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The Coming DeSantis Balancing Act

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  November 18, 2022 12:01 PM

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is flying high these days. He's fresh off a breathtakingly lopsided victory in his state, the likes of which have literally never been seen before. He led Sunshine State Republicans to wins up and down the ballot, decimating the Democrats and repudiating the news media. For the first time since 1873, Democrats will be shut out from statewide office in Florida. The left and the press launched an endless stream of attacks on DeSantis throughout his first term, and he fought back aggressively. In doing so, he's achieved governing results so positive that Florida voters saw fit to endorse his continued leadership by nearly 20 points last week. A dramatic vindication. DeSantis improved upon his 2018 victory margin by almost exactly 19 percentage points. That would constitute a blowout virtually anywhere, but in Florida, it's an unthinkable tsunami. The governor seems to be relishing his moment, stepping up his role as a leader within a national GOP still reeling a bit from a surprisingly underwhelming overall midterm cycle. Many Republicans are looking for good advice on electoral success, and DeSantis is uniquely positioned to offer it right now: 

While former President Donald Trump was announcing his 2024 comeback campaign Tuesday night, his chief potential Republican primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, was 168 miles to the north, outlining a different electoral path forward for the party. During a closed-door appearance before the Republican Governors Association meeting at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in Orlando, the governor gave a detailed explanation on how he scored a lopsided reelection last Tuesday — including examples laden with implicit contrasts to the former president, who went unmentioned...DeSantis argued forcefully against the widely shared Trump-era conventional wisdom that the party couldn’t appeal simultaneously to suburban and rural voters, saying that he “won overwhelmingly” with suburbanites while also racking up massive “Saddam Hussein margins” in the state’s rural areas, according to a recording of the one-hour appearance...The appearance came during a two-day conference where governors, donors, and senior party officials grappled with last week’s disappointing midterm election and conveyed the desire for a new blueprint for the party. With the Florida governor and other prospective candidates waiting in the wings, many of the attendees said it was time for Republicans to move forward, blaming Trump for their failure.

It's an over-simplification to blame any single factor or person for the party's notable shortcomings last Tuesday, but it's an empirical reality that the former president was a drag on the party in key battlegrounds. A few data points: 

Despite his huge base of supporters, Trump was much less popular than the party he seeks to lead. A Washington Post scorecard found that GOP House candidates outran Trump’s 2020 margins in 344 out of 435 districts, or about 80% of the time. Trump’s favorability rating among exit poll voters was a dismal 39%, and even in places like ruby-red Texas, it was only 45%. In 2020, Trump won 47% nationwide in his re-election bid. Nearly three out of 10 voters this year said their main reason for voting was to oppose Trump, even though he has been out of office for two years. Only 16% said their main reason was to express support for Trump. If there is one single explanation for why the 2022 midterms were so different from others, it’s this: It became a referendum on Trump almost as much as it was on Joe Biden’s failures. That’s never happened before...The difference leaps out at you from the exit polls. People were genuinely disappointed in Biden. But the 10% of voters who said they “somewhat disapproved” of his record actually voted for Democrats over Republicans by four points. “Republicans failed to make this into a referendum campaign,” Ken Spain, a former Republican campaign strategist, told NBC News. “The candidates who underperformed in battleground states and districts had one thing in common: Trump’s endorsement.”

Republicans barely won voters who described themselves as "dissatisfied" with the state of the country (as opposed to angry), and Democrats actually had a small national lead in House races among independents. These are huge failures of the out-of-power party in an environment like this. People can argue over how much of that failure is attributable to Trump, but some substantial portion of it surely is, which brings us back to DeSantis. Fresh polling shows that he's well-situated to become a viable presidential candidate, overtaking Trump in a flurry of national and state-level 2024 GOP primary surveys. New ones continue to roll in. Eye-opening results here: 

If DeSantis wants to run for president in the 2024 cycle, which I think he does, there are many encouraging signs for him floating around right now. Donald Trump didn't start preemptively trashing him for no reason. But taking the plunge and actually supplanting Trump as the frontrunner for the nomination would be very challenging and fraught with political peril. DeSantis could peak too soon. He might run into trouble or badly miscalculate down in Florida. He may misread his moment and squander the opportunity he has. Trump could consolidate support, while a crowded GOP field makes it impossible for any one alternative to gain traction, in a repeat of 2015 and 2016. Any number of other scenarios could play out that may render any DeSantis 2024 ambitions quixotic, in retrospect. I suspect he's thought long and hard about all of this and is developing a plan to avoid pitfalls, ahead of a possible-to-probable run. We'll see.  

