The answer is, “How the hell would I know?” – the governor runs the tightest ship in the business, and not only do his peeps not leak, but you’ll never catch him lying on top of his covers in a robe, hair in curlers and kicking his painted toenails with the telephone receiver up to his ear calling up Maggie Haberman and asking “Whatchya doin’?”
But the fact that Team Heavy D is not out there briefing the world on its strategy does not mean he doesn’t have one. The Trump team wants you to think that the RDS campaign is in chaos because the guy who was president is in the lead, pretty substantially, over six months before the first vote gets cast. But then, if pre-election year polls were particularly predictive, we would have had President Jeb! And Merrick Garland now would be on SCOTUS explaining that free speech isn’t free and the right to keep and bear arms actually refer only to the kind of guns you pump at the gym instead of giving “Get Out of Jail Free” cards to the junkie kids of corrupt pols.
Trump’s strategy is crystal clear – inevitability with a dollop of “and that will show them.” How winning the primary only to lose another general election – recent polls showing the general race in the key battleground states are absolutely brutal to the former prezzy – remains unclear to those of us to whom winning involves victory instead of glorious defeat. But the inevitability thing is a potentially effective strategy – right now, Trump is the default guy for GOP voters who have yet to start paying attention. Republicans know Trump, and they like Trump – hell, most DeSantis people like Trump – so it’s no shock that they rallied to Trump in the wake of these disgraceful lawfare indictments. And the Democrats are ecstatic since Trump is the easiest candidate to take out in the general because about 53% of Americans hate him and will never vote for him. Some people even think the shameful Hunter Biden wrist-slap is partially designed to further rile the rubes into nominating Trump.
Trump presents himself as unbeatable with an insurmountable lead, though his lead has slowly been surmounted. It’s dropping, but DeSantis’s numbers do not yet seem to be rising. Trump clearly knows who his main target is, and it’s not Mr. Friendly Tim Scott, Pious Pence, Establishment Nikki, or Trump’s tech bro Mini-Me Vivek. The Florida governor has a winning record and a bunch of achievements, and in typical Trump fashion, they go right at his strong points. COIVD hero? No, DeSantis was a COVID zero because of reasons, and ignore those videos of Trump hugging the Fauc and also MEATBALL!
There’s a coherent case to be made for Trump – I have friends who make it well and who ought to be the faces of the campaign instead of the C-listers who usually get the gig. But ask about strategy and the Trump campaign, and the answer is that it’s whatever Trump decides to say or the Truth at any given moment. Naturally, this is usually less an argument than a stream of obnoxiousness.
Sadly, a lot of patriotic folks concerned with their country have bought the nonsense parts – “Wait, this internet site says DeSantis loves Soros and Rove and Ronna and that the Bushes are Casey’s cousins and DeSanctimonious likes vaxxes, and that all makes sense to me despite his track record of doing stuff that is the exact opposite of all that, but no one on the internet would ever mislead me, and it reinforces my pre-existing prejudices so I’ll embrace it wholeheartedly.” Trump has unleashed his dogs of war, though many are mutts – a bunch of goobers with usernames along the lines of @TrumpViKING and @RINOSlayerMAGAHero whose Twitter avatar Frank Frazetta iconography belies their doofy Don Martin-lookin’ reality.
Did DeSantis expect all this? Probably, but who knows for sure? He doesn’t talk, nor do his people. Trump’s campaign is Sonny Corleone not merely telling Sollozzo what he’s thinking but making sure it gets on tape for the feds to use to further the frame. The question is whether DeSantis is Fredo or Michael. And if you think he’s Fredo, that seems like wishful thinking. Fredo can barely pick up a guy from the airport. DeSantis took a purple state and made it bright red. He won a 20-point reelection in 2022 when Republicans across the country collectively choked. If DeSantis is the Fredo that his opponent would have you believe, he’s at least got one outstanding attribute – luck.
But it’s unlikely that DeSantis just lucked into his position as the only real challenger to Trump for the 2024 nomination. Ron the Don seems more like Michael – cunning, calculating, and silent. His track record is one of careful planning and calculating risk versus reward by choosing fights; he can win, and that provides a big ROI (like picking a battle with Disney and prevailing). He puts wins on the board – that’s his braggadocio. He also shows a military man’s eye for logistics – the big story in Florida is that it went from a Dem majority to a 500K GOP majority, and that takes organization. We’re seeing stories of DeSantis’s massive ground game being prepared. You can bet that there’s a lot more going on out of sight – and he’s got the cash to make it happen.
But has his campaign plan been disrupted by Trump’s persecution resurgence? Hard to tell, though no plan survives contact with the enemy intact. I have no inside info, but I do see him playing the long game. He does not seem to feel that he needs to “take Trump down,” as some people are eager for him to do. I expect he will wisely avoid walking into the kill zone by fighting Trump on Trump’s terms – no one can out-Trump Trump, but someone could outlast him. Look at the DeSantis campaign so far – it’s built for duration and attrition, not a decisive battle. He’s locked down the money he needs to play this out to Iowa and New Hampshire. He’s building relationships and organizations in both. In the meantime, Trump will have legal troubles piling on, and he will have funding challenges too. But he will also have the Trump Exhaustion Factor. Remember that Trump laid (for him) relatively low for two years before announcing. Now he’s back and in people’s faces. Let’s see if he wears out his welcome again.
The debates will be a challenge. What’s DeSantis’s strategy there? We know the Trump plan – hyperbole, insults, and a certain disregard for objective reality. My guess is that DeSantis will position himself as the guy whose policies you like but who doesn’t grate on you. Maybe that works. If so, he survives and tries to close the deal in Iowa and Ne Hampshire against a guy he hopes is out of money, burdened by lawfare, and who has simply worn out his welcome. DeSantis wants to be The Guy Who Can Win, whereas Trump increasingly just seems obsessed with being The Guy.
So, my assessment of the DeSantis strategy is attrition warfare, where Trump’s lead continues to decrease while DeSantis’s numbers rise as the clown car candidates get a clue and get out. Then Iowa and New Hampshire are the decisive battles – a shock DeSantis win and Trump’s air of inevitability is fatally punctured. He spirals, losing decisively on Super Tuesday and locking it up for DeSantis.
Am I right? DeSantis’s people will not say. They don’t talk. We’ll see if “Action, not words,” is a winning strategy in 2024.
Follow Kurt on Twitter @KurtSchlichter. Get Inferno, the seventh book in the Kelly Turnbull People's Republic series of conservative action novels set in America after a notional national divorce, as well as his non-fiction book We’ll Be Back: The Fall and Rise of America.
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