DeSantis against Trump, the great Republican duel

In the failed launch of his candidacy by the hand of Elon Musk, Ron DeSantis only once uttered the word trump. And it was not the noun, but the verb: "Merit must trump (Trump) over identity politics," he said a minute after starting. Although he did not mention Donald Trump once, the former president is the great rival to beat in a crowded primary election to choose the Republican Party's candidate for the 2024 elections.

Trump did quote his rival again and again on Wednesday, but not exactly by name. He called him "Ron DeSanctus" or "Ron DeSanctimonious", to accuse him of being a prude; "Ron DiSaster", for the disaster of the premiere of his campaign, or "Rob", reproducing the error of a British newspaper to convey that he is so insignificant that people do not even know his name. "The way you have managed your ad, you will manage the country!" he wrote on his network among other more lackadaisical attacks.

Trump, 76, loves to give nicknames to his rivals, like a schoolyard bully. But that backlash and the barrage of negative publicity on television against Florida's governor show that the former president fears his rival. He is ahead in the polls, yes, but Trump knows very well how volatile the trends are, even more so with the judicial calendar that lies ahead.

That's DeSantis' own thesis: "I think a lot of what he's doing is showing everybody that he understands I have a good chance of beating him because now he's not criticizing anybody else. Just me. They wouldn't do it if they didn't think I have a chance, because I think they realize that I'm offering people a record of achievement that is unparalleled. They know I have a better chance of winning the election," he said in an interview with Jack Heath's Good Morning New Hampshire radio show on Thursday, when direct questions about Trump made it impossible for him to continue dodging the issue.

DeSantis, 44, has a delicate balance to keep. To win the primaries, the votes of Trump's critics are not enough, but he needs to convince some of his supporters that he is a better option to defeat Joe Biden, who has no major rivals in the Democratic primaries. But you must choose carefully where you pose the battle. Speeches that Biden has found effective, such as accusing Trump of threatening democracy, would be counterproductive for DeSantis.

The governor of Florida has found some points where he believes he can seduce the base of his party. He criticizes that Trump appointed Jerome Powell, chairman of the Federal Reserve, later renewed by Biden, because this way he can hold them responsible for the high inflation that the country has suffered. It also points to how the debt and deficit increased under Trump, another key issue for his voters. And on the border, he promises to build a "complete" wall, a way of signaling that Trump didn't. DeSantis had a group of Venezuelans who had crossed the border from Mexico taken to Florida so he could send them on a charter flight to Democratic territory and thus show toughness with immigration.

He has approved a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy in Florida that he believes can also bear fruit among voters in the Republican primary. Trump boasts of having appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned the constitutional right to abortion and referred to the law of each state, but rejects a federal law that restricts it nationwide.

But its star theme is the pandemic. Florida reopened activity earlier, which was good for the economy, and slowed down covid immunization, which was very bad for health, but has built a myth around his administration that connects better with the anti-vaccine drive of much of the most faithful Republican electorate. When a son of Trump tweeted a meme showing the former president taking down DeSantis, Christina Pushaw, of the governor's campaign, replied: "Your father could not placate even the 50-kilogram goblin known as Anthony Fauci," referring to the prestigious epidemiologist who coordinated the response to the pandemic and who became the object of the ire of Republicans. but the one Trump kept in office.

DeSantis gives one of lime and one of sand. In an interview Thursday night on Newsmax, where he also suffered some minor technical problems, he applauded him: "Most of our voters obviously appreciate a lot of the things that President Trump did. I do. He's been attacking me a lot, but I still give him credit for the things he did well, especially with the economy in the first three years." In another, on host Matt Murphy's radio show on 99.7 WTN, he criticized: "Obviously, he's attacking me from the left. I don't know what happened to Donald Trump. He's a different guy today than when he was running in 2015 and 2016 and I think the direction he's taking with his campaign is the wrong one."

DeSantis' ideology is conservative, populist, protectionist, defiant: a kind of Trumpism without Trump. It is more aggressive and extremist about cuts in social security and health or in the culture wars and against diversity and gender identity. He has banned Chinese citizens from buying property in Florida, another errand for his hypothetical foreign policy in which the Ukraine war is a "territorial dispute," he said, although he later said he had been misunderstood.

Although he has a seemingly perfect resume (baseball captain, from a middle-class family, graduated from Yale and Harvard, Navy veteran, with experience as a congressman and governor, young, married, with three ideal young children), the governor is cold, lacks some empathy and people skills. The Trump campaign said launching the candidacy on Twitter was ideal for DeSantis because he didn't have to see anyone.

