DeSantis: What he’s offering America
A campaign launch typically gives a presidential candidate a jolt of energy and momentum, said Chris Cillizza in his Substack newsletter. But when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis kicked off his campaign in an audio interview on Twitter with the social media firm’s CEO, Elon Musk, it was an “unmitigated disaster” that only served to raise doubts about DeSantis’ “prime-time readiness.” The streaming audio immediately crashed, subjecting listeners to 20 minutes of dead air and comical, frantic efforts to fix the technical problems. The decision to announce on Musk’s decimated, glitch-ridden platform, instead of before a cheering room of supporters in Florida or a key primary state, was “one of the worst unforced errors” ever seen in a presidential campaign. And it came with DeSantis badly trailing Donald Trump in the polls and needing “a reset.”
When Twitter finally fixed DeSantis’ audio feed, said David Frum in The Atlantic, “the world could hear a man radically and pathetically unready for national leadership.” Rather than take the opportunity to articulate his “broad visions” for the nation, he spoke as a divider, promising to be more competent than Trump in dividing Americans along the lines of race, faith, and class, and in punishing the “woke” elites. Admittedly, DeSantis has “had a tough couple of months,” said Rich Lowry in Politico. But he’s proven himself a real political talent in Florida, and if he can pull off a win in an early primary state like Iowa, he has a real chance “of taking down Trump.”
DeSantis is just as unfit as Trump, said Will Bunch in The Philadelphia Inquirer. He’s offering a “blueprint for American fascism,” saying last week that he’s studied the Constitution’s “leverage points” and has a plan to greatly expand presidential power. In a DeSantis administration, he said, the Justice Department and FBI will not operate as “independent agencies,” and will do his bidding. If DeSantis does prevail, said David French in The New York Times, it may mean the end of “conservatism as we have known it.” Trump junked the social conservatism, economic libertarianism, and commitment to a strong defense that used to define the GOP, transforming it into a populist, big-government party unified by hatred of the Left. If DeSantis prevails, it will show that Trump wasn’t a blip, but “the harbinger of more permanent change.”