Some brief thoughts about Ron DeSantis before tonight's debate

This post could be 20x as long as it will be. More later.

Every day, I get asked by reporters about Ron DeSantis. Is he dead in the water? Can he revive his campaign? What should he have done differently?

Today’s big question is “What does DeSantis need to do tonight?”

The shortest version of that answer I gave to Politico Florida and Kimberly Leonard:

“DeSantis needs to do everything right from here on out, and at an A+ level,” said GOP strategist Liz Mair, who previously worked for the Republican National Committee. “That includes this debate.”

OK, but let’s be more specific.

DeSantis (and all of them, really) needs to get as much camera time as is humanly possible. As much camera time, as much speaking time. He’s running against one of the best-known people in the world and I bet he doesn’t even (still) have 75 percent name ID consistently among Republicans in every poll going. Debates are useful for fixing this kind of problem, especially if you can verbally murder the frontrunner while making people laugh and smile (but let’s not set expectations too high).

Does DeSantis need to start attacking Trump more? Kind of.

This is a delicate dance, as I have said several times in the past week. That is not even so much because attacking Trump is often for Republicans the equivalent of detonating a bunch of TNT directly in front of their faces. It’s because every time you mention him, he gets free press. Free press (AKA earned media) correlates strongly with electoral outcomes. He’s been getting enough free press lately— and not the kind that actually turns Republican primary voters off of him (insane though that may seem to many of you). Why help him get more?

Here’s the general gist of what DeSantis needs to start saying like a record on a loop (but not like Marco Rubio on a loop back in 2016):

“Look, we all love Donald Trump. I love Donald Trump. I voted for him twice. He endorsed me. He achieved so much good for the country. But the sad fact is there’s one big thing that Donald Trump did wrong, it’s affecting you right here, right now, and it’s a mistake I didn’t make in Florida. Trump listened to Fauci, let Fauci lock the country down, and shuttered the economy over COVID. That caused huge economic damage, and then was used to justify a ton of spending, some of which he signed into law and even more of which Biden signed into law. He created a blueprint for Biden and the Democrats to spend, spend, spend, and now we have an exploding national debt, a huge deficit, and we’ve all been contending with insane inflation that has resulted from all this spending for years now. We need to replace Biden with someone who will never, ever be duped into making that kind of mistake and simply will not allow it. In Florida, we didn’t do lockdowns, we didn’t shutter the economy, we didn’t close schools, and we didn’t jack up spending because a) that’s not who I am or what I am for but also b) we didn’t have to, because we didn't make the mistake of listening to the wrong people from the get-go. Trump was great, but we can do even better, he knows it, that’s why he moved to Florida. No matter what he may say now, that is the best endorsement I could ever ask for and he and his whole family gave it. Let’s take all the good from the Trump years, and make America even greater than it was four years ago.”

There’s also ample room here for DeSantis to talk up any other Florida economic or education accomplishments if he wants to. I’m not familiar with all of them. He should add them.

This is, I believe, the only way to attack Trump as a candidate or someone speaking for a candidate, that will work.

DeSantisworld writ large has been coming at Trump from the right on social issues. On spec, Trump is indeed extremely vulnerable on those and frankly always has been.

But DeSantis should note, the GOP has a lengthy history of nominating pretty squishy Republicans, including on social issues. Ronald Reagan? Actually pretty squishy. George H W Bush? OMG… Bob Dole? Definitely squishier than a lot of the party. George W Bush? Pretty squishy in 2000, we only remember him being less so because of all the gay marriage ballot initiative stuff in 2004. John McCain? Squishy. Mitt Romney? Very squishy. Donald Trump? Very squishy. Still very squishy. Maybe even squishier now.

Republican voters just don’t tend to nominate rock-ribbed conservatives, in general, but especially on social issues. Now, is Trump so squishy with his current abortion position that he’s not even capable of being called pro-life in a “no really, I’m not taking the piss” fashion? Not for my money, but hey, I am someone who cops to being a moderately pro-choice, anti-Roe Republican and who sweats the details.

Most voters don’t sweat the details. Most pro-life voters, historically, have just wanted someone to say they’re pro-life— the actual policy substance or their record doesn’t matter that much. In my opinion, that’s in part because a lot of people who call themselves pro-life are not, in fact, pro-life when you pin them on details (of course, many are solidly and legitimately pro-life). For them, “pro-life” is a sort of aspirational statement or maybe code for something else, which they expect to hear a nominee echo or else their abortion box isn’t ticked. But they do not sweat the details the way pedants like me do.

