Some conservatives worry about Ron DeSantis using the power of government to implement his agenda

When Donald Trump and Joe Biden met in Florida during the August 2024 White House Race: A Conversation with DeSantis, a Democratic Democrat and a Hero

Ex-President Donald Trump’s bid to keep Ron DeSantis out of the 2024 White House race reveals as much about his own mindset and the challenges his campaign faces as it does about Florida’s fast-rising Republican governor.

He is also expected to continue political travel outside the state to raise money and grow his brand. After avoiding public events outside Florida for most of his first term, DeSantis in August took the calculated gamble to hold rallies in support of Republican candidates in some of the country’s most contested races for governor and US Senate. He continued to travel up until 10 days before the election.

A Republican official who did not want to be named said that there was two very stubborn politicians in Florida that were at the tip of the spear for the GOP. The two people command attention but they also have their own political operations. It’s already exhausting to talk about.”

On the campaign trail, Republican candidate Ron DeSantis does not mention Trump but his speeches include a lot of mentions of President Joe Biden in an attempt to convince voters that he is better than the incumbent Democrat.

Trump announced his latest presidential bid just a week after the midterms last month. But they have different approaches: saying nothing about 2024, and letting speculation swirl. A May or June announcement is expected for the race if consultants in Florida are correct, because state lawmakers meet for their annual legislative session.

As he returned to the road, Trump betrayed irritation with the criticism of his campaign so far, and left no doubt that he has a lot of interest in the upcoming election.

The campaign ad by the candidate suggests he was created by God to fight for Florida as he described himself as a fighter who stood up against medical experts and criticism during the state’s time of need.

The biggest cheer of the day came when he talked about how he was able to arrange for almost 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, a stunt that has faced intense scrutiny and legal challenges.

The Red Wave in Florida: Donald Trump Goes to Ohio, and he Tells Miami-Dade County to Become an America First Red State

Both candidates could find themselves on the same financial footing if they do go head-to-head. DeSantis has raised $200 million this campaign cycle through his two political committees and has spent just over half, leaving about $90 million in potential seed money for a Super PAC. At the end of October, Trump was sitting on about $117 million between his three active fundraising vehicles, according to federal election data.

CNN reported this week that Donald Trumps desire to launch a third campaign for the White House is one of the reasons he is traveling so much before the election. Indeed, during a visit to Iowa on Thursday, Trump told voters in the first-in-the-nation caucus state to “get ready” for his return as a presidential candidate. Trump stopped in Pennsylvania on Saturday – home to the tight Senate race between his endorsee, Republican Mehmet Oz, and Democrat John Fetterman – and he’ll spend election eve in Ohio, where the former president endorsed Republican J.D. Vance in the Senate race against Democrat Tim Ryan.

The decision to hold the rally in Miami-Dade County comes as Republicans are optimistic they will carry the one-time Democratic stronghold for the first time in two decades. Investments by Republicans to make inroads in the area’s Hispanic neighborhoods have paid off in recent elections, and the party is seeing a wave of enthusiasm that is turning the state a deeper shade of red. Republicans will hold an advantage in voter registration on Election Day for the first time in Florida’s modern political history.

President Trump gave a historic red wave in Florida in the elections of 2018, with his slate of endorsed candidates up and down the ballot and molded the state into a stronghold of the populist movement, stated the announcement from Trump’s Save America PAC. Florida is now an America first red state due to President Trump.

He said that Biden touches it and it turns into something worse than gold. Most Americans think the country has seen its best days, and that is frustrating. They think that we’re clearly on the wrong track. But you know, I think Florida provides the blueprint that other states can follow.”

Glenn Beck, the right-wing talk radio host, was half-joking when he made this suggestion the day after the election, but he voiced a hope that a red wave that wiped out many Republicans would linger. The reality – that the party had an unusually poor showing in a midterm that many expected would be a historic blowout – felt too sour to linger on.

