Ron DeSantis: A Case for Self-Awareness
There is no getting rid of Trumpism without looking in the mirror
Ronald Dion DeSantis is out, and the postmortems are in. The reasons for his failure run the gamut: He failed to connect with voters, attacked Trump too little or too much, had a terminally online and ineffectively managed campaign, made a series of unforced errors, or perhaps never had a chance. Whatever the reason, a common theme throughout these lamentations is dismay.
The Republican Party seems destined to lose in the general election with Donald Trump as its candidate, and the ‘moderate’ wing of the party is looking for a culprit. Some blame Democrats and the media pushing indictments, others blame Trump, and some even blame the electorate. What’s lacking is serious introspection into how they got here and the role they played in it.
DeSantis supporters are not all that different from Trump supporters despite clinging to that distinction to appear respectable, reasonable, and moderate. The policy daylight between Trump and DeSantis is nearly nonexistent, and DeSantis embodies many of the same shortcomings as Trump. Trumpism will continue to run rampant within the Republican Party’s ranks until they come to terms with these facts.
No cohort better represents the anti-Trump, pro-Desantis wing of the Republican Party better than the editors at the National Review. In 2016, they wrote an article titled “Against Trump.” In it, they offer a litany of reasons not to vote for Trump. Chief among them were substantive policy differences on immigration, foreign policy, and the economy. They also mention his wobbly record on multiple issues, inexperience, and uninterested attitude toward limited government, reforming entitlements, and the Constitution. They also state: “his obsession is with ‘winning,’ regardless of the means — a spirit that is anathema to the ordered liberty that conservatives hold dear and that depends for its preservation on limits on government power.” We will return to this last point later, but there were substantive policy differences between Trump and his ‘moderate’ detractors in 2016.
The editors recently published a similar article arguing the same conclusion but for different reasons. They argue Trump’s actions surrounding and leading up to January 6th are “infamous presidential acts and represented serious offenses against our constitutional order” and “[o]n this basis alone, both [Haley and DeSantis] are vastly preferable to Trump.” Outside of his “bad instincts on trade and NATO,” Trump would waste much of his time on personal vendettas, has a “tendency to personalize everything,” is contemptuous of rules, and his “erratic nature would risk real harm to the country.” All of this is true, but what’s missing is any substantive policy differences.
In 2016, they dedicated multiple paragraphs to describing, in detail, the policy differences they see between themselves and Trump. In 2024, all they could muster was a single line about instincts related to policy because Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump do not have policy differences. Indeed, DeSantis’s primary campaign pitch, endorsed repeatedly by National Review contributors, has been, “I can do what Trump couldn’t.” Ron DeSantis would usher in a golden era of Trump policies because he’s an effective leader who can pull the correct levers of power and maneuver the party into a fighting position on the policies that matter. In other words, DeSantis would be Trump but better.
Multiple contributors at the National Review share this assessment, and Noah Rothman summed it best: “The Florida governor has devoted most of his energies to peeling away Donald Trump’s core supporters by taking ownership of the former president’s issue set and presenting himself as a more competent and capable steward of those priorities.”
The only daylight between the two is on COVID and Ukraine. The former is no longer relevant, and the latter doesn’t appear decisive within the party, given that DeSantis’s position is “roughly in the center of the Republican Party.” The lone bailiwick remaining is entitlement reform, and DeSantis has already caved.
And so, we have the justification for voting for DeSantis, not because he has better policies, but because he is “far and away better on the merits, more likely to win in November, and, if elected, more likely to deliver — free from the wild drama of a second Trump term — conservative results.” The ‘moderate’ wing of the Republican party cannot distinguish their preferred candidate from Donald Trump as it relates to policy and are left to justify their support in terms of effectiveness, temperament, and drama.