What about LGBTQ+ issues? Not since about 2006 have I seen that anything much on the LGB side of that acronym is super-motivating to anyone bar a small sliver of Mike Huckabee and then Rick Santorum voters. I think those people largely see Trump as their avatar for reasons wholly unrelated to social issues and I’m not sure how many of them are movable. DeSantis might be able to peel them off, but focusing on doing so is the kind of thing that risks him looking myopically focused on “the gays” in a way that doesn’t speak to voters’ main concerns, whether that be inflation, progressives making them feel like bad people for holding views and using terminology that seemed OK a mere ten years ago, loss of socio-economic status, or whatever else people are upset about. It looks a bit fringe and random and like a non-sequitur to a lot of people who instinctively are looking for an alternative to Trump.

What about the “T” component of the acronym? Admittedly, I think a lot more people— and Republican primary voters especially— are concerned about mainstreaming gender transition on a mass scale. (Full disclosure: This is just not an animating issue for me; I know trans people who transitioned decades ago and it has vastly improved and probably saved their lives; I also know two kids who started transitioning and then reversed their transitions; people are different and have different experiences; I don’t have any set views on any of this, I don’t know what policy should be on this beyond I think all policy needs to be constitutional, nor does it impact my vote). In particular, they worry that social media and liberal teachers and bullying in schools and whatever else is convincing a bunch of girls to transition to being boys and that they may not actually be boys and wow, doing anything medical that furthers a transition sure could be risky if kids are going through a phase or something and how they feel at the point when they decide to transition does not endure. (I’m not trying to minimize any side of this debate’s views. I simply don’t know that there’s an answer that works for everyone, and again, I vote on spending, free trade, health care, immigration and civil liberties).

So, DeSantis probably can get more mileage out of hitting Trump on matters pertaining to “T” than he can “LGB,” but again, how top of mind really is this for enough voters to propel him forward in some meaningful way? I’m just not convinced the numbers are there.

The DeSantis campaign is frequently accused of being very and too online, and I will definitely say that if you go on Twitter, there are about five major discussions happening at any given time and one of them always involves gender transition with lots of warring opinions. I think the DeSantis campaign may be mistaking this for real life.

They should not. Yes, I know parents of all different political stripes who think something seems off about the number of kids transitioning and who worry about the effects of puberty blockers but also about kids who aren’t allowed to transition potentially or actually killing themselves. These people are real.

But for as much as they do talk about this, I’m guessing paying up to twice as much for a portion of ground chicken than they did a year and a half ago is a bigger concern. I think kids’ learning loss, whether or not due to COVID (but yeah, most likely due to COVID) is a bigger concern. I think hundreds of dollars more being attached to a mortgage bill now versus a couple of years ago thanks to inflation and interest rates is a bigger concern.

And if these things are not, I think they’re just as likely to vote for Vivek Ramaswamy as DeSantis.

I think if DeSantis starts deploying a line like I have suggested above and keeps hammering it and knocks it off with the social issues stuff, he might see some improvement in his poll numbers. There is legitimately no good answer that Donald Trump can offer for the situation DeSantis would then be critiquing; there really isn’t! And the contrast is there and it’s real!

But I think DeSantis will not do this because he genuinely believes, Ted Cruz-like but with less robust attacking capability, that most Americans genuinely do believe what he believes on social issues and prioritize them as much as he does. Meanwhile, Trump is making the opposite bet, and I think history indicates Trump is more likely to be right than DeSantis.

In any event, we will see what happens tonight. At the end of the day, even if he talks about abortion and transgender teens all night, if DeSantis gets more face time than anyone else and appears generally competent, capable of stringing a sentence together without sounding like a space alien or a guy reading talking points straight off of index cards, he’ll probably move his numbers up a little and Trump’s floor down a little, at least in Iowa. But we are running out of time and “a little” is just not going to cut it soon, probably meaning October 15.

I frankly expect Nikki Haley will perform better than DeSantis in this debate based on her last appearance, and DeSantis will continue to send out memos like this one to absolutely no avail. But I’d love to be proven wrong! (Also, DeSantis-world: Quit sending out memos like this! That’s what campaigns do when they’re desperate! Also, what if you actually bait Trump into debating? I doubt you’re ready for that and you do better and he does worse when he stays off the debate stage!)