Philip Klein observes that some of Ron DeSantis’s statements, and his voting record on Medicare and Social Security from early in his congressional career, could be used against him by Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2024 primary battle.
It’s probably worth remembering that Donald Trump himself once supported raising the retirement age to 70 and privatizing Social Security. As Andrew Kaczynski reported in 2015, Trump called for letting people invest their Social Security contributions and for hiking the retirement age in his 2000 book, The America We Deserve. Trump wrote, “This is a sacrifice I think we all can make. And I don’t accept the criticism that it’s easy for guys like me to tell thirty-year-olds they shouldn’t retire until they’re seventy. Like a lot of people I know, I plan to work forever.”
These positions did not blow back on Trump during the 2016 primary or the general election. Trump’s thoroughly postmodern, protean character might be part of the reason for that — his latest provocation easily sweeps away everything that came before. But another reason is that Trump pivoted away from those positions throughout the 2016 campaign. He pledged to keep Social Security and Medicare as they were, and he mostly talked about other issues instead.
In a hypothetical 2024 campaign, nothing would stop DeSantis from making a similar pivot, especially since some of those old positions of his are from a decade ago. He could say he hopes to preserve those major entitlements for the elderly and suggest an openness to bipartisan collaboration to make them more sustainable for future generations. And then DeSantis could turn to other issues — immigration, education, the environment, or some other topic. In the 2018 gubernatorial election, DeSantis’s top GOP primary rival and the Democratic nominee both tried to make an issue of his past statements about entitlements, and DeSantis was nevertheless able to outmaneuver them.
Democrats would no doubt be happy to let the GOP make the funding of entitlements the most salient issue. But Republicans might benefit from stressing a broader portfolio of policies meant to improve outcomes for working families. Gaining credibility with the economic middle could even help Republicans address the sustainability of federal entitlements. A GOP that is seen simply as the party of austerity will struggle to gain a political coalition on fiscal or other issues. A track record of delivering for working families would open up broader possibilities.