WASHINGTON — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sees him and Donald Trump as the two contenders for the GOP nomination in 2024.
DeSantis will have to first make this vision a realty in order to win. DeSantis will have to start from a pinned position with Trump punching downward and the rest punching upward.
Nikki Haley – the former South Carolina Governor – delivered a powerful right hook in her campaign video on Wednesday. She said that DeSantis was nothing more than a ” echo of Trump.” The former president who has a majority of Republican supporters now spent most of Wednesday in social media insulting DeSantis.
Everyone wants him to be knocked off so that they can become No. David Urban, former Trump advisor who hasn’t endorsed any candidate, said that he was No. 2. “And Trump’s being Trump.”
This unusual squeeze is both a testament to DeSantis perceived strength, and one of the many challenges he will face in his quest to become a political dragon-slayer that has brought down two presidents – Trump and Joe Biden. He will not get much help from his fellow Republicans, who are jealous of his position and want to keep Trump on his back.
DeSantis and his team are expecting an attack from DeSantis’ opponents outside of Trump. As of right now, advisors don’t think it is worth getting involved with lower-polling opponents.
This is a two horse race. A person familiar with DeSantis’ political strategy said that if there is a third candidate, it would be Joe Biden.
DeSantis will continue to pick his spots for Trump rather than take a scorched earth approach towards a frontrunner whose support base is key to Republican hopes to win the general election in 2024.
DeSantis has seen his poll numbers drop in recent months, and Trump’s is still above 50% in many national surveys. However, he will raise enough money to run a campaign that is competitive. Never Back Down, a pro-DeSantis super PAC, is planning a budget of $200 million and has promised to hire 2,600 field operatives throughout the country. These figures are staggering for political strategists from both parties.
John Kasich said, “He is definitely a viable contender,” the former Ohio Governor who lost the GOP nomination in 2016. “But, the question is: Has he peaked? Has he reached his peak? “If you spend all your time trying to determine whether you are likable, then that is not a positive sign.”
While DeSantis is primarily concerned with introducing himself and drawing comparisons with Trump the super PAC has shown a willingness by dropping bombs in the field.
Never Back Down once referred to Haley as “Mickey Haley”, after she had criticized DeSantis for his battle with Disney.
DeSantis is clearly in second place. According to a CNN poll published on Wednesday, Trump had 53 percent of the vote, DeSantis 26 percent, and Haley 6 percent. Former Vice President Mike Pence has stated that he plans to make a running decision next month. The other seven candidates and potential candidates did not finish above 2 percent.
This survey, which is largely based on other recent polls puts DeSantis closer to Pence, Haley, and Clinton than Trump.
DeSantis, despite having just announced his candidacy via in a glitchy Twitter Spaces Conversation with Elon Musk billionaire, has been actively campaigning for over two months. He has visited the early primary states, and raised money for state party under the auspices a nonprofit policy group and book tour.
In that time, DeSantis’s standing in the national poll averages fell as a result of constant media coverage. DeSantis, and the rest in the race, are more concerned about Trump’s rise from a candidate who was a plurality to one that regularly won the majority of primary votes in polls.
Kevin Madden is an adviser to Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee. He said DeSantis would have a better chance of making his case with voters because he can already get “roadblock coverage” for his events. This is an advantage that Haley, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy do not have.
DeSantis’s political team plans to focus on his achievements as governor. This includes his unconventional approach to Covid and his immigration policies, and the controversial measures he signed, such as the so-called Don’t Say Gay Law, a extension and a ban on abortions for six weeks.
A person familiar with DeSantis’ strategy stated that the team believes DeSantis has “a really solid record” to run on.
According to a person close to DeSantis’ team, one of Trump’s weaknesses is that Biden, via executive order or other means, has quickly undone many of Trump’s decisions as president. This goes against Trump’s claim that he only needs four years to “finish” the job.
DeSantis, now free of the shadow campaign’s shackles, must also cut into Trump’s base to gain support.
Madden stated that “he’s going have to make this race a race between himself and Donald Trump.” “The challenge is for him to decide when to launch a full-frontal attack because Trump will be inevitable and he’ll have to face Trump. You want to do this more on your terms than Trump’s.”
If polls are correct, any candidate who wants to win would need to steal votes from Trump — a dynamic which wasn’t evident when Trump had a plurality of support. Some Republicans believed that a consensus opponent could win by consolidating anti Trump voters.
Trump will not make it easy. Trump has been attacking DeSantis for months on both a personal and a policy level.
Trump said on Truth Social Wednesday that “[H]e urgently needs a character transplant” and, “to the best of my understanding, these are not yet medically available.”
Trump said that DeSantis is “a disloyal” person, as he won the governorship in 2018 with Trump’s support.
Former president’s advisers claim that DeSantis may have difficulty navigating between Trump, the other candidates and himself.
“You have a crowded and ever-growing-more-crowded field,” one Trump aide said, “and everybody’s going to be looking to take a shot at Ron DeSantis.”