According to recent polls, one of the best ways to get rid of President Donald Trump is to support Rep. Ron DeSantis. Some people think that if DeSantis didn’t have baggage from his first term, his two campaigns and obsession with the 2020 election, he could be Trump. For his part, DeSantis has privately told supporters he believes Trump’s divisiveness and addiction to political drama distracted from advancing his agenda. It’s a fact that the governor will be able to defeat the former president in a primary.

At the DeSantis victory rally, supporters made clear that they saw his winning platform as a springboard. The room was filled with chants of “two more years!” which would indicate that they would rather see the new Gov. in the White House than in the mansion.

Ahead of DeSantis’ upcoming visit this weekend to California, where he’ll appear at the Reagan Library and also deliver a speech at a fundraiser for the Orange County Republican Party, he took a shot at the state’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, for being “preoccupied” with DeSantis and Florida.

His political style has been married to a strongman persona. As governor, he’s targeted universities, public health workers, and corporations for opposing his policies. He has sent police to round up voters with felony convictions who, confused by the state’s efforts to strip their voting rights after voters reinstated them a few years ago, mistakenly voted in recent elections. He pushed the legislature in Florida to support anti-gay laws, a new map of the state and legislation against Disney after the company criticized the state’s “don’t say gay” bill.

Meanwhile, unlike the national party, the Democratic Party in Florida is in tatters, struggling to field and support candidates and to organize and mobilize voters. The mix of Latino voters in Florida is more skewed towards immigrants from Cuba and Venezuela who respond favorably to the attack on Democrats as socialists.

Donald Trump has an issue with fellow Florida resident. The Dump Trump crowd, though bigger than ever before, doesn’t understand how deep and unquestioning the cult of personality around Trump still is in some parts of the party.

Two years ago, the party issued a statement of loyalty to Trump after failing to pass a policy platform. When party elites inched away from Trump after his election loss and the insurrection that followed, they did not manage to bring the party with them. The majority of Republicans in the House decided to overturn the election and the majority of their voters believed that the election was stolen.

“There’s no way to deny Donald Trump got fired Tuesday night,” Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican who has been critical of Trump, told “CNN This Morning” on Thursday. “The search committee has brought a few names to the top of the list and Ron DeSantis is one of them. I think Ron DeSantis is being rewarded for a new thought process with Republicans and that solid leadership.”

Later in the year of 2020, if the Republican presidential nomination were to go to the Florida governor, he would endorse him in the primary, according to an interview with Politico.

“Build anticipation,” one longtime Republican fundraiser with knowledge of DeSantis’ operation said. I think he is in charge of the time frame. Everyone anticipates things. and you want to move quickly, he calls the shots now.”

The legislative session will be “as red meat as you can possibly imagine,” a GOP consultant said. They will pass it, and it will become law, whatever he proposes.

The Republican fundraiser predicted that financial institutions would be a DeSantis target in the spring and said that they would do anything they could to kill within their path.

“If in fact you go into a presidential primary with Donald Trump and think you’re going to kick his ass, you got another thing coming,” one Republican consultant in Florida told CNN.

I am not sure if he is running. I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Digital. He would be making a mistake. I think the base would not like it – I don’t think it would be good for the party…I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering.”

Trump said he received more votes than the other candidate, but downplayed Tuesday’s results. Presidential races usually have much higher turnout than midterms and Trump’s margin of victory over Biden was about 3 points.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu doesn’t believe in the idea of former president Donald Trump in the future of the Republican Party.

Taking it a step further, Sununu – who just won a fourth two-year term in the Granite State by 15 percentage points – said it’s “un-American” to “be a country where the best opportunity for our future leadership is the leadership of yesterday.”

When Donald Trump Becomes a General Election Candidate: D.A. Obeidallah, J.R. Lake, and D.C. Clubber Lang

The survey found that a majority of Republican voters would back Trump if he were the Republican nominee in the general election.

Dean Obeidallah is a former lawyer and host of a daily program on the radio. Follow him @[email protected]. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has more opinion on it.

Lake, a failed Republican candidate for governor of Arizona, wrote that she pity the fool who runs against Trump.