“Dave tried to change things. So they got rid of Dave.” To be sure, DeSantis does not pose the same threat to the constitutional order as Trump, this much I agree with. However, he did cultivate a cadre of yes-men, established a “top-down campaign structure designed to give him [the] information he wanted to hear,” had “a reputation for disregarding advice and data that conflicted with his opinions,” used the power of his office to engage in personal vendettas, and repeatedly downplayed January 6th.
Riddled with inner turmoil, “the DeSantis campaign was too much of a DeSantis fan club.” The blame for his campaign's bizarre decisions ultimately rests with DeSantis himself. Had he listened to his advisors earlier, he might have avoided the most obvious pitfalls: the glitchy X campaign launch, the hyper fixation on wokeness, and his allergy to liberal media. All of which he was advised against doing, and most importantly, the people who challenged these decisions were soon replaced—like Dave. The sad irony is that he often acquiesced to the advice of his advisors soon after relieving them of their duties (these claims are laid out in a comprehensive postmortem by Marc Caputo).
DeSantis used his position as governor to take what can only be described as personal vendettas against Bud Light and Disney. The former in response to using a trans woman in an ad; the latter in response to Bob Chapek’s remarks about HB 1557, better known as the ‘Don’t Say Gay Bill.’ In neither case does it seem to be for the benefit of his constituents; instead, it appears to be in service of DeSantis’s ego. He also personally intervened to get a relatively minor political rival jailed in a sham conviction that was recently overturned.
His stance toward January 6th and the 2020 election are likewise Trumpian. In August of last year, two-and-a-half years after the attempted insurrection, DeSantis publicly dismissed Trump’s 2020 claims. This comes after spending much of that time deflecting from the question, campaigning for election-denying candidates, promising pardons for convicted insurrectionists, and instituting an election interference police force whose only accomplishment is arresting and intimidating eligible voters.
While it is improbable that he would induce a constitutional crisis on the order of Trump, it’s clear that the poor decisions on the campaign trail were a manifestation of his dictatorial temperament and that his ego can drive his political decisions to the detriment of his constituency. All this is to say that DeSantis is an arrogant, ego-driven buffoon that surrounded himself with sycophants and took issue with Trump’s election claims only when forced to by the exigencies of campaigning against the man himself. In a word, he is Trumpian (it’s also worth noting that at least one sub-faction of the Republican Party is ecstatic at his comparison to the fascist dictator of Hungary, Victor Orbán).
DeSantis supporters agree with Trump’s policies and backed a candidate who embodied many of the same shortcomings as Trump. The explanation for this about-face is simply pragmatic. As Dan McLaughlin explains, first, “You cannot assemble a winning coalition without [the Trump faction],” for they are close to a majority within the party. Second, you must hold the coalition together for the general election, and the best person to do that is someone who appeals to both the New Right and the Reaganite wings of the party. DeSantis is better suited for this task than Haley. The anti-Trump, pro-DeSantis wing has become unmoored in the exact manner they warned in 2016, eschewing nearly every philosophical and political objection they once espoused solely to win power.
As Ron DeSantis supporters find themselves wondering what to do from here, it’s important to remind them that they buy into the same victimhood logic as Trump supporters that justifies the use of state power against their enemies, agree with Trump’s policies, backed a Trump-lite candidate, and are just as obsessed with winning as their demagogic party leader. If electing a more respectable, competent fascist was ever in doubt, the ‘moderate’ wing of the Republican Party has answered unequivocally.
The question they should be asking themselves is not “Why did DeSantis lose?” but “Why did Trump win?” Why has the ‘moderate’ wing of the party dispensed with their 2016 objections? Under what conditions are people susceptible to demagoguery like Trump’s? What role did conservatives like the editors at the National Review play in creating and sustaining those conditions? Until these questions are squarely faced and tackled by American Conservatives, we will continue to see a backslide into right-wing authoritarianism within the Republican Party.
The road ahead for conservatives in America will be difficult if they genuinely want to rid their ranks of Trumpism, and it begins with honest, clear-eyed introspection. In a word, self-awareness.
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