Florida is home to at least four of the most talked about potential 2024 Republican presidential candidates – Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, Marco Rubio, and Rick Scott.
Thursday night, with the recruiting help of the Florida-based firm Point Blank Political (a campaign consulting and advertising agency), I spoke with eight Florida Republicans, all of whom voted for Trump in 2020.
The group was uniformly widely enthusiastic about the prospects of Governor DeSantis running for president, wholly impressed by his record as the Sunshine State honcho. They also universally are very down on their U.S. senators, Rubio and Scott.
Here was a typical comment:
“Republicans with Donald Trump for the last four years, we’re so used to somebody that will fight for us and not apologize. And Marco Rubio and Rick Scott are not somebody that will fight for us. They are going to give up and they’re going to apologize. Ron DeSantis is somebody that will fight for us and he wouldn’t give up.”
Watch part of the discussion here.
What’s interesting about this group is not just what they say about the relative standing of the Floridian pols. This deeply engaged octet offers insight into what many Redland voters are seeking in their leaders now, with the Trump-DeSantis brand still very much in favor.
Survey says: Essential viewing.
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It is about time, all y’all.
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1. Most of the pandemic vectors are headed in the right direction:
The United States recorded fewer than 40,000 new daily cases of Covid-19 for the first time in five months on Thursday, a piece of promising news as countries across the globe struggle to hold off another infection surge before inoculations become widespread. (AFP)
Without question, the United States is in a far better place than it was two months ago. Reports of new cases have declined more than 70 percent from their January peak, and hospitalizations have fallen by more than 60 percent. The once-halting rollout of the vaccination campaign has also accelerated, with about two million doses being administered across the country most days. (New York Times)
But:
[T]here remains ample reason for concern. Highly infectious variants are circulating, case numbers are not declining as quickly as they had been and it remains routine for more than 2,000 deaths to be announced nationally in a single day. Outbreaks around New York City and Miami, where case numbers have plateaued at high levels, have largely offset continued progress in much of the Midwest and West. (New York Times)
HALPERIN SAYS: The governors of Texas and Mississippi are not Neanderthals, but are they part of the governing body of the town of Chelm, whose elders have been chronicled in these pages before, as dedicated WWoN readers know:
The people of Chelm met to discuss the signs that had been positioned in advance of the winding mountain road that led into town.
The signs said “DANGEROUS CURVES AHEAD.”
Strong winds had blown down the signs, damaging them beyond repair. The wise people voted to not replace them because there had not been any accidents on that stretch of the road in quite a long time.
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2. The Biden administration’s immigration policy on the Mexican border is still a slow-motion train wreck happening right before our eyes:
The Biden administration is preparing to convert its immigrant family detention centers in South Texas into Ellis Island-style rapid-processing hubs that will screen migrant parents and children with a goal of releasing them into the United States within 72 hours, according to Department of Homeland Security draft plans obtained by The Washington Post.
The plans show the Biden administration is racing to absorb a growing number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border amid shortages of bed space and personnel. Republicans and some Democrats fear that relaxing detention policies will exacerbate a surge that is already straining the Biden administration.
HALPERIN SAYS: The politics of this are indeed fascinating to some, but this is a humanitarian crisis which will likely set back the cause of immigration reform and create a spooling mess that will take months or years to correct. It is too soon to say that the border is Joe Biden’s Vietnam, but the humanity and numbers here are staggering.
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3. Democrats are simultaneously building up the infrastructure and Green aspirations in the pending reconciliation package with a “too big to fail to win 50 Senate Democratic votes” strategy while simultaneously (and wrongly) somehow assuming they can still win Republican cooperation and votes for the measure:
Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), the top Republican on the Transportation Committee, said he told Biden that Republican priorities had to be taken into account in any legislation.
“A transportation bill needs to be a transportation bill that primarily focuses on fundamental transportation needs, such as roads and bridges,” Graves said in a statement. “Republicans won’t support another Green New Deal disguising itself as a transportation bill.” (Washington Post)
HALPERIN SAYS: As some on the left wait for the filibuster to be eliminated, others are in what appears to be fantasy mode, thinking they can add even more to the bill, including comprehensive immigration reform (!) and that such a gambit will draw GOP support. Whether another all-Democratic enterprise can prevail in the fall is a separate question, but it seems pretty clear that this is not what unity and bipartisanship look like.
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4. The current President of the United States loves foreign policy more than economic policy, and David Sanger of the New York Times has an essential early read on what has happened so far:
The Biden foreign policy that emerges from these early weeks is one of restraint, caution and fast-paced deliberation. Decisions come more quickly than they did in the Obama administration, when Mr. Biden, as vice president, complained about the endless meetings….
To Mr. Biden’s supporters, it is all a triumph of rationality, of thinking through strategy rather than tweeting a decision first and coming up with the rationale to fit it later. To his critics, including some on the left, Mr. Biden’s first few weeks on the world stage are a lost opportunity to penalize a murderous leader, end drone strikes altogether or flip the switch quickly to get back into the Iran nuclear deal.
The president’s advisers note that it is early yet, and that some of the hardest decisions are coming in the next few weeks, including whether to withdraw the remaining 2,500 American troops from Afghanistan and what mix of public sanctions and covert cyberstrikes to assemble against Russia for the SolarWinds cyberattack on government and corporate targets.
HALPERIN SAYS: I would love to know what Putin and Xi think about this story. At some point, “work in progress” becomes a body of work.
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5. As grave as the sexual harassment allegations against Andrew Cuomo are, and as rightfully damaging as his failure to fully take responsibility for his actions is, his conduct regarding nursing home deaths remains a major political and legal problem for him that will not just disappear. As with the harassment matter, additional reporting and facts are not the governor’s friends:
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top advisers successfully pushed state health officials to strip a public report of data showing that more nursing-home residents had died of Covid-19 than the administration had acknowledged, according to people with knowledge of the report’s production.
The July report, which examined the factors that led to the spread of the virus in nursing homes, focused only on residents who died inside long-term-care facilities, leaving out those who had died in hospitals after becoming sick in nursing homes. As a result, the report said 6,432 nursing-home residents had died—a significant undercount of the death toll attributed to the state’s most vulnerable population, the people said. The initial version of the report said nearly 10,000 nursing-home residents had died in New York by July last year, one of the people said. (Wall Street Journal)
The central role played by the governor’s top aides reflected the lengths to which Mr. Cuomo has gone in the middle of a deadly pandemic to control data, brush aside public health expertise and bolster his position as a national leader in the fight against the coronavirus. (New York Times)
HALPERIN SAYS: Cuomo has always counted on his team staying completely loyal to him; on both of these important matters of controversy and personal responsibility, Andrew is now one whistleblower away from resignation or impeachment. And it could happen.
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6. There will be more plot twists, but the pandemic spending bill is going to be signed into law by Joe Biden after Senate and House passage.
HALPERIN SAYS: Joe Manchin will vote with his party, Lisa Murkowski will (almost certainly) vote with her party, and the 50-50 Senate will remain the 50-50 Senate. I don’t begrudge Capitol Hill reporters doing their jobs to record all of this activity for history, but please prepare for another few days of sound and fury signifying that Team Biden-Harris-Pelosi-Schumer have convinced their flock this bill must pass.
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7. Donald Trump has picked another fight with Mitch McConnell, Georgia Governor Kemp, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
HALPERIN SAYS: And the fact that many of you are hearing about this tiff for the first time is an extraordinary indication of how far the news bar has moved on the former president after just a few weeks.
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