Clubber Lang, in a scene from the film ahead of a fight withRocky Balboa, is asked by a reporter if he hates the character of the boxing legend.

The Ex-President in “Rocky III” vs. Clubber Lang and Trump’s Failure in the 2020 GOP Presidential Campaign

For instance, the ex-president honed in on one of the strongest areas of the DeSantis record for many conservative voters – his frequent fight against federal Covid-19 restrictions and recommendations. The President accused the team of trying to rewrite history over his record. There are Republican governors that did not close their states. Florida was closed for a long time.

In March 2020, in response to the rapidly spreading pandemic, the Florida governor issued an executive order closing bars and nightclubs, and urged people to follow US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines limiting gatherings on beaches to no more than 10 people.

His recent remarks and comments have deviated sharply away from government-imposed protections in what appears to be a desperate bid to appeal to the GOP’s Covid-denying voters before an anticipated presidential run.

The debate among free-market conservatives about whether the government shouldn’t interfere with businesses has become a subject of debate. DeSantis has often intervened if he accuses a business of running afoul of his vision of freedom. He instigated a fight with the cruise line industry over their vaccine policies, banned businesses from requiring masks and vaccines and championed a bill that would restrict how businesses teach workers about race and gender.

But any potential run inevitably means a face-off with Trump, who is, as yet, the only Republican to have formally announced in the race. “Rocky III” marked the 40th anniversary of its release last year, but the 2024 GOP nominating campaign might be Rocky vs. Clubber Lang all over again.

But barring prosecution of the former President, if DeSantis wants to win in 2024, he can’t keep ducking Trump’s barbs. DeSantis should remember that even though in “Rocky III” the iconic fighter lost his title early in the film to the menacing and cruel Clubber Lang, the “Italian Stallion” prevailed in the end.

But if the former President is not exactly an underdog in the White House nomination contest, he certainly has been on the ropes of late, with polls showing a certain Trump fatigue among many voters in his party who would rather someone else be the GOP nominee.

During the 2016 GOP presidential race, Trump and Rubio were among the Republicans vying for the opportunity to square off against the eventual Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. The GOP contender to beat early in the campaign was Trump.

That’s when Rubio finally took the gloves off, calling Trump “an embarrassment” and a demagogue. But it was too little, too late for Rubio, who lost the Florida GOP primary, and ended up dropping out of the race the next day.

When they fire, you should return the fire with overwhelming force, according to DeSantis, who was sitting in the cockpit with the title of “Top Gov”. He said never to back down from a fight.

Perhaps DeSantis — a Harvard Law School graduate and former federal prosecutor — is waiting to see if Trump is criminally indicted, in the hopes he doesn’t have to meet him on the field of battle. Last week, Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis told a judge that she was about to make a decision in the investigation into attempts by Trump and his allies to influence the 2020 election in Georgia.

Jack Smith is the special counsel looking into Trump over the January 6, 2021, attack and a trove of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago. As a practical matter, it would be terrible for his election prospects to have a president under indictment and guilty of a crime.

Trump’s ill-equippedness: defending the last election in New Hampshire and his public criticism of evangelical leaders: The example of Joe Biden

You have to fight for it. There could come a time when GOP voters view DeSantis’ refusal to defend himself and punch back as a sign of weakness.

The more silent he is, the harder it will be for people to question why he won’t fight.

There is something disconcerting about a former president who was trying to steal the last election and was embraced by his supporters as if nothing happened.

There is also a clear belief that Trump is owed the Republican nomination and that some of his colleagues are not very appreciative of his one-term presidency.

Trump’s musings about loyalty also recall his attack on evangelical leaders earlier this month, whom he said showed “disloyalty” by refusing to support his 2024 bid so far despite his delivery of a generational conservative Supreme Court majority. The comments were a reminder of Trump’s transactional view of politics – and also that a man who dumped aides, staff and Cabinet members at a fearsome clip in office often tends to view loyalty as a purely one-way allegiance.

