There was only one big beast at a parade of would-be Republican candidates for president in Las Vegas at the weekend, although plenty of smaller creatures showed off their wares. Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, received several standing ovations for his address to the Republican Jewish Coalition leadership conference. The king of the MAGA jungle, Donald Trump, was received warmly but had only been asked to appear at the last minute on video.
The two prize-fighters began as allies but are now worlds apart. At 44, DeSantis is 32 years younger than Trump, with a glamorous wife, Casey, a former TV news presenter, and three children who seem made for the role of future “first family”. DeSantis is by no means Trump’s rival as an orator, yet he owned the stage in Las Vegas after winning re-election in Florida. As for Trump, his handpicked Republican candidates fell like ninepins in the midterms.
At last Trump, 76, has a serious presidential challenger at a time when the “macho macho man” (Trump’s favourite campaign song) looks uncharacteristically weak. For that alone, DeSantis is getting a hero’s welcome from the Republican establishment. Trump is not only on the back foot electorally but also faces potential criminal charges over his behaviour during the January 6 storming of the Capitol and the retention of secret White House documents at his Florida home.
Trump is unfazed. He loves being the underdog. “I am a victim. I am a victim,” he repeated without a blush at the launch of his 2024 presidential campaign in the gaudy Mar-a-Lago ballroom on November 15. Daughter Ivanka was busy washing her hair that night after declining to re-enter politics. But Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara, joined Trump in issuing veiled threats against DeSantis. It would be “nicer”, she warned, if he stayed out of the race: “I can tell you these primaries get very messy and raw.” The Republican party could be split in two by the fight.
For Trump, everything is personal. He insists he made DeSantis and can break him at whim. DeSantis was his protégé in 2018, when Trump backed the then relatively unknown Florida congressman to run for governor and win a tight race. But DeSantis has an ego to match his mentor. In a recent campaign ad, he boasted that on the eighth day, “God created…Ron DeSantis.” Is this hubris or the confidence of a man on a winning streak?
Trump’s campaign launch at Mar-a-Lago was “low energy”, commentators mocked, comparing him to an earlier Florida governor, Jeb Bush, whom Trump had dispatched with brutal ease in 2016. But the Trump play-book has not changed: when you are down, hit’ em hard. A popular poster with the MAGA crowd shows Trump as action hero Rambo hell-bent on revenge. DeSantis may have “only begun to fight”, but Trump has never stopped fighting by fair means and foul.
In an opening skirmish this month, Trump came up with a typically insulting nickname for his rival: Ron DeSanctimonious. There may be more to the jibe than meets the eye. DeSantis is untested on the national stage. He lacks the celebrity power and charisma Trump possesses and tends to take himself very seriously. For prominent Republicans and big money donors it is a welcome change, but perhaps not for the fans who will ultimately decide who wins the nomination.
A friend in wealthy Republican circles with homes in Florida and Pennsylvania, two states vital for victory, says: “These two big gorillas could really cannibalise each other. It could get ugly, but if I had to put my money on it, I’d put it on Trump. De Santis is wildly popular in Florida, but can he turn swathes of blue-collar voters in Pennsylvania red? He doesn’t do the dog whistles Trump does.” Yet DeSantis is a culture warrior, who claims his state is “where woke goes to die”. He took on Disney over its support for LGBTQ+ issues in schools (the “Don’t Say Gay bill”) and won. Plummeting shares proved how damaging it was for the Mighty Mouse to mess with DeSantis.
He also won praise for keeping schools and businesses open during the pandemic, picked fights with Dr Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s Covid-19 tsar, and scored big among Hispanic voters in Miami-Dade county, formerly a Democratic stronghold. This was despite orchestrating a controversial stunt last September, when migrants in Texas were flown to Martha’s Vineyard, a summer beach colony for Washington political elites in Massachusetts.
These two big gorillas could really cannibalise each other
“We have the governor of Florida … hatching a secret plot to send immigrant families like cattle on an airplane,” the local state representative fumed. Yet DeSantis was unrepentant.
The plus side for DeSantis is that all Republicans like to be on the winning team. He exudes an air of competence, and according to Rod Dreher, senior editor of The American Conservative: “Trumpism has no future unless it trades in Trump for acolytes who are actually good at politics, and prefer governing to tweeting.“
In contrast, the former president looks more and more like a drag on the Republican ticket. Even though Trump can still draw a crowd, voters have tired of his definition of “winning”. As Paul Ryan, a former Republican speaker of the House, told ABC News: “With Trump, we lose … We lost the House in ‘18. We lost the presidency in ‘20. We lost the Senate in ‘20. And now in 2022 we should have and could have won the Senate. We didn’t. And we have a much lower majority in the House because of that Trump factor.”
This is the Republicans’ dilemma. Trump is toxic for many independent voters, particularly after his “stop the steal” election-denying antics and the January 6 riot. Yet he won nearly 75 million votes in 2020, more than any Republican candidate in history (and still lost to “Sleepy Joe” Biden, who turned 80 last weekend). If he loses the nomination to DeSantis his most fervent supporters may not show up to vote in 2024. It is a case of can’t win with Trump, can’t win without him.
There is no question DeSantis has the guts to take on the former president. He grew up in a modest Italian family in working-class Jacksonville, Florida, then went to Yale and Harvard law school. While there, he joined the US Navy, served as a lawyer in Guantanamo Bay and in Iraq as a legal adviser. He still serves in the Navy reserves.
Wife Casey is said to be his most important political strategist. She was diagnosed with breast cancer only a year ago but was declared cancer-free last month. Her no-fuss ability to cope won widespread admiration.
This has not prevented Trump from hinting he has kompromat on De Santis. On the very day of the midterms, he tried to scare him off standing for president. “I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering,” Trump said on Fox News.
The former president may have to put up or shut up. De Santis has not formally declared his candidacy but has assembled a huge war chest. He is merely waiting to enter the race at a time of his own choosing, not Trump’s. Until then, he can get away with touting his own successes while ignoring his rival.
DeSantis hopes Trump will turn his fury on the other Republican challengers, who risk splitting the field to Trump’s advantage. Where Trump is concerned, it is kill or be killed.
