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What if Donald Trump can’t or doesn’t run in 2024?
And/or if he runs, can another Republican beat him for the nomination?
It is by most measures the most significant binary in our shared American future: Will Donald J. Trump be the Republican nominee for president in less than two years or not?
The implications either way are massive.
Massive for the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, the nation and its soul.
By my count, there are four main chatted about scenarios under which Trump is NOT the standard bearer again (health, legal, decision not to run for family/personal reasons, beaten for the nomination).
And, of course, if it is NOT Trump, the name on the lips of British bookies, Gang of 500 members, top donors, bipartisan pundits, promiscuous pollsters, and, yes, Republican voters is Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a man who is on the precipice of breaking the record for the most money raised in a gubernatorial campaign without self funding (or, maybe, including self funding).
As he cruises towards reelection in the Sunshine State, there is much to say positive from a clinical political point of view about DeSantis’ prospects, much that explains why he is the consensus choice to be the GOP nominee in 2024 if Trump doesn’t make the race – and even why some believe the Florida topper would best his most famous constituent if they both go for the gold.
Take DeSantis’ TV ads. I’m usually wary of analysts declaring certain political spots to be “effective” or “good” because there is no way, outside extensive research, to know if a commercial is actually going to help a pol’s standing or not with voters.
But the DeSantis’ ads so far seem very strong to me, from a messaging and technical point of view.
Watch the latest one:
As with the previous spots, the focus here is on real people (or maybe actors playing real people?...). Note also the nods to teacher pay raises and environmental protection, two of DeSantis’ pre-pandemic efforts that had some conservatives back then grumbling that the governor was too moderate. And the appeal to Hispanic voters.
Team DeSantis is trying to run up the score against Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Crist to produce an electoral and demographic calling card (a la George W. Bush 1998) to send a message to the party and the pundits that the governor is The One.
There are too many cautionary stories out there, including some from folks who know DeSantis well, about his personality and treatment of many around him, to believe he is a flawless rocket ship who will hurdle unmolested to the 2024 nomination.
And whether Trump runs or not, there are other players (Cotton, Cruz, Christie, Pompeo, Pence, Youngkin, etc) who are not just going to let a relative newcomer saunter to the top prize.
Still consider this summary of the little commented on bio of the man who in the minds of many enraptured conservatives sprung full-grown onto Earth just two years ago:
Born on September 14, 1978, in Jacksonville, Florida.
[1] He is of Italian descent.
[2] His family moved to Orlando, Florida, before relocating to
Dunedin, Florida, when he was six years old.
[3] In 1991, he was a member of the Little League team from Dunedin
National that made it to the Little League World Series in
Williamsport, Pennsylvania.
(4] After graduating from Dunedin High School in 1997, he attended
Yale University. He was Captain of Yale's varsity baseball team and
joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity.
[5] On the Yale baseball team, he was an outfielder; as a senior in
2001, he had the team's best batting average at .336.
[6] He graduated from Yale in 2001 with a B.A. Magna Cum Laude in History.
[7] He then spent a year as a History Teacher at the Darlington School.
[8] He attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 2005 with a Juris
Doctor Cum Laude.
[9] He received his Reserve Naval Officer's commission and assignment
to the Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG) in 2004 at the U.S. Naval
Reserve Center in Dallas, Texas, while still a student at Harvard Law
School.
[10] He completed Naval Justice School in 2005.
[11] Later that year, he received orders to the JAG Trial Service
Office Command South East at Naval Station Mayport, Florida, as a
Prosecutor.
[12] In 2006, he was promoted from Lieutenant, Junior Grade to
Lieutenant. He worked for the Commander of Joint Task
Force-Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), working directly with detainees at the
Guantanamo Bay Joint Detention Facility.
13] In 2007, he reported to the Naval Special Warfare Command Group in
Coronado, California, where he was assigned to SEAL Team One and
deployed to Iraq with the Troop surge as the Legal Advisor to the SEAL
Commander, Special Operations Task Force-West in Fallujah.
[14] He returned to the U.S. in April 2008, at which time he was
reassigned to the Naval Region Southeast Legal Service.
[15] The U.S. Department of Justice appointed him to serve as an
Assistant U.S. Attorney at the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle
District of Florida.
[16] He was assigned as a Trial Defense Counsel until his honorable
discharge from active duty in February 2010.
[17] He concurrently accepted a reserve commission as a Lieutenant
Commander in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the US Navy
Reserve.
[18] He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Navy and Marine Corps
Commendation Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal, and the
Iraq Campaign Medal.
[19 He represented Florida's 6th Congressional District in the US
House of Representatives from 2013 to 2018.
****
If DeSantis runs and wins, he would be the youngest Republican elected president in U.S. history, at a time when a lot of voters believe the party and the country are desperately in need a new generation of leaders at the national level.
For the most enthusiastic DeSantis backers, there is the combination of his blue-collar upbringing, young family, and a conservative record that no one has matched, along with his Red-pleasing pandemic performance, his fundraising prowess, his eagerness to pull the pants down on the elites and media, while going 800 miles per hour at all times (making it impossible apparently to slow him down, let alone stop him).
Like Trump, much of his support from the right comes from his backing from conservative traditional and conservative media, which loves how he is constantly spoiling for a fight with anything Blue, including and especially around the “freedom” issues connected to the pandemic, where Florida schools, businesses, houses of worship, and more were kept open.
He has taken on unions, Fauci, Disney, and Big Business, while pounding every imaginable hot hot hot button (judges, taxes, guns, abortion, critical race theory, kids and the Internet, women’s sports, and more).
He’s also cleverly played to suburban voters on a range of issues that could easily go national, including education, crime, the environment, mental health, animal safety, cancer research, and housing.
And the big-time donors love him because he has proven to be an unapparelled fundraiser, closing in on more than $150 million raised this cycle, from over 200,000 contributors across the country, and a small-dollar donor list built through merchandise sales that would be the envy of every other Republican operation with national ambitions if they knew just how vast and sophisticated it is.
I still think Trump is far more likely to be the Republican nominee than DeSantis is. But I see why the chattering class chatters so much about the Sunshine State big.
But as of now I think Trump will run and that Trump will be the nominee, whether DeSantis gets in or not (and my hunch is he won’t).
Still, as the above makes clear (I hope!), DeSantis commanding position as #2 is not just about his Red-hot press conferences or his poll standing.
No one in either party in modern history has had a better two-year Invisible Primary run than Ron DeSantis, with the possible exception of Barack Obama in 2006-2007.
And some day someone will report all the stuff Team DeSantis has done over those two years behind the scenes to improve his standing that even Wide World of News readers don’t know about.
Yet.
****
ESSENTIAL READING
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet next week at a summit in Uzbekistan, a Russian official said Wednesday.
The two leaders will meet at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit, held in the Uzbek city of Samarkand on Sept. 15-16, Russian Ambassador to China Andrei Denisov told reporters.
* The Washington Post extends its previous scoop on the nuclear secrets allegedly found at Mar-a-Lago.
* The Washington Post scratches the important surface on the Team Biden-Team Obama tensions.