He gave a very mundane speech when he came to New Hampshire. Sununu told Bash that the response they had received was that he stuck to the talking points and went away. “So he’s not really bringing that fire, that energy, I think, that a lot of folks saw it in ’16. I think, in many ways, it was a little disappointing to some folks. I think most people understand that he is going to be a candidate, but he will also have to earn it. And that’s New Hampshire.”

Judging by his remarks about DeSantis and evangelical leaders, Trump is not yet ready to acknowledge that reality. He traveled to South Carolina to visit an ice cream parlor late in the day, but also used the opportunity to get to know voters.

Trump appeared Saturday to understand that his two years of fury over the 2020 election, which he still falsely says was stolen from him, may have turned off voters in 2022, when many of the election-denying candidates he promoted in swing states lost – potentially costing the GOP the Senate.

“This campaign will be about the future. Issues will be the subject of this campaign. Joe Biden has put America on the fast track to ruin and destruction and we will ensure that he does not receive four more years,” Trump said at a small event Saturday in the South Carolina State House.

He has not abandoned his standard rhetoric. On Sunday evening, he called into a rally for his favorite election-denying candidates, one of which was failed gubernatorial nominee in Arizona, Kari Lake. And earlier on Saturday, in New Hampshire, the former president – who is facing criminal investigations by the Justice Department and a district attorney in Georgia over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election – could not resist taking aim at institutions that are revealing the true course of events in 2020.

The Justice Department had been trying to hold Trump responsible for his electionstealing activity, but he said he would try to block the efforts.

We are going to end the weaponization of our justice system. There’s never been a justice system like this. Trump said it’s all an investigation. And he branded his resistance to such probes as more proof of the very quality that many Republicans embraced in 2016 and that helped propel him to the White House.

He promised to challenge the establishment in Washington again with the help of your vote next year.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has made freedom his calling card, but some conservatives have become skeptical of how liberally the Republican leader is using government power to impose his will.

As Florida state lawmakers met earlier this month to hand DeSantis new authority over Disney World – punishment for the company’s opposition to a measure restricting certain classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity – Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire took a shot at the power grab.

“I’m a principled free-market conservative,” said Sununu, who is also weighing a bid for president. Many people think that the government should be punishing businesses because they disagree with them politically.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is a right-of center group that argued for the right to speak for white supremacist Richard Spencer, who was invited to speak on a Florida campus. Nevertheless, the group has repeatedly criticized Florida’s heavy-handed approach to forcing conservative beliefs on universities and is suing the state over the Stop WOKE Act, a DeSantis-backed measure that legislated how professors teach certain topics.

“You cannot censor your way to freedom of expression,” said Will Creeley, FIRE’s legal director. You cannot trade orthodoxy for something else. What we’ve seen recently in Florida is a troubling willingness to do just that.”

“Corporatism is not the same as free enterprise, and I think too many Republicans have viewed limited government to basically mean whatever is best for corporate America is how we want to do the economy,” the Florida governor said at a speech last year at the National Conservatism Conference. “My view is, you know, obviously free enterprise is the best economic system, but that is a means to an end.”

What Do African-Americans Tell Us About Florida, And Why Does President DeSantis Prefer to Do What He Tells Them?

“Being perceived as racially insensitive is not a good place for him to be in the long term,” a Republican supporter of DeSantis said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk frankly about an area of rising worry.

The supporter pointed directly to the fight over an Advanced Placement course on African American studies and DeSantis’ quarrel with the College Board, saying the governor could alienate some voters who would otherwise be supportive.

But Republicans voters have yet to be introduced to many potential contenders for the party nomination. Meanwhile, outside groups such as the Club for Growth and Americans for Prosperity have signaled they intend to get involved in the primary.

But DeSantis, who is soft launching a nascent campaign, is skipping the event as he prepares promote his new book. He can mingle with donors while at a private retreat for the anti-tax Club for Growth in Palm Beach, Florida.

“I’m a genuine libertarian; I’m kind of a live-and-let-live kind of girl,” Levin told CNN. She said she doesn’t object to candidates that have strong personal beliefs about social issues, but she does object to candidates who put power in the state of Florida behind their socially conservative views.

