How Ron DeSantis Is Positioning Himself on the 2020 Election

If you’re closely watching Ron DeSantis and his positioning for a widely anticipated presidential run in 2024, I highly recommend setting aside an hour to watch his full speech at NatCon, the National Conservatism Conference, which was conveniently held in Miami, Fla., in mid September. The speech strikes a lot of notes familiar to regular watchers of his stump speeches, but if you haven’t watched him at work in a long-form address, this is a good sample. He makes a vigorous case for his philosophy, his ideas, and his actions — from his highlights to more dubious ideas such as his unconstitutional social-media law — across a broad array of policy areas, including pandemic response, education, immigration, mob violence, law enforcement, transgenderism, low taxes and fiscal restraint, elections administration, woke corporations, separation of powers, and the administrative state. (He was notably silent on abortion, and, given his position running for reelection as a governor, he avoided any discussion of foreign policy, other than trade with China). Among other things, DeSantis champions Reaganism while making an argument (popular with the NatCon crowd but justly a subject of heated debate within the conservative movement) that times have changed in ways that require governments to stand up more to big business in order to preserve individual liberty and republican self-government.

A major challenge for any Republican candidate these days, especially one aiming to peel Donald Trump’s supporters away from Trump himself (as DeSantis will have to do if he faces off with Trump in a presidential race), is that a whole lot of Republican voters believe that the 2020 election was stolen, and it wasn’t. There isn’t evidence showing enough fraudulent or illegal votes to change the outcome across a sufficient number of states. While Democrats committed blatant illegalities, and while the nature of voter fraud is such that some portion will always be undetectable, there really is not a defensible case for there being enough places for illegal votes to have hidden for the election to have actually been stolen.

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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If you’re closely watching Ron DeSantis and his positioning for a widely anticipated presidential run in 2024, I highly recommend setting aside an hour to watch his full speech at NatCon, the National Conservatism Conference, which was conveniently held in Miami, Fla., in mid September. The speech strikes a lot of notes familiar to regular watchers of his stump speeches, but if you haven’t watched him at work in a long-form address, this is a good sample. He makes a vigorous case for his philosophy, his ideas, and his actions — from his highlights to more dubious ideas such as his unconstitutional social-media law — across a broad array of policy areas, including pandemic response, education, immigration, mob violence, law enforcement, transgenderism, low taxes and fiscal restraint, elections administration, woke corporations, separation of powers, and the administrative state. (He was notably silent on abortion, and, given his position running for reelection as a governor, he avoided any discussion of foreign policy, other than trade with China). Among other things, DeSantis champions Reaganism while making an argument (popular with the NatCon crowd but justly a subject of heated debate within the conservative movement) that times have changed in ways that require governments to stand up more to big business in order to preserve individual liberty and republican self-government.

A major challenge for any Republican candidate these days, especially one aiming to peel Donald Trump’s supporters away from Trump himself (as DeSantis will have to do if he faces off with Trump in a presidential race), is that a whole lot of Republican voters believe that the 2020 election was stolen, and it wasn’t. There isn’t evidence showing enough fraudulent or illegal votes to change the outcome across a sufficient number of states. While Democrats committed blatant illegalities, and while the nature of voter fraud is such that some portion will always be undetectable, there really is not a defensible case for there being enough places for illegal votes to have hidden for the election to have actually been stolen.