Rich notes that Florida governor Ron DeSantis would be the front-runner in a hypothetical Republican primary without Donald Trump. I generally agree, and would just add two points.
One is that it often feels like DeSantis is running as if Trump is not in the race. For instance, asked about January 6 recently, he treaded water, saying, “I wasn’t anywhere near Washington that day. I have nothing to do with what happened that day. Obviously, I didn’t enjoy seeing what happened, but we’ve got to go forward on this stuff.” DeSantis has obviously made the calculation that he can go after Trump from the right — on issues such as immigration, crime, abortion, and Covid — but by adopting a preachy tone about an issue such as indictments or January 6, he risks sounding like just another establishment Republican. The problem for DeSantis is that while this might be politically savvy in a situation in which Trump is not in the race and in which there would be little to gain by antagonizing him, with Trump in the race, it’s important to draw a stark contrast. When Trump attacks DeSantis, he doesn’t stop to think whether the attack will be from the right or left, as he has gone after DeSantis for being worse than Andrew Cuomo on Covid, for signing a six-week abortion ban, etc. Trump’s strategy is to relentlessly attack his opponents on everything — and so it’s hard to run against him if you’re trying to walk on eggshells when it comes to January 6.
A secondary point, which may seem somewhat contradictory to my first, is that it isn’t at all clear that a different strategy would do much to change the overall picture. We can sit here and second-guess everything DeSantis is saying and doing, or not saying and not doing, but it isn’t clear that a different strategy would be any more effective than the current one. The bottom line is that considering DeSantis is running against a former president who has been impeached twice, indicted twice, and found liable for sexual assault in a jury trial; who is directly or substantially responsible for Republican defeats in three straight election cycles; who refused to accept defeat in a presidential election and triggered a mob assault on the nation’s Capitol; who is overwhelmingly unpopular among general-election voters; who would be limited to one term even if elected; and who, in spite of all of this, is still polling with 53 percent support among Republicans in a crowded primary field, it’s not obvious to me there is a strategy that is going to work.
I’ve been on team “it’s too early” regarding prematurely declaring the Republican race over, and still think that is largely true as from my experience, voters in early primary states don’t start to get really serious until maybe after Thanksgiving. That said, given all that Trump has been through and how resilient his support is, I don’t envy the job of a political strategist trying to figure out what it would take to get his support to crater by the 20-30 points that will eventually be necessary for somebody to overtake him.