I never thought that I would be advocating for Ron DeSantis to run for president, but then again I never thought a lot of very strange things would take place. If the Red Queen said, “I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast,” she should try political blogging and see what a real mindbender is. Feed your head, indeed.
Here’s an idea I’m going to sell you. It’s a good thing for Ron DeSantis to run for president. The reason this topic even arises is because he’s squandered massive political capital in the past 24 hours, what with the Disney folks outsmarting him and demonstrating how that is not a difficult thing to do.
Long story short on that, DeSantis found a way to take over the Board and the Board passed restrictive new covenants, which basically hamstrings the Board from doing much of anything, and now DeSantis looks like a fool. Word on the street is that maybe he would be deterred from running due to this development.
This is not a new idea, either. It’s been kicking around for some time and there is merit to these arguments.
Jonathan Last at the Bulwark has a take on this:
So just for a moment, let’s pretend that it’s July 1 and DeSantis is out. What does the primary dynamic look like?
For starters, it means that all of the questions about Biden running stop. If DeSantis pulls the plug, Trump becomes the overwhelming favorite—at which point there is zero chance that Biden declines to run for reelect.
The next thing that happens is Trump pops higher in both national and early-state polls. That’s because Trump is the second choice of about half of the voters who support DeSantis. Which means that you’d expect Trump to almost immediately add >10 points to his poll numbers, putting him close to the 60 percent mark nationally.
Then comes the time for fear.
The Republican establishment, which has been pushing DeSantis relentlessly for two years, would freak the eff out. They’d look around and see that Nikki Haley has moved backwards since declaring her candidacy. Mike Pompeo seems to have disappeared. Maybe Chris Christie is in the race sitting at 3 percent. The point is: No declared Republican candidate will have demonstrated viability.
So the money will go searching for someone who has upside potential.
The two obvious figures are Glenn Youngkin and Tim Scott.
You see where this is going and how strange it’s going to get. And maybe Glenn Youngkin would end up becoming a viable, if dark horse, candidate. I can’t see Tim Scott mustering the requisite juice in any eventuality, but perhaps Youngkin might cobble together a miracle — but the Republicans really wouldn’t want that, the article goes on to say.
Last’s opinion is that what would happen is that that the Republican party would “make a show of backing Youngkin and then hop back on side as soon as the nomination was Trump’s.” The logic, they would tell themselves, is that they, the old school Republicans, would only have to re-capitulate to Trump this one last time and then they’ll own their party again, and their souls, in January, 2025. Trump will be gone and he won’t run again in 2028, goes the thinking. And that may not be the case at all. A lot of this is assumption and wish casting on their part.
Actually, the GOP wouldn’t do that bad with Glenn Youngkin on the ticket. He could sell the new GOP probably better than anybody, due to his upset victory in Virginia, unseating the Democratic governor. But maybe the GOP isn’t ready for that and they want to lose with Trump yet one more cycle. Could be. And here’s a wild idea, maybe DeSantis would want Youngkin on his ticket?
Put it all together and it’s pretty clear that the best outcome for America is that DeSantis does run. If nothing else he’s holding Trump’s numbers down and creating enough uncertainty in the overall dynamic to keep the race relatively unstable and open to disruption.
If he’s able to beat Trump—great. All the better. And if he loses to Trump, then maybe the fight will be so bitter that some Republicans (or at least Republican elites) will be more grudging in their support of Trump in the general. Or even decline to get back together with him.
God help me, I never thought I’d be in the Draft DeSantis movement. But here we are. I hope he runs.
And DeSantis very well may run, no matter what. Here’s an interesting tidbit.
It’s well known that Casey DeSantis is Ron’s de facto campaign manager. Maybe there’s truth in this statement. Who knows? What we do know is that the GOP primary is shaping up to get even stranger than what we knew a few short weeks ago.
Maybe Chris Christie will end up being the candidate, in the eventuality that Trump’s legal problems prove to be an insurmountable obstacle. Or, maybe DeSantis, like the dog chasing the car, will actually catch the damn thing and then at that point, find out he doesn’t know what to do with it. DeSantis is way in over his head, as the recent debacle with Disney shows. He may actually be either the perfect foil for Joe Biden or he may disrupt the GOP primary race enough to where Trump inherits a badly split and imperfect thing. This can only work to Democratic advantage. Run, Ron, run. Don’t listen to anybody who tells you not to.
