Florida Governor Rob DeSantis has made it official that he’s running for President in 2024. Right now I’m backing DeSantis over Trump, not for the reasons floated by the TDS-riddled, cruiseship class “conserving conservatism” crowd, but because DeSantis has constantly, consistently and repeatedly taken the fight to the social justice warrior set to combat their quest to fundamentally alter America in the name of neo-Marxist victimhood identity politics.
And much more in that vein.
We can debate various other positions of Trump and DeSantis, but DeSantis has been much more active in fighting the far-left social justice warrior agenda than Trump was while President. DeSantis has crushed his SJW enemies, driven identitarians before him and heard the lamentations of their shemales.
Trump may drive the left crazy, but it’s DeSantis that has the hill of skulls surrounding his throne.
Tags: 2024 Presidential Race, Critical Race Theory, Donald Trump, Elections, Environmental Social Governance (ESG), Florida, Republicans, Ron DeSantis
Voted for Trump twice, and will do so in 2024 if he’s the candidate, but DeSantis should be the GOP candidate for no other reason than age. It’s time we ended the gerontocracy and let the next generation take over.
I see a simple numbers game.
Many people who voted for Trump in 2016 changed to Biden in 2020. Those voters aren’t going to come back.
Many people who voted for Trump in 2020 balk at his behavior in the months afterward, and (sadly) believe the lies of the J6 commission. Those voters aren’t coming back.
I’m not arguing these people are correct; I’m laying out the numbers.
I don’t see how Trump can win in 2024. Not with these numbers, and not with the fraud we can expect.
Or, let’s look at it a different way.
The swamp underestimated Trump in 2016. In 2020 they corrected that mistake. If he gets the nom in 2024, what, are they going to let him win? Nope.
DeSantis is the only viable candidate that I see.
Oh, and everything LP said above. 8-)
I wouldn’t try to predict 2024 at this point. Hell, I wouldn’t try to predict 2023.
I’ve got my doubts about both Trump and DeSantis. I’m still suspicious of the lack of preparation demonstrated by him after the 2016. It’s almost like he didn’t expect to win; nothing was prepared, and he hadn’t thought at all about the fact that the morass in DC was against him. His hiring decisions were naive; he trusted the assholes from the establishment, when he already knew from Rogers that they were spying on him. Stunning incompetence, in that regard.
Which is why I suspect he was a stalking horse for Hilary who turned on her.
I still voted for him. I still think he did an unexpectedly good job, far better than I ever expected. But, still… He ain’t the man we need.
Nobody is. The problem is too big for one “man on a horse” to come in and fix.
DeSantis, I have my doubts about. He’s got too many ties with establishment types for me to be comfortable with him. I think he comes pre-coopted, if you catch my drift.
I’d still vote for him, as the lesser of two evils.
Brutal honesty means I have to acknowledge that we’re basically f*cked, however. The machinery of state is the problem; it’s under the control of the unelected, and obviously beyond our control. Getting that back is going to require a near-total turnover in Congress, because only with enough of them doing their damn jobs can there be a check on the permanent bureaucracy–And, most of them would have to eschew “working with the establishment” drones and apparatchiks that infest the staffs. Those are the real problems; the President is really kinda-sorta unimportant, as we see demonstrated by Biden.
Either have my vote in the general. I like DeSantis better than Trump based on the people that work alongside DeSantis and especially looking at how poorly Trump did in finding people to work alongside him.
However, while I typically don’t read Kirk, I do agree with this: “The machinery of state is the problem; it’s under the control of the unelected, and obviously beyond our control. Getting that back is going to require a near-total turnover in Congress, because only with enough of them doing their damn jobs can there be a check on the permanent bureaucracy” My primary support will go to whoever addresses this issue and doesn’t skirt around it.
The tie breaker between Trump and Desantis to me is the Covid lockdown.
Desantis reopened Florida when Trump was still on “lockdown to flatten the curve” mode. It turned out Desantis was right and Trump’s covid response, in my opinion cost him the 2020 election.
On the political battlefield cultural issues are the high ground. I’m a dollars and cents man myself but you can’t deny that issues we deal with about budget or economic development of tax reform aren’t linked to these cultural fights and the arguments we use against each other during their debate flows from them.
DeSantis fights on that high ground where Trump did sparingly. DeSantis has delivered results on those cultural issues as well. We need to stay laser focused on the goal, which is to restore the rationality and soberness that defined our political values as a country before identity politics torched everything to hell.
I’ll always appreciate Trump for lighting the fire, but he missed too many opportunities (not entirely his fault) when he was in office. We’re at war, but Donald didn’t realize it started the day he won in 2016 until it was too late.
Trump’s failure with COVID is rooted in his deeply germaphobic nature, which is well-documented. Disease-related anything are hot buttons for him…
Now… If you were looking to dislocate the man, what would you do? How do you slant your most effective attacks on his presidency?
I think we can all agree that absent COVID, Trump would be president today.
Consider that, and then consider a bunch of other “coincidental” things that have gone on. COVID could well have happened at any point over the last 15-20 years these assholes have been “investigating” gain-of-function work overseas, against the direct executive and legislative “guidance” of both the President and Congress.
I think you’d learn a lot of interesting things, were you to go in and start asking pointed questions across the breadth of the NIH and all the pharma companies.
@kirk
Once is bad luck
Twice is suspicious
Three times is enemy action
Covid was so perfect and so convenient and so topical anyone should suspect the unthinkable. Anyone with any kind of intelligence training should be almost certain the unthinkable did in fact occur.
I have never believed the ‘accidental’ part of the accidental lab leak. This is one of those rare cases Occam’s Razor falls apart. The conspiratorial version appears to be the more plausible version as new information comes out almost every day.
Monsters are real.
A point that needs clearing up: in 2016, I think about 1/3 of Trump’s votes were not actually for Trump, they were against Hillary. Reality is, a presidential election is a binary choice. I wasn’t thrilled about Trump, voting for Hil was basically totally unacceptable.
Come 2020, I was pleasantly surprised that Trump had actually made some progress. I was still leery of some of his attitudes, but he got results.
At this point, I think Trump’s time has past. I also think that the “conserving conservatism” crowd is done, and looking for the next grift.
I honestly feel that the “establishment GOP” is a huge component of the problem. They’re not actually doing anything in favor of their supposed constituency; they act, always, in the interests of the oligarchy. It’s just like the Democrats: Do they act in the interests of their avowed constituents, or are they merely weaponizing them?
I think the problem goes well beyond “party” and deep into culture, how we get all these assholes in the first place. The local Republican politicians around here are a bunch of swag men, the way they advertise themselves and behave; it’s all about the booty they bring back from the legislature, and never mind what they’re signing away to the Democrat crooks while they get the swag.
The whole thing is crooked. I guarantee you that if a legit centrist party ever shows up that’s halfway honest and aboveboard? They’re going to destroy both the other parties, and I suspect that the rump remnants of the True Believer establishment Democrats and Republicans would probably make common cause in a heartbeat.
@Kirk “His hiring decisions were naive”
You’re not lying. Trump hired Omarosa FFS. I mean, did Trump see his own show?
Trump is an impresario, in the same traditional vein as P.T. Barnum. That’s his thing; it’s what he does.
The fact that he’s honest, underneath it all? Hard to believe, but it has to be true, or else they’d have found things during all the investigations that they should have been able to effectively use.
I kinda like the guy, but… President? Again? He did something unprecedented, in that he did his best to keep promises he made, which is unheard of. Even so, I suspect that his second term will be more of the same–Endless theatrics (not on his part, either…) and nothing really accomplished.
What we really need would be for someone to clean the Augean stables that are Washington, DC. It’d almost be a mercy if one of our enemies nuked the entire place, because that’s about the only damn way that’s actually happening. Which is a sad commentary on our situation, and how we’ve allowed these parasites to assert these powers.
Note the FDA’s recent ban on veterinary drugs… Did any of that go through Congress? Was it voted on? Nope… But, the f*cking idiots gave their power over to the FDA, so that’s on them.
@Kirk “FDA’s recent ban on veterinary drugs”
What’s this? I tried looking, but found too many unrelated stories that didn’t quite fit what you’re describing.
@Howard,
https://pjmedia.com/columns/megan-fox/2023/05/26/fda-bans-farmers-from-caring-for-their-own-animals-without-costly-vet-approval-n1698371
That’s one of many stories on it. My sister, the horse fanatic, tells me that the animal husbandry types have been up in arms about it ever since it was announced. The requirement for a vet (there’s a shortage, BTW, of those…) is going to drive prices for meat and eggs through the roof.
This is the kind of crap I’m talking about, with the morass in DC. The farmers and animal care people have been calling up and complaining, and they’re literally being told that a.) Congress knows nothing about this, it’s not legislative… They didn’t pass any laws, etc., etc., and that b.) they (Congress…) can’t (won’t, more accurately, having given up their effective ability to control the bureaucracy) do anything about it.
This has been out since, what…? December? Something like that. First time I’ve seen anything even remotely mainstream about it was… Today. I’d heard that there was a run on meds down at the local feed store, but… That was about it.
I voted for Donald Trump twice and have no regrets. He was the best option available. Ron DeSantis lacks Trump’s street fighter disposition but has demonstrated an ability to produce legislative victories.
In evaluating the comparative worth of style vs substance, DeSantis has proved himself to be a competent administrator. President Trump made numerous faulty personnel choices, which acted as a drag on his agenda.
I believe DeSantis has better focus and would make superior use of his time in office. That said, if Trump wins his party’s nomination, I would crawl through broken glass to get him elected.
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New College is the smallest one in the state. I’m still waitng for him to get around to fixing DEI at UF and FSU.
Has DeSantis held anyone’s money at risk? Disney is one thing but SALT was a wedge issue of joy. Has he tried to shrink the FL government? I need to see more of this RDS before I decide I like him.
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