Riding in the ‘Trump lane’

Conant said he can understand why DeSantis isn’t attacking quite yet.

“He is still very much introducing himself to Republican primary voters around the country,” Conant said. “He wants that introduction to be a positive one. He wants people to like him.”

Primary voters still like Trump, he said, but many of them are open to a change.

“That’s the spot DeSantis is trying to fill,” Conant said. “But when it comes to the debates this fall, that’s probably when you’ll see candidates start taking the gloves off.”

Ben Newman, an Orlando attorney who served as Rubio’s regional campaign chair in 2016, said one of the major differences between the 2024 race and 2016 is that Trump is a known quantity.

“He’s not a novelty anymore,” Newman said. “He’s not going to get the kind of free media coverage or unearned media coverage that he got in 2016.”

Another difference, Newman said, is that there is a well-defined “Trump lane” in the GOP primary, which allows candidates to define themselves as Trump-style MAGA populists or as more traditional conservatives.

DeSantis, despite being Trump’s biggest threat in the polls, is running in the Trump lane, Newman said. This led to one of his first real gaffes in issuing a statement that the RussiaUkraine War was a “territorial dispute,” echoing Trump but angering many key Republicans.

DeSantis later backtracked, telling Fox Nation on Thursday his remarks had been “mischaracterized.” He said the Russian invasion was “wrong” and President Vladimir Putin was a “war criminal.”

In sticking to the Trump lane, Newman said, DeSantis may be taking anti-Trump voters for granted, thinking they have nowhere else to go.

“The only way he is going to succeed … is he’s going to have to do a better job of distinguishing himself from Trump,” Newman said. “And that hasn’t happened yet.”