Eleven Realities About Trump vs. DeSantis: Victor Davis Hanson
https://victorhanson.com/eleven-realities-about-trump-vs-desantis/
Most think it likely that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will run against a probable candidate Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. If so, we can expect the following:
1) DeSantis will run on the Trump MAGA agenda. There will be no challenge on the major issues. There will be no Never Trump return, no Romneyism redux, no Liz Cheney-like recalibration of the Republican Party.
2) DeSantis cannot argue that his superb governorship gives him superior executive experience over Trump, given that Trump’s four years saw historic successes. And vice-versa. Instead, the race will hinge on two considerations: Trump will argue that DeSantis is his own copied automaton (e.g., “I made him”) and yet lacks Trump’s fire-in-the-belly combativeness, so necessary to challenge the leftwing destruction of our institutions. DeSantis will fire back that he will “get even not mad.” That is, his attacks on Disney or Martha’s Vineyard are laser-focused, shorn of puerile put-downs, cul-de-sac extraneous tweets, and narcissistic fixations with past grievances and hurts.
3) Trump will assert charisma; DeSantis competence. Each will try to combine both as Reagan did. But can Trump run or govern without the psychodramas of being surrounded by shysters like the Mooch or Omarosa, or the volatility of a Bannon or Roger Stone?
4) Alternatively, can DeSantis turn out 40,000 in an open-air rally in early February?
5) We know Trump from his presidency, but will we know him at age 78-79? Is he as alert and savvy and cunning as he was nine or ten years earlier? And in the debates, will DeSantis prove dazzling or more a 2016 Scott Walker, a figure with a similarly superb record of state governance, a willingness to take on the teacher unions and the Left, and someone who exuded executive competence—before he melted down on the debate stage?
6) The midterms may prove interesting. What to watch: how will the Trumpers in Ohio or Arizona do? Will a Republican blowout favor Trump, while the party just squeaking by suggests pushback against and weariness with Trump’s nonstop flamboyance?
7) Money will not be the object. Both will raise fantastic amounts of cash that will strangle the efforts of the others (e.g., Cotton, Pompeo, Haley, Pence, etc.). Instead, the nomination will likely be decided in the early primaries, given DeSantis will or will not shatter the aura of Trump Republican invincibility.
8) Some Christie-like marginal party candidate, angling for a cabinet spot or VP birth, will be a designated anti-Trump attack-dog. He will bark at Trump nonstop in the manner of the 2016 efforts of Mitt Romney or John Kasich, and his role will be to bait Trump in hopes of keeping him reactive and self-obsessed while DeSantis appears presidentially aloof from the mudslinging.
9) The Left will likely fund Trump’s efforts, in the manner they are already feigning sympathy for his “charisma,” while trashing DeSantis’s “mean spiritedness—and likewise are pumping money into Trumpian House and Senate and state candidacies on the theory the Trump brand is as toxic in the general election as it is invaluable during the primaries (i.e., ensure he will win in June, fail in November 2024). On the other hand, for all their hatred of Trump, at some point leftwing pols will figure that DeSantis lacks the negative personal polling of Trump, and might be the harder candidate to defeat, and thus the preferrable target of their funded invective?
10) The two are not running in a vacuum. Joe Biden will not run, despite protestations to the contrary. Kamala Harris will not be the nominee; she shares Biden’s cognitive challenges but without the excuse of senility or the fake patina of “Ole Joe Biden from Scranton,” given her toxic multiple personalities and her hyper-Hillary cackling. Newsom claims he will be more charismatic and “tough” and “experienced.” Maybe. But here in California, he is known as an obnoxious hypocrite and pampered Bay-Area empty suit, a featherbrain who listens to the last leftist he talks to. And when Gavin play acts the role of man-of-the-people and goes out to one of California’s weekly disasters (looting trains, wildfires, earthquakes, etc.) he puts on pristine Patagonia-like outdoor clothes and seems bothered by the proximate dust and dirt. Bottom line: Trump’s electability issue will not be so prominent, given Clinton and Biden were savvier politicians and were familiar old Democratic warhorses—at least compared to a Gavin or the factotums on the 2016 and 2020 debate stages.
11) Expect the unexpected. Will Trump be indicted on a trumped-up charge? Would it win him sympathy and votes or more likely relief, “I’m tired of the hysteria he attracts from the crazy Left”? Will Ukraine end with a whimper or a bang? Will we be in a stagflationary depression by 2024? How will Biden exit the stage? What dirt will the Left spring, in Access Hollywood, Kavanaugh hearing, or Russian collusion fraud fashion—or at this point are Americans bored with and immune to their melodramas? Can Trump match DeSantis’s campaigning mile-for-mile, despite being nearly 35 years older? Will Trump’s health hold out? Do we know much of anything about DeSantis compared to the now open book of Trump’s life? Does that matter anymore?
Will the two Floridians, make up, get around the Constitution, and run as a pair?
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