“DeSantis is always talking about he was not demanding that businesses do things, but he was telling the cruise lines what they had to do,” former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a fellow Republican, said of DeSantis last year. Hogan still has not forgiven the Florida governor as he ponders about entering the Republican nomination.

South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has compared her Covid19 record to that of Rep. Ron DeSantis for different reasons, suggesting that Florida was too hands-on for ideological reasons. Noem said Friday it was her state, not Florida, that “set an example of freedom” by refusing to shut down at all. Florida, which has been dubbed a Citadel of Freedom, has closed schools, bars and theme parks and restricted other economic activity.

What Do Governor DeSantis Really Want to Tell Us About Higher-Centric Government Programs? Commentary on Rufo on Twitter

But his approach has often included more government programs (creating an office to pursue voter fraud and a new program to conduct missions to surveil, house and transport migrants from border states to Democratic jurisdictions), more regulation (dictating bank lending practices) or flexing government power in unprecedented manners (ousting an elected state prosecutor).

Allies of DeSantis have pushed against the chatter. Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contended on Twitter recently that the governor was using his power as an elected leader – a job he was reelected to with a historical 19-point victory in November.

The new board of New College is being restructured by the governor who wants it to become a more conservative university.

“The complaint about using ‘state power,’ meaning constitutionally-mandated democratic governance, to correct the ideological corruption of public universities, i.e., state institutions funded by taxpayers, is ridiculous,” Rufo tweeted. “Amounts to ‘the people can’t regulate the state.’”

“I don’t appreciate Gov. DeSantis going after Disney’s tax status,” Griffin said at the time. It could be portrayed, felt or look like a reprisal. The people who serve our nation need to keep their heads above water, in time.

But the ex-president’s entire political career, the modern Republican Party and a vast conservative media empire are based on the exact opposite premise of the Rolling Stones’ song: giving the party base exactly what it wants to hear – whether it is true or not.

What Fox News saw and saw: How the left fought back to the White House and back again after Donald Trump’s 2024 run-riot

Did viewers of Fox ask about the election because of what they saw on the network, or did it happen because it feared its viewers?

The new details showed that the key players on the right feel that they have no choice but to appease the voters and the viewers who depend on their political power.

Some media commentators would argue Murdoch has evolved his model to use television stations in his home country of Australia and tabloid newspapers in Britain as well as Fox News in the US. Murdoch changed his mind about endorsing Tony Blair in the British general election in 1997 when The Sun wanted to support the Labour Party.

There are also signs that the billionaire publisher may finally be getting buyer’s remorse over Trump given the headline in his New York Post after the ex-president’s low energy 2024 campaign launch in November, which read, “Been there, Don that.”

As he said in a deposition made public in a court filing on Monday in the Dominion case: “It is not red or blue, it is green,” referring to the color of a dollar.

A similar calculation is made for the political market by the Republican politicians that appear on Fox. Their unfiltered adoption of much of the doctrine favored by the conservative grassroots ultimately stretched American democracy to the limit.

Catering to that group helped propel Trump to the White House. GOP lawmakers whose hold on power depended on not crossing the reality-star-turned-president then allowed Trump to run riot. That helped foster an unstoppable radical tide that led to the US Capitol insurrection in 2021 and eventually to Republicans acquitting him in not one but two impeachment dramas.

The huge power of the Republican base was the secret sauce that forced new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to make concessions to the most radical representatives in the conference after 15 rounds of voting he needed to win his job. McCarthy had earlier watched as two predecessors, former Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, tried to resist the GOP’s far right insurgency and lost their job. As McCarthy showed by handing Fox host Tucker Carlson access to hours of Capitol Hill security footage last week – despite Carlson’s conspiracy theories about January 6, 2021 – his speakership is a totally owned subsidiary of the GOP’s most extreme elements.

McCarthy’s dominance by the same GOP base that Murdoch worried about driving away is one reason why a coming showdown with the White House over raising the government’s borrowing limit has so many financial experts fretting about a possible default that could rattle the global economy.

