There’s lots of reporting that the GOP primary field is about to get very crowded. Christie, Sununu, Youngkin, a Dakota Governor nobody’s ever heard of on top of already announced DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott are preparing to run against Donald Trump. Why is this happening when it was assumed that the smart move for the party was to field just one opponent to confront Trump? Well… Meatball Ron just isn’t making anybody’s heart beat faster:
No seasoned, successful politician runs for president without a theory of the case — a detailed and plausible path to victory. And as more prospective candidates surface, it’s becoming clearer what’s at the heart of those plans: a growing belief within the party that DeSantis is a paper tiger.
At one time, the Florida governor looked to be the candidate best positioned to knock off Trump, en route to finishing off President Joe Biden. DeSantis was Trump without the baggage — and 32 years younger.
He was coming off an epic 2022 reelection victory in the nation’s third-largest state, marked by Florida’s biggest winning margin in 40 years. Officials in both parties did a double take at his robust performance among all Latino groups.
With DeSantis, the GOP could get the same conservative policies as Trump, the same unyielding approach, the same judges, the same trolling of the libs. He was a party leader on Covid. The suburbs would be back in play. So would the five states Biden flipped from Trump in 2020.
But DeSantis’ Disney jihad and his Ukraine-is-a-territorial-dispute stumble have undermined his aura of competence among donors and the business community. Trump’s relentless attacks — none of them answered — and his drum beat of abuse have left the two-term governor bruised. Far from projecting strength, DeSantis suddenly appears to be a candidate who’s thrived in a protective cocoon, isolated from media scrutiny, and surrounded by a compliant legislature afraid to test him.
On the eve of his launch, DeSantis now confronts the perception that he is a porcelain candidate, glazed and decorative, durable enough, but not really built to withstand the blunt impact of Trump’s hammer or the full fury of a united Democratic Party.
Yet the notion that DeSantis is ripe for a takedown is only part of the reason why the presidential race is suddenly looking so enticing. In the three years since Trump lost reelection, there is little evidence to suggest he can win back the White House and much evidence to suggest he’ll drag the party to defeat with him.
This is what a healthy portion of the GOP political operative class — and the donor class — believes. Most of Trump’s primary rivals think it, too. Some of them, like Christie, are willing to say it out loud.
“Donald Trump has done nothing but lose since he won the election in 2016. We lost the House in 2018. The Senate and the White House in 2020. We underperformed in 2022 and lost more governorships and another Senate seat,” he said in a recent radio interview.
DeSantis says it privately. According to a New York Times report, the governor told supporters and donors in a call Thursday that Trump can’t win, pointing to “all the data in the swing states, which is not great for the former president and probably insurmountable because people aren’t going to change their view of him.”
Against that backdrop, it’s not a bad bet to jump in now under the expectation of filling the role DeSantis was once assumed to hold. But there is a sense of urgency: any new entrants must get in before DeSantis has the opportunity to use his considerable resources to make it a two-person primary with Trump. The clock begins ticking next week.
I will never understand why they think calling Trump a loser is going to win them the primary. The vast majority of their dipshit voters believe that Trump won and won big. And they aren’t telling them otherwise! This makes no sense.
But there’s another problem. The bigger field almost guarantees that Trump will win the nomination. Here’s why:
In 2024, more states will award delegates through winner-take-all primaries — a system that helped Trump when opponents divided the vote, allowing him to be awarded all or most of the delegates with less than majority support.
Once in office, Trump used his influence to stack state parties with loyalists who increased the number of winner-take-all states from seven in 2016 to 17 in 2020.
Do they not know this? Or is it all some elaborate kabuki dance?
I have to assume that all of them, including DeSantis, are running to be the last man standing in case Trump keels over. That’s the only possible reason.