Much like seven years ago, Donald Trump is running for president to the dismay of establishment Republicans. They figured him for a loser when he announced in 2015. He wasn’t, but he looks more like one now after his chosen candidates fared poorly in Pennsylvania, Arizona and other swing states in the midterm election.
Even Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post and Wall Street Journal editorial board have turned on Trump. But it would be reckless to count Trump out or underestimate how he and his enraged politics of grievance still menace our democratic form of government.
Trump won in 2016 with a primeval appeal to the fears, resentments and prejudices of enough voters to leave most establishment politicians lying prostrate at his feet for four long years.
The more things change, the angrier Trump gets. He began his third campaign Tuesday night with a long and subdued speech at Mar-A-Lago, full of his characteristic bombast, hyperbole, exaggeration and breathtaking disregard for the truth.
There are not “millions and millions” of immigrants swarming across the border. It will not take “200 to 300 years” for climate change to affect our coasts (as South Florida already knows). Inflation was not “zero” on his watch. The country is not in “a horrible state.” There are no “blood-soaked streets” in “cesspool cities.”
It was a rerun of his “American carnage” inaugural address. Even a bored Fox News cut away to other programming at one point.
Everywhere you look, Trump-backed candidates lost. In a victory for democracy, the system held. The “Stop the Steal” movement may have finally breathed its last with the defeat of Kari Lake, an election denier who lost her bid for Arizona governor.
But Trump remains a dire threat to democracy and a serious risk of inciting new violence. The more he loses, the more ruthless he becomes. He incited a mob of supporters to attack the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election that he had lost. He could still be indicted for that, even though he’s now a candidate.
The Trump faithful remains an electoral force, at least in Republican primaries, despite visible cracks in the base. A post-election poll for the Republican Party of Texas put Gov. Ron DeSantis in the lead there at 43% with Trump at 32% followed by four also-rans.
DeSantis has not announced his candidacy, but his intentions are plain and he’s among those lamenting the disappointing Republican midterm results.
A DeSantis-Trump battle could open the door to more moderate Republicans such as outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.
DeSantis is riding so high from his landslide reelection that some people seem to think he’s the only plausible alternative to Trump. In fact, they are more alike than they are different, as the wider American public needs to learn. DeSantis is simply a more polished version of Trump.
In an column skeptical of both men, The Boston Globe’s Jeff Jacoby wrongly credits DeSantis with “strongly promoting vaccines” against COVID-19. He didn’t. In fact, DeSantis signed a law banning vaccine mandates in schools and workplaces, and he just gave a resounding endorsement of Dr. Joseph Ladapo, the quack anti-vaxxer running the Florida Department of Health.
A nagging bit of post-election media spin is that DeSantis is the best alternative to Trump. But Florida’s governor is just as authoritarian and polarizing. His ideology is deeper-rooted, and he is less prone to push the "big lie." But DeSantis’ judicial appointments are as reactionary as Trump’s and vetted by the same Federalist Society gurus. Both sought to suppress voting and exploit religion. “Megalomaniacs of a feather,” as columnist Frank Bruni wrote in The New York Times.
DeSantis’ “stop woke” law, censoring how schools and colleges teach American history, is a more subtle appeal to racism than Trump’s overt bigotry.
To Trump, the prospect of DeSantis’ rivalry must be the unkindest cut of all. One of the few truths Trump tells is that his tweeted endorsement was critical to DeSantis winning the GOP nomination for governor in 2018. However, Trump’s recent claim that he had to send in the FBI and Justice Department to Broward County in order to secure the general election for DeSantis has been repudiated by everyone who should know.
If Trump can’t bluff DeSantis out of the race, Florida will have a presidential primary in 2024 unmatched for its ferocity and its consequences.
Florida will face the prospect of a sitting governor clashing with a former president who is his best-known constituent. Florida’s winner-take-all primary could be fatal to the ambitions of one or the other, because the state Republican Party awards all delegates to the candidate who leads, even with less than a majority. In 2016, Trump won all 99 Florida delegates with 45.7% of the vote, leaving none for Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who ran second and third in the 13-candidate field.
The Democrats’ method of awarding delegates by proportional representation is a better system, especially at producing a moderate, consensus candidate from the long slog of primaries.
Across the country, a close look at last week’s results strongly suggests that the Trump brand’s appeal may be waning. The ultimate “Florida Man” must be stopped, once and for all.
———