There are many factors he'll need to consider, from the timing of an announcement to how to manage and head-off various non-Trump opponents. Perhaps most crucially, however, DeSantis will need to convince Republicans that he is a preferable pro-Trump successor to Trump, not something else, while maintaining the broad appeal he demonstrated in his re-election romp. In my view, any successful effort to move past Trump can only be led by a credible pro-Trump figure who does not come across as an overall Trump critic. Sure, opposing Trump in an election fight will require some, well, opposing. But there's a difference between being an electoral opponent of Trump's and being anti-Trump. Conservative writer Nate Hochman made a similar point recently: 

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DeSantis’s best claim to the nomination is not to present himself as a break with Trump’s legacy, but as the man who is better-suited to continue it than Trump himself. That is not, of course, why the Trump-sceptical conservatives who have flocked to DeSantis prefer him. Republican elites and beltway conservative leaders, many of whom were less enthusiastic about Trump than rank-and-file party voters, see DeSantis as a long-overdue reprieve from the ex-president’s influence over the GOP...neither Right-wing writers nor the Republican establishment have the final say in these matters: Republican voters do. If DeSantis allows himself to be defined as the Never Trump — or even the anti-Trump — candidate, he will be permanently discredited in the eyes of many of the voters he needs to win. If he can convince those voters that he is the next step in the MAGA movement, he may just have a chance...Trump’s influence, at least in part, helped stymie the long-foretold red wave, delaying the arrival of the Republican “cavalry” to throw sand in the gears of the Biden agenda for at least another two years. Republican voters are looking for someone to lead the movement that Trump began in 2016 — not to abandon it altogether. But they also need someone who can win them the election.

It's a delicate balance, but DeSantis' best (and arguably only) path to 2024 success is avoiding alienating large swaths of Trump supporters (beyond his hardest core fans, who will spit fire at anyone challenging their guy) by persuasively claiming the mantle of a younger, more effective, more electable guardian and advocate of Trump's agenda and legacy. Doing this will likely entail scrupulously ignoring or brushing off Trump's barbs, plus media efforts to drag him into a mud fight. DeSantis will probably need to reply to Trump attacks against him with...Trump praise. When Trump says that DeSantis would be nothing without his 2018 endorsement, DeSantis can agree that the endorsement was critical in that campaign and express gratitude for it.  He can then pivot to what really matters: What DeSantis did with that opportunity to govern, which is far more relevant than who helped whom four or five years ago. The best way to neutralize the coming attacks from Trump may be to rhetorically hug Trump as much as possible, without descending into humiliating sycophancy. It's the Brian Kemp two-step. 

This might sound something like, "I was proud to receive President Trump's endorsement in 2018, and he's right that it was instrumental. I was also proud to endorse Trump in 2016 and 2020, and to have voted for him twice. Similarly, he has now voted for me twice as governor, and he's a valued constituent in the state of Florida. We're thrilled to have him here. He was a great president who did important things for our country, and we should all be grateful." And then, when the time is right, he adds the shift: "But what matters now, in 2024, is who is best equipped to lead our party to victory in November, and then to lead a nation facing so many challenges, many of which have been caused or exacerbated by Joe Biden and the Democrats." And that's where he makes his case about turning the page. Not out of scornful rejection of Trump, but as what is necessary to win and advance the cause. 

In the meantime, I think DeSantis benefits from Trump's wildly premature entry into the race, which has the added benefit of freezing out some Republicans who'd otherwise have clogged up the field. Depending on Trump's trajectory, he can adjust his timeline and messaging, if needed, but he can hang back and wait for a while. There's no great rush. For context, Biden didn't announce his 2020 campaign until spring of 2019. DeSantis should seek to stay disciplined, navigate the incoming fire from Trump and others, and focus on the business of the people of Florida (with the built-in excuse/reality of an upcoming legislative session early in the year). Governing Florida allows DeSantis to put points on the board and draw useful contrasts that accentuate the strength he demonstrated on election night. On that front, I'll leave you with this: