all. Trumpers will allege cheating if the governor prevails in the primary;
hardcore DeSantis fans will chafe at the self-destructive pigheadedness of
renominating a loser who specializes in personal destruction if Trump does.
A party
divided between two characters as sorry as these deserves to lose. And it well might.
So, one
cheer for DeSantis 2024. One way or another, directly or indirectly,
intentionally or not, it’ll get us a little closer to a healthier GOP.
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