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Keep Focused and Ignore DeSantis vs. Trump
And we’re off! Governor DeSantis has made the unofficial, official. I did not listen but some accounts I have read indicate that the announcement may not have gone smoothly.
But that is irrelevant — DeSantis is in and is the only declared candidate anywhere close to challenging President Trump for the Republican nomination, and thus DeSantis vs. Trump is going to dominate infighting at least until some primary returns are counted.
But it is a distraction.
The presidency of Joe Biden has created enormous problems for the nation and they will continue unabated at least until January 2025. The problems are so many — legal, financial, cultural, national security — that one Progressive strategy seems to be paying off: if you present enough targets, you can’t shoot them all. And, if so, the Progressive contagion can be arrested at best but not defeated.
So it is going to take some prioritizing. Where do you start? What set of initiatives if the Progressives are turned out of federal power will have the most impact on restoring the nation?
The Republican nominee has to be able to address this and make the case that (1) he/she can persuade the voters that the Progressives cannot be allowed to stay in charge, and (2) the specific prioritized steps he/she will take to have the greatest impact on the totality of problems the Progressives have created.
Personally, I think Vivek Ramaswamy has a very good handle on this and is thinking in this way. But his profile is too low. I have contributed to his campaign and encourage others to do so to make sure he is in the picture and makes it into the debates. But I concede that it looks to be between DeSantis and Trump. But whichever side you choose, the enemy is the Progressive ideology as empowered in the Administrative State and its allies in corporations (specifically media, financial and technological) and academia, and the weakened judiciary.
And keep in mind that in order for the Progressives to be turned out of power, we need two things: (1) the ground game will need to be strong, any method of pulling together votes that is legal in the post-Covid world must be used by Republicans whether we think it correct or not, because the Progressives will be doing even if we don’t, and (2) we will need to get the support of voters to whom Republicans have traditionally not appealed. President Trump has been the absolute best at doing this, DeSantis needs to demonstrate that he can do so outside of Florida to even be considered to be the Republican standard bearer.
So as the candidates stump, evaluate them against the challenges described above. Are the attacks on Progressivism clear and persuasive? Do the planned actions address the most important problems? Does the candidate evidence a real connection to “common folk” — reflecting their priorities and concerns? Does their campaign organization have a handle on the new vote collection rules?
Personal snark between candidates is irrelevant. But be aware that some of the rhetoric is a stand-in for a larger question, e.g., when Trump claims that DeSantis is “disloyal,” he is really raising a question of whether DeSantis can be trusted to do what he promises to do; when DeSantis says he doesn’t know anything about how to pay off a paramour he is making an issue about judgment. President Trump has the advantage in that exchange because the voters can see his track record as President after his moral missteps, the voters are just now hearing promises from DeSantis at a national level that he hasn’t yet had a chance to fulfill or break.
There will be more of this — so much more. And the only way to get through it without pulling apart is to stay focused on the purpose of the General Election, to not get caught up in the nastiness of the back and forth. Instead, we need to evaluate how these exchanges demonstrate that the candidate is making the best case for victory in 2024.
Published in General
David French is NeverDeSantis... unsurprisingly.
There HAS TO BE a strategic role in the next Republican White House for Vivek Ramaswamy. Perhaps a Susan Rice/Vallery Garrett-style role.
Can you give us the highlights?
Treasury secretary, Energy secretary, or when Powell’s term is up, Chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Yes and no about Trump understanding the huge problems with corporatism.
Trump totally understood and understands what the Uni Party’s desires for trade agreements that favor their investments in China trade hold for the USA. These trade agreements hold nothing other than disasters for our ability to have goods – including computer products used in our weapons systems and our foods and medicines. Should we really be getting such essentials from a “trading partner” who is also an enemy?
So Trump was good on that score.
But for whatever reason, he continued to mollify the big corporate hold on our nation via the pharmaceutical industry’s capture of our “health” agencies. He was president and had power. The pharmaceutical companies hold was preventing us from having actual treatments. Their syncophant, one Tony Fauci, was denying those who thought that they had COV any possibility of being treated early. (Take note: Even though in March 2020, the media stated quite clearly how early treatment for COV was essential, the NIH/CDC put out guidelines stipulating that no doctors anywhere in the US should offer any patients any treatment for COV until in the hospital and on ventilaters. A deadly proposition!)
Was there a reason why he could not have fired Fauci? Was the reason because once Trump declared COV a national emergency, he really no longer had any power — as the nation was then being run by FEMA?
Or did he refrain from kicking Fauci to the curb as it was an election year and he did not want to stir up even more horrible headlines from Mainstream Media?
Also personally I find it hard to forgive Trump for pretending he could not send in Fed troops to defend the people in 38 communities across he USA where Antifa/BLM gangsters looted and burned their way thru business districts owned by mom and pop store keepers.
Yes, states have rights. But citizens have rights as well. The precedent had already been set decades ago by Eisenhower, Kennedy and Nixon that Fed troops can come in and protect American citizens when their governors are not lifting a finger to save their businesses and their lives.
I can think of few ways of dying being worse than being clubbed to death with baseball bats wrapped in barbed wire while trying to defend my small time convenience store in a community that had depended on that business.
Fair comment, but maybe President Trump will feel less constraint and be more aggressive. If he is re-elected it will be obvious that the country is ready for a reset.
Hasn’t the day yet come when David French’s opinions are a non starter?
The short version: French is a corporatist and he hates the new antagonism toward corporations.
Good idea. Put him in charge of our dollars. And to ride herd on the Fed. Reserve.
Surely a fascinating GOP contest between Trump and De Santis beats a moribund process to prop up the bewildered incumbent on the other side?
Earlier this evening I got to thinking about and laughing at DeSantis’s firm statement that he would pardon the J6 prisoners and Trump. What a great move! His saying that immediately contradicts the notion that Joe Biden is the nice guy in the race. And that’s all Biden has to offer.
I bet that Biden, or his aides perhaps, will soon figure out that he needs to take these issues off the table, lest people realize that he is actually a belligerent nasty vindictive harsh punitive monster. :) :)
True in part. But the NY Times and MSM all in on Trump. Think even Slow Joe can beat him. No idea if they are right. But NY Times article today about DeSantis’ strategy sounds like its worried.
He couldn’t fire Fauci because nobody knew how wrong he was. What we know about Fauci, we learned after Trump left office.
We don’t lose because our politicians fight dirty. We lose because our voters are weaklings who can’t stand the dirty fight. Dem voters aren’t deterred by dirty fights and even love it when the ugliness targets Repubs.
Really? I’d have to see a timeline on that.
Here’s a timeline: A timeline of Fauci’s predictions about the COVID pandemic.
I think a fair reading supports @redherring ‘s comment. Fauci was given a tremendous platform and had used his time in government to curry favor with powerful politicians and the media. He didn’t wear well, but the chinks in the armor were not evident to enough people before Trump was out of office. There were people who knew he was full of BS early on, but it wasn’t a widespread phenomena until after Trump was gone. His changing story on the vaccines is what finally damaged his public appeal.
Exactly. A lot of people in NIH didn’t like him and called him a “little Napoleon.” As more came out, we learned Blix was worse.
What did Fauci do before Trump left office that we didn’t find out about until after? Some of the details of his relationship with the funding of the EcoHealth Alliance may not have been confirmed until later, but that is far from sufficient to say that what we know about Fauci we learned afterwards.
Which is irrelevant to my query. .
@thereticulator, we seem to be talking past each other. The question started out (IMV) as to whether Trump could have/should have fired Fauci and thus whether his failure to fire Fauci makes Trump culpable for Fauci’s role? You seem to take the view that Trump is strictly liable regardless of what he knew or could have known. That’s a viewpoint, and if so is disqualifying. Then the same standard can be applied to DeSantis who, whatever his later actions were, deprived Floridians of freedom for a period of time — longer than “2 weeks to stop the spread”. If it is strict liability, then both are disqualified. If you want one not to be disqualified, then articulate a different standard.
I don’t weigh in on that topic at all. I question the timeline. I try to pay a lot of attention to sequences and time. That’s why I’m annoyed when YouTube now tells me a video was published “1 year ago” when it really was published a year and ten months ago. Saying that we didn’t learn about how wrong Fauci was until after Trump left office asks me to forget all the conversations we had about Fauci when Trump was still in office.
On what grounds do you think Trump could have fired him for cause?
I think that depends on who is meant by “we”. No one is suggesting that Fauci wasn’t sketchy in Feb 2020. I certainly thought he was. But what could Trump do about it politically until Fauci was broadly understood to be sketchy is the question. And when was that? IMO the timeline says that was mid 2021.
Exactly the right question, I think. The law is really complicated on this issue. I’m not sure he could have fired him or many other people in the federal government. It’s true of a lot of agencies. This lack of hiring and firing control is probably why Trump pushed through this executive order that really ticked off the bureaucracy and that, as I understand it, Biden et al has reversed.
A walk through Google-returned search results on this issue is hilarious. Wow, did Trump’s actions get the bureaucracy angry. :) :) :)
I remember reading about this issue a few years ago in which the articles said these laws evolved in a highly partisan way such that they are a tangled mess.
I think these laws to protect federal employees were passed during a time when there was more character in the bureaucracy such that the employees (and/or appointees) were less political than they are today. Job security was what they got in return for being nonpolitical.
They were probably never like that, but that was the hope and expectation.
I was shocked at how political Fauci turned out to be. He seemed to like and respect Trump at the start of the pandemic. Then some switch flipped, and Fauci started working for the Never Trumpers. It was very strange.
It would not surprise me to learn that Fauci wanted to be the most powerful man in the world in that he could bring down Trump. And he may have done just that. :) :) :)
I don’t think we’ll ever know. But, wow, it is so possible.
Trump and all presidents are in an odd position. I had a friend who was a principal of a middle school, and I was helping out in the office. There were so many people in the building who really needed to be nudged out the door to some other job. They were miserable and making everyone else miserable. I was talking to my friend about the situation, and he said, “There are unions at every level in education. I have essentially all the responsibility but none of the control.” That’s what Trump seemed to be facing in Washington.
We want our presidents to be nice guys that we can talk to and who represent us as the people we would be if we were in charge. Nice people.
But then when things go south, we want the authoritative store manager who fires everyone in sight and everyone despises.
We need to work this out in our head, what we really want in our leaders. As it stands, no one could do this job of president to anyone’s complete satisfaction.
Perhaps it is not a binary of disqualification or not, but it is matter of who has good instincts at a time of crisis. DeSantis followed experts, then doubled checked, then changed course. Trump delegated to liars and fools and never stepped up to lead. Who did it better? Neither were as a wise as me, but that is a high standard:)
Hmmm. So you are saying that President Trump would have been a better leader by declaring a national state of emergency, overriding federalism, firing Fauci, and restraining Newsom, Cuomo, Whitmer, et al.? Yeah, you are probably right, but….
Rather then firing Fauci, Trump made a TV show out of their briefings. Trump could have toned that down, keeping Fauci and Birx from being in the limelight rather than stowed away in the back room where they belonged. Those TV briefings became a clown show and a perfect opportunity to allow the media to politicize every action.
I’d have to see the timeline that shows that.