RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/12/17/the-populist-who-gets-things-done/

Ron DeSantis is the man of the moment in American politics. The Republican governor of Florida first gained a national profile in 2020 for defying Covid lockdown orthodoxy and later for his battles against woke. His smashing re-election victory in the Midterms this November – defeating his Democratic opponent by almost 20 percentage points – has propelled DeSantis to new heights. According to a recent poll, Republicans now prefer DeSantis over Trump to be the party’s presidential candidate in 2024 by a huge 23-point margin. The New York Post has declared him ‘DeFuture’. And he already leads Biden in one early election survey.

It is the breadth of DeSantis’s victory in November that has most excited Republicans. He turned a state that was recently considered ‘purple’ – that is, a toss-up between the Democrats and Republicans – into a deeply red state. He ‘rewrote the political map’, as he himself has put it, winning cities and suburbs across Florida, and support from a variety of demographic groups. His pick-ups included the formerly Democratic bastion of Miami-Dade County, which is 70 per cent Hispanic. The voters of Florida had a close-up view of DeSantis for four years and obviously liked what they saw.

In comparison to Trump, DeSantis just looks more dynamic. Virtually every one of Trump’s handpicked candidates was defeated in the Midterms, making Trump a big reason why a much-anticipated ‘red wave’ did not materialise. Trump also faces potential criminal charges for the ‘January 6’ attack on the Capitol and for the retention of confidential documents at his Florida home. The 76-year-old former president announced his candidacy for the 2024 election last month with a snoozer of a speech (some dubbed it ‘low energy’, referencing Trump’s jibe about Jeb Bush in 2016). His first post-announcement meeting was with an anti-Semitic celebrity (Kanye West) and an anti-Semitic nobody (Nick Fuentes).

DeSantis clearly gets under Trump’s skin. Trump’s nickname for him, ‘Ron DeSanctimonious’, is weak, given that he’s not remotely sanctimonious – another sign that Trump has lost his touch. In the past few weeks, Trump has launched unprovoked rants against DeSantis and has sulked about the Florida governor’s supposed disloyalty. In response, DeSantis has kept studiously quiet, which has only driven Trump more nuts.

Perhaps predictably, DeSantis’s rise has led liberal commentators to set off alarm bells and issue dire warnings. He’s ‘just as bad as’ or ‘worse’ than Trump, they say. He’s ‘Trump 2.0’, but more efficient and ruthless, making him an even more dangerous threat to democracy, apparently. DeSantis has ‘made Trump’s lines, and lies, his own’, says Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an MSNBC columnist and scholar of fascism at New York University. DeSantis is a ‘constitutional ignoramus, a bully and a strongman’, according to Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, and thus ‘as much a threat to America as Trump’.

It is clear what these people are trying to do with DeSantis – tar him with the same brush as Trump and create a negative image of him in the minds of voters outside of Florida. They want to make DeSantis’s name just as toxic as Trump’s and turn him into a candidate who no self-respecting person could consider voting for. So far, they have a long way to go. The Real Clear Politics polling average finds that most Americans have a favourable view of DeSantis, but a negative view of Trump. Still, the media spinners are only just getting started. If you thought the rhetoric about Trump being a ‘fascist’ was over the top, just wait to hear what they will say about DeSantis should he run.