Donald Trump obviously broke America's sense of itself and its political norms. He's also a career petty criminal and conman who is likely to be indicted soon on several more charges surrounding the 2020 election. There's an understandable nervousness among GOP elite about him leading the ticket in 2024, especially with the taint of January 6th hanging about him. Therefore they wanted a "Trump without the baggage."
Enter Ron DeSantis.
DeSantis had the pedigree of winning a comfortable re-election in what used to be a purple state, he was not currently under indictment and did not have a decades long record of tax evasion and business fraud to defend.
However, DeSantis had a fatal flaw that passed unnoticed among the commentariat who tried to assure us the DeSantis was a credible challenger to Trump. That fatal flaw? His personality. Sure, Trump was always going to be the nominee as long as he was alive, reasonably healthy and not actively serving a prison term. The fact that folks I respect like Jon Chait and Martin Longman thought he represented a credible challenge to Trump fails to account for the fact that, as Josh Marshall put it, "The GOP is a failed state and Donald Trump is its warlord."
But what IF Trump keels over on the 17th hole at Bedminster? Could DeSantis beat Biden? He is younger, which gives him an advantage Trump - whose meager mental furnishings are way more threadbare than Biden's - would have lacked.
DeSantis, however, thought that he could simply borrow the words to the Trump hymnal without learning the music.
DeSantis is transparently mean in a way that Trump - for all his cruelty - is not. Mean as in cruel but also as in petty. You have stories like this one that beggar belief, where he's ham-fistedly trying to create a Brown Shirt militia, while fighting Disney, the immigrant workforce that allows Florida to function and anyone with a college degree, especially teachers.
DeSantis may be "Trump without the baggage" but he has all the horrifically cruel policies without the winking sense of humor - which I'm assured exists - that Trump purportedly has.
I have a sneaking suspicion that Florida is going to go through some things. A soft boycott of the state by Latino truck drivers and migrant workers is going to pinch. Falling tourism is going to pinch. At some point, DeSantis' clearly unconstitutional laws and orders are going to be overturned, and we are entering hurricane season. The dysfunctional rot that DeSantis has brought to Florida's government reminds me of fellow ideologue Sam Brownback, whose resounding failures as Governor of Kansas actually produced a Democratic governor in that ruby red state.
It turns out that you can't be a "smart Trump" or a "fascist with a better plan." When you ARE a creeping authoritarian, you are ipso facto an idiot and a cretin.
Lucky for us.
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