Trump or DeSantis?
Will we be forced to choose between the two icons of conservatism?
Last night, in a highly anticipated speech at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump announced his candidacy for President of the United States of America.
For millions of die-hard supporters, this announcement was a moment of exhileration. Trump is back!
For some conservatives, it was tiresome. Trump is back?
In the wake of the 2022 midterms, conservative pundits have been looking around for someone to blame for Republicans falling short of the sky-high expectations that we had going into Election Day. One name that some commentators have settled on is none other than former President Trump.
It’s weird, isn’t it? Trump wasn’t on the ballot, though he obviously involved himself in the elections, endorsing candidates in both the primary and general elections. He spent millions of dollars and held thirty rallies across the country in support of these candidates. Most of his endorsed candidates won – JD Vance was in third place in Ohio during the primary but won with the help of Trump’s endorsement, and now he will be in the Senate. Herschel Walker is headed toward a runoff in Georgia, while the candidates in Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Arizona lost close races. This criticism begs the question, assuming that the establishment candidates would have won, but this seems improbable.
Rather than blaming Trump, who comes out of this midterm with an incredible success rate in his endorsements, it seems more logical to blame what my friend Raheem Kassam called McLeadership - Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel.
Mollie Hemingway, editor in chief of the Federalist and perhaps the most astute scholar of the way the Democrats stole the 2020 elections, dismissed claims that Trump was responsible:
“You’re seeing a lot of people trying to take advantage of the failure on Tuesday night, to go after Donald Trump. And that’s fine, people go after different people, but it seems to be a coping mechanism to neglect to deal with the fact that the Republican Party has failed Republican voters and failed the American people.”
Mollie Hemingway, The Federalist
So what does this bode for Trump, the GOP, and the MAGA movement going forward?
The same pundits who denounced Trump the moment he came down the escalator in 2015 are using these midterm results to call him finished and demand he make way for a new leader, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. They say that Trump is all talk and no action, while DeSantis has implemented strong conservative policies in Florida and should be the next king of the GOP going into the 2024 presidential election. Trump himself has fed the fires of this GOP civil war, attacking DeSantis on Truth Social as “Ron DeSanctimonious” while claiming credit for DeSantis’ initial primary victory in 2018.
Trump’s rhetoric is understandably rubbing a lot of people the wrong way. Attacking DeSantis before Election Day seemed like bad form, and doing it after DeSantis won reelection by 20 points seemed like pointless sniping. But this is who Trump always has been. Remember Lyin’ Ted, Little Marco, and Low Energy Jeb? His penchant for name-calling is part of his charm when he’s attacking people you don’t like, but irritating when he comes after people you like. With Donald Trump you have to take the whole package.
Ron DeSantis has accomplished some great things as Governor of Florida, and we definitely need his bold tactics at the national level. However, we cannot forget what made Trump such a phenomenon in the first place.
There is something ineffable about Donald Trump, a quality of charisma that only comes around once a generation or so. Consider Napoleon Bonaparte, who started the French Revolution as an unimportant artillery officer from an unimportant family, but within just a few years was the Emperor of the French. There was just something about him that inspired men to follow him to the gates of Hell, a quality that allowed him to amass huge armies that defeated the great powers of Europe in battle after battle. After his first defeat in 1814, he returned from exile and rather than being immediately arrested by the soldiers of the King, they threw away their orders and followed him again instead.
Not every leader has that elusive quality, but Donald Trump clearly does. It’s not something tangible, not something you can easily explain, but it is clearly there. Before Trump, did you ever see conservatives waving flags with a Republican candidate’s name on them? Who before Trump filled stadiums with his rallies? Not even Ronald Reagan inspired the zealous loyalty that millions of people have for Donald Trump. While we tend to hate the idea of cults of personality, there is clearly something about Trump personally that attracts tremendous loyalty.
Conservative pundits who prefer to engage in the marketplace of ideas can miss that. They look at Trump’s record, then they look at Ron DeSantis’ record, and they decide that DeSantis is the superior option. Yet this makes the same mistake as conservative pundits handicapping the Pennsylvania Senate race when they assumed that the candidate with the best ideas would naturally win. Politics today is tribal, and tribes have leaders. Trump is the leader of a movement, and trying to attack him in order to take over that movement is a huge mistake. MAGA Republicans already have a huge amount of mistrust for the GOP establishment, and when those establishment figures come along with a new figurehead leader it only deepens that mistrust. If Ron DeSantis attempts to challenge Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican primary, Trump will make it his mission to destroy him, and DeSantis will permanently damage his cachet with the Republican base.
