I enjoy when Yglesias pushes back against conventional wisdom in some instances. I think it's helpful to read contrarian voices to challenge what you believe. However, he can be almost willfully blind to the actual realities of the contemporary GOP, and this is not unique to him. Most pundits are pretty comfortable financially and socially. They live in major cities, with all the issues and privileges that accrue to that, and they probably aren't worried about things like abortion rights.
Anyway, Yglesias makes the case for why Ron DeSantis "seems to have stalled". It's kind of willfully obtuse. His argument is that DeSantis was briefly popular because he was very Covid skeptical and that aligned with the GOP base, and now that Covid is gone, he's not as popular.
What a load of horseshit.
DeSantis had his little moment because Trump tried to overthrow the elected government of the United States. He tried desperately to mimic Trump's movements and political instincts - attack, attack, attack - but lacked authenticity and charisma. DeSantis is Scott Walker 2.0. He is a fairly repellent human being with the charm of wet laundry.
What Yglesias consistently does is apply his lens to GOP voters. He fancies himself a rational, objective guy (he is, in fact, a walking bundle of his prior convictions) and therefore assumes that GOP voters are as well. There is a frame in economics and political science of the Rational Actor that presumes that everyone acts in their perceived reasoned self-interest. The behavior of GOP voters who seem to vote against their self-interest puzzles them, but they just assume it's a glitch.
To assume that GOP voters are choosing candidates based on a reasoned evaluation of competing policies is to ignore that political devolution of the Republican Party this century. The fact that the GOP did not have a party platform in 2020 is sense a quirk and not a feature of GOP politics. Trump is an aberration and not - as he truly is - the natural endpoint of a party that has become a creature of Fox News Grievance.
DeSantis' boomlet was caused by his anti-Covid Safety politics. Yglesias is puzzled why Covid amelioration measures became a partisan issue, which gives away the game. Anyone to the left of Trump felt that it was in our personal and national interest to save as many lives as possible by using NPIs and vaccines to fight the virus. Precisely because people on the left took the stance of masking, distancing and vaccinating, the right opposed it. It's that simple and that stupid. Even as Republicans began dying in disproportionate numbers because of their refusal to take countermeasures to Covid, they clung to harmful beliefs that flew in the face of all evidence.
Trump has been mildly hurt by boasting about his vaccination record, which was arguably the one good thing he did as president. Even Trump himself cannot escape Cleek's Law.
So, if we understand that the base GOP voter is simply reacting against the cultural and political Left, then policy doesn't really matter. The obvious craving for a dictatorial strong man by vast portions of the Right is about vanquishing their enemies rather than any real concrete goal. If a policy helps "pwn the libtards" then it is good, even if it hurts them, too.
DeSantis spiked by attacking the current bugaboos of the Right - teaching actual American history, letting LGBT people exist, Disney, education as a public good - not because he had any real hold on their loyalties.
As quite a few people have noted, Trump's legal troubles have helped him with the GOP base. He's committed multiple crimes (ok, allegedly, but he's plead guilty to others). He is manifestly unsuited by temperament, ability or experience to be president. That does not matter! In fact, the more he's placed in legal jeopardy, the more his poll numbers rise with the GOP base.
To embrace Cleek's Law is to abandon the bothsides frame of a certain class of punditry. After Trump was elected, the NY Times went on numerous Cleetus Safaris to Ohio Diners to try and understand the average Trump voters' position on capital gains tax cuts.
They haven't learned a goddamned thing.
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