In reality, DeSantis poses neither an ideological battle (there are not so many differences) nor a popularity contest (there he is lost against Trump). What he has to convince staunch Republicans is that he is a better candidate to defeat Biden. His victory in Florida with a 19-point lead contrasts with the defeat of numerous Trumpist candidates in last November's midterm elections.

Many blamed the former president for the red tide (the color of the Republican Party) that was expected in the legislative elections did not arrive. That was the moment when many looked at DeSantis thinking about 2024, starting with his own supporters, who in the celebrations chanted: "Two more years!"

Ron DeSantis, last July in Tampa (Florida). Phelan M. Ebenhack (AP)

In the Twitter space where he presented his candidacy, DeSantis put his finger on the wound: "There is no substitute for victory. We must end the culture of losing that has infected the Republican Party in recent years. The tired dogmas of the past are inadequate for a vibrant future. We must look forward, not backward. We need the courage to lead and we need the strength to win." It won't be easy, however, for primary voters to make that calculation instead of being swayed by their sympathies. Primaries are usually a popularity contest at the end of the day.

While DeSantis measures his criticism, Trump does not cut himself: "I think he is very disloyal, but he has no personality. If you don't have personality in politics, it's a very tough business," he said this week. "He desperately needs a personality transplant and, to my knowledge, they are not yet medically available. A disloyal person!" he wrote on Truth, his social network.

Both had a good relationship, but the former president feels betrayed because he considers that he owes him the position of governor: "He was dead. He was looking for a job and I supported him and he went up a lot of points. It was 30 points down at least, maybe more than that. He was dead. So I think it's very disloyal, but I don't care. Look, a poll just came out in Iowa. I'm leading by 30 or 40 points. I don't care at all," he said while playing golf outside Washington this week.

The polls do indeed give Trump a wide lead: 53.9% to 20.4%, according to the average of the FiveThirtyEight polls, a gap that has so far been widening. It is not often that a candidate who starts with a clear advantage is dismounted. The last to achieve this was Barack Obama with Hillary Clinton. Trump himself started from the bottom in 2016, but in a year when there were 17 candidates and none dominant. Trump also accumulates more support among the party's congressmen, including those from Florida, who have mostly supported him, which the former president exhibits as a great triumph.

DeSantis is going to have it even harder because the primary system favors the winner of each state (in many he takes all the delegates) and because the vote of Trump's critics has several options to choose from (or divide). Already entering the race for the Republican nomination are the only black Republican senator, Tim Scott; former U.S. ambassador to the UN and former governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley; Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchison; the billionaire entrepreneur of the world of biotechnology and scourge of the woke ideology Vivek Ramaswamy; businessman Perry Johnson; political commentator Larry Elder, and politician and businessman Rollan Roberts, son of the West Virginia senator of the same name. Former Trump Vice President Mike Pence is also expected to compete for the Republican nomination, and there is speculation about Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, among others.

The Republican Party will set a minimum bar of support to participate in candidate debates. Trump, if anything, has hinted that he won't participate: "Unless [DeSantis] comes up, why would anybody debate?" he said this week. Quite the opposite of the governor: "No one has a right because they do to anything in this world, you have to earn it. That's exactly what I intend to do, and I think debates are a big part of the process," he said in his interview with Fox News on Wednesday.

Pending cases

Normally, the primaries are clearing and very few hold on in the race as soon as they see that they have no options. With rallies in 12 cities between Tuesday and Friday, DeSantis will launch his candidacy next week in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the first states to vote. The calendar, without closing, suggests that the decisive month will be March, starting with the so-called Super Tuesday (March 5). By March 25, the date on which the trial against Trump has been set in New York for 34 charges of falsehood derived from three payments to hide scandals (one of them an extramarital affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels) in the 2016 presidential campaign, almost 75% of the delegates will have already been elected.

Trump has other judicial fronts open, but not even the civil conviction for sexual abuse of a New York writer has eroded his popularity. He presents himself as a vigilante and promises a presidency of revenge. DeSantis is willing to pardon Trump himself if convicted and the Capitol stormers on January 6, 2021: "On the first day, I will have people who will meet and study all these cases, who are victims of instrumentalization or political persecution. We will be aggressive in granting pardons," he said this week in another interview on The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show.

Both Trump and DeSantis (who raised $8.2 million on his first day of campaigning) have their pockets full for a publicity battle in style. The governor of Florida has attracted some big donors, but the former president does not fall short and has more contributions from the grassroots, which manages to appear as a candidate of the people while playing golf in an elite private club.

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