And that would be a shame, because I think Ron DeSantis has a bright future! He really has done some great work in Florida, if nothing else in securing their elections after the fiasco of Bush v Gore in 2000. Before DeSantis, Florida was a purple state, and he only won his own election by the skin of his teeth. After his first term, Florida is a solid red stronghold, in large part due to their solid election systems.
Ron DeSantis is beginning to recognize that saving our states and our country requires us to use government power to reward our friends and punish our enemies. He weathered the storm when some squishy conservative commentators tut-tutted his attack on Disney, and he stood up to the media establishment when they came after him for banning grooming in elementary schools. We need this sort of boldness at the national level, so I hope and pray that DeSantis does not burn his bridges with the MAGA movement by recklessly challenging Trump in the upcoming election.
Donald Trump is obviously not perfect. Many of his hiring decisions in his first term were very bad, to say the least. Some of the organizations and PACs that he has set up since leaving the White House seem more interested in self-promotion than helping Republican candidates. His ego will not allow him to recognize any possible issues with the Covid vaccines that he championed under Operation Warp Speed. Nevertheless, we must not forget that under Trump we had one of the greatest economies in American history, we had no new foreign wars, and we were finally getting the border under control. These are tangible results that confirm the devotion of the 75 million Americans who voted for him in 2020.
For all his faults, Donald Trump is still The Guy, and no amount of wishing and hoping by the same conservative commentators that hated him in the first place will change that. If I had my way, we would get a Trump / DeSantis ticket in 2024, setting him up as the natural successor to lead the MAGA movement in 2028. But politics is a dirty game, and the men who rise to the top do so because of their ego and ambition, not despite it. We might be in for an extremely bitter fight.
Both the Democrats and the neoconservative Republican establishment would love the sort of carnage that would result from a war between Trump and DeSantis. Remember that the Jeb Bushes, Mitt Romneys, and Jonah Goldbergs of the world think they own the Republican Party, and the nomination of Donald Trump was a massive repudiation of this misconception. They have not and will not forgive us for this offense, and propping up DeSantis is just another attempt to wrest control of the GOP back from the populists and nationalists. I hope that the governor is smart enough to see this for what it is and resist the temptation to dance to their tune. We definitely cannot return to the pre-2015 Republican Party of free trade, open borders, and endless foreign wars.
If we are to save our country, we need an inspirational leader, someone who makes a personal connection with the forgotten men and women of America. Donald Trump did that in 2016, and I believe he deserves one last chance to do it again in 2024.
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Brian, your points are well taken, and your depth of historical and political knowledge always impresses me.
I hope Trump will hone his future messages more sharply than the ones he presented during last night's over-long speech. A bunch of avid Trump supporters who were watching the speech together simply gave up in disappointment and left early. The group thought Trump was repetitive, long-winded, unfocused, and looked a bit demoralized. Five or ten minutes were all he needed: He could have stated something like, "Things are terrible in America and around the world, I know how to fix them, I've fixed them before, and I'm back Baby to fix them again. Here's my top-5 list: [list here]."
Of course, Trump alone cannot undo all the harm that has been done, not only in the last few years, but in many decades of backroom-dealing and cheating that finally became obvious to those Americans paying attention. The simple answer is that no single person is the answer.
So many Americans are still oblivious to what's happening around them. Why? Many reasons, of course, but several biggies come to mind: People are unable to get good information; they are afraid or choose not to get good information; they are too busy with everyday life; they no longer care; they no longer think critically; they no longer act wisely.
Trump, DeSantis, or whomever is the next anointed "Golden One" cannot fix this broken system alone. We all need to fix it, abandon it, or create something new. Nibbling around the edges just won't work, in my opinion. I'd be thrilled to return to the days of following our US and State Constitutions, which are darn good documents for life in any age.
Of course, if we don't radically repair our elections to eliminate all financial and political influence and all cheating that matters, nothing any candidate or individual voter does will make a whit of difference. Few in power will want to fix the broken system that put them in power and rewards them richly.
Finally, unless and until American politicians and bureaucrats learn how to admit their mistakes (such as those disastrous decisions Trump made regarding COVID that continue to cost millions of people their lives and livelihoods), we can never move ahead. It's one thing to be larger than life; it's quite another to have a monstrous ego that blinds good judgment. Admitting and learning from one's mistakes are the only ways to avoid them in the future.