The straddle between winning a party’s base voters and trying to court middle America has long tested Democratic and Republican nominees when they have to pivot to a general election. In 2024, this political leap may require supreme political skill from whoever emerges from what could be the GOP’s “America First” primary.

This was why Trump, an apparently unlikely clarion of the people after spending his life in Manhattan and flying around the country on a private Boeing with gold-plated fittings, was the perfect candidate for the moment. He was denounced by liberals for his “profoundly offensive” rhetoric. Trump was a huge draw for his crowds, he was funnier than the presidential events and more like comedy shows. Here was someone who was shouting out loud what millions of Americans had believed for years but felt constrained from saying because of social convention. While many commentators decried Trump’s demagoguery, they didn’t look at the social, economic and political reasons for his rise.

“This persistent theme — that Republicans in Washington fail to effectively represent the values of the people who elect them – foreshadowed the nomination of Donald Trump in 2016,” DeSantis writes in “The Courage to be Free,” published on Tuesday.

“The chasm between the aspirations of the GOP voter base and the behavior of party leaders in Washington would continue to grow wider in the ensuing years.”

Many politicians face a moment when, for reasons of conscience or political reality, they risk alienating their closest supporters. But sometimes there is no choice but to spend this political capital.

Trump had foreshadowed this marriage of convenience between his presidency and the conservative media infrastructure in an appearance at the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City in 2018.

Stay with us. Don’t be fooled by the fake news from these people. … What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening,” he said.

Fox News isn’t gonna win! Tucker Carlson, Murdoch, Newsmax, and the Censorship of Fox News

The painful truth about email and text messages, which every TV anchor and media executive should learn, is that you never know which message will be publicly released when your company is sued.

It is especially painful when messages show that you are in fact allowing false information on the air.

Lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems released unflattering messages and depositions to the public as part of a $1.6 billion lawsuit against Fox for airing conspiracy theories about their role in the 2020 presidential election.

That’s how we know Tucker Carlson tried to get a Fox News White House correspondent fired for fact-checking former President Donald Trump’s false tweet about election fraud.

Note that he said company. The company was the main focus of the Fox leaders and top talent. Democracy was at stake, but the larger concern at Fox News appears to be that rival Newsmax was gaining traction after Trump lashed out at Fox News for his 2020 election loss.

Murdoch said that he didn’t mind the politics of putting the MyPillow CEO on Fox News.

Ryan said in the interview that Fox News has to be a part of the solution if we’re going to solve conservatives’ problems.

Ryan said there isn’t a bigger platform than this in America. “So I think the conservative movement is going through a lot of churn and a lot of turmoil and I don’t like where it is right now.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/01/politics/fox-news-republicans-what-matters/index.html

The Social Media Abruptness of the Republican Party in 2018: Donald Trump and the Libertarian Joe Biden, aka Mr. Jeffrey DeSantis

During the George W. Bush administration, Fox would have been a major backer of military aid for Ukraine if Russia had invaded as it did a year ago. That perspective is still evident on the network, where many guests talk about the importance of Ukraine aid.

But its top stars, like Carlson, are mimicking Trump and questioning whether the US should be opposed to Russia’s authoritarianism and invasion of Ukraine.

Trump will appear this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference, long a major stop for potential Republican presidential candidates. There will also be a major announced candidate at the event.

CNN spoke with two dozen or so lawmakers, many of whom they described as hardcore Trump supporters who were essentially his strongest defenders during his four years in office.

Republicans worry about the viability of Donald Trump as a candidate. They are worried that Joe Biden could be given another four years in the White House because he has underperformed in the last three election cycles.

Multiple members of the Freedom Caucus actually traveled to Florida not to meet with Trump, but instead to talk to DeSantis, according to Raju. They were impressed.

The conservative Club for Growth event was held at The Breakers Palm Beach resort. “Some of these Republicans, they just sit back like potted plants, and they let the media define the terms of the debate. They let the left define the terms of debate. They take all this because they are not doing anything. I said that was not what we were doing.