Following an abysmal showing in the 2022 midterm elections, the Republican Party has every reason to jettison former President Donald Trump and his thrice-failed MAGA agenda in favor of a younger, more serious, disciplined, and base-approved alternative.
But Tuesday’s results aren’t just a reason; they’re also an opportunity. The party needs only the will to take it — which, as we know from experience, is a difficult ask since the GOP’s backbone tends to disappear whenever it’s needed most.
You’ve heard it a dozen times: Donald Trump’s time is up! It’s the tipping point! Obviously, these predictions were wrong. However, this time might actually be different (emphasis on the word “might”; Trump has an uncanny knack for survival), thanks largely to Trump himself.
On Thursday, just two days after a series of elections in which Republicans underperformed everywhere except for Florida and New York, Trump released a deranged, incoherent statement savaging Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for – well, for something.
You must read the entire thing to get the full effect.
“NewsCorp,” says Trump, “which is Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and the no longer great New York Post (bring back Col!), is all in for Governor Ron DeSanctimonious, an average REPUBLICAN Governor with great Public Relations, who didn’t have to close up his State, but did, unlike other Republican Governors, whose overall numbers for a Republican, were just average — middle of the pack —including COVID, and who has the advantage of SUNSHINE, where people from badly run States up North would go no matter who the Governor was, just like I did!”
The former president adds,
Ron came to me in desperate shape in 2017—he was politically dead, losing in a landslide to a very good Agriculture Commissioner, Adam Putnam, who was loaded up with cash and great poll numbers. Ron had low approval, bad polls, and no money, but he said that if I would Endorse him, he could win. I didn’t know Adam so I said, ‘Let’s give it a shot, Ron.’ When I Endorsed him, it was as though, to use a bad term, a nuclear weapon went off. Years later, they were the exact words that Adam Putnam used in describing Ron’s Endorsement. He said, ‘I went from having it made, with no competition, to immediately getting absolutely clobbered after your Endorsement.’ I then got Ron by the ‘Star’ of the Democrat Party, Andrew Gillum (who was later revealed to be a ‘Crack Head’), by having two massive Rallies with tens of thousands of people at each one. I also fixed his campaign, which had completely fallen apart. I was all in for Ron, and he beat Gillum, but after the Race, when votes were being stolen by the corrupt Election process in Broward County, and Ron was going down ten thousand votes a day, along with now-Senator Rick Scott, I sent in the FBI and the U.S. Attorneys, and the ballot theft immediately ended, just prior to them running out of the votes necessary to win. I stopped his Election from being stolen.We should pause here to ask: What? What on earth is Trump on about now?
“And now,” the rambling statement continues, “Ron DeSanctimonious is playing games! The Fake News asks him if he’s going to run if President Trump runs, and he says, ‘I’m only focused on the Governor’s race, I’m not looking into the future.’ Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that’s really not the right answer.”
He concludes, “This is just like 2015 and 2016, a Media Assault (Collusion!), when Fox News fought me to the end until I won, and then they couldn’t have been nicer or more supportive. The Wall Street Journal loved Low Energy Jeb Bush, and a succession of other people as they rapidly disappeared from sight, finally falling in line with me after I easily knocked them out, one by one. We’re in exactly the same position now. They will keep coming after us, MAGA, but ultimately, we will win. Put America First and, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
This isn’t Trump’s first broadside against DeSantis. The former president also attacked the governor by name at a campaign rally before the midterm elections.
Taken together, the attacks on DeSantis reek of desperation. Trump is scared. He has identified DeSantis as a threat before the primary has even begun, and before DeSantis has even confirmed his plans to run in 2024. This points to one thing: The GOP has a real chance right now to discard the former president in favor of someone who mimics the parts of Trump that served the Republican Party and its base well, but is not congenitally impulsive, destructive, toxic, unpopular, and self-obsessed.
The reasons a Trump-free GOP seems more realistic and attainable this time around are twofold.
First, there’s DeSantis himself. Unlike the stable of Republicans who also ran in the 2016 presidential primary, DeSantis is a happy marriage of successful leadership and culture warrior gung-ho. Trump won in 2016 precisely because he staked claims in both worlds. He dominated the 2016 primary field because his opponents ran as if it was 2008, showering their eventually non-existent audiences with white papers and preaching the gospel of “bipartisanship.” They were mostly reticent to engage on social issues, and none of them had Trump’s stomach for all-out brawls with the press, the Democrats, and even the Republican Party itself.
DeSantis is different. He answers the question that has dogged the GOP since Trump descended his escalator: If not Trump, then whom? DeSantis is not just a well-liked and competent state executive, well-versed in the minutia of good governance and conservative leadership. He is also an effective and proactive general in the cultural wars, brawling with journalists and Democrats alike, all while spearheading largely successful campaigns against everything from critical race theory to hypersexual school curricula and “woke capital.” No one who ran against Trump in 2016 could claim both. They were either competent executives or culture warriors, but not both.
Secondly, and most importantly, the reason things may be different this time is this: The former president himself says so. Trump’s attacks tell us he believes at least one person can tank his 2024 aspirations, and that person is Ron DeSantis.
To those who aren’t paying close attention, the attacks come out of nowhere. Indeed, DeSantis hasn’t said or done anything recently to insult, demean, or even challenge Trump. He has been too busy governing and cementing the Florida Republican Party’s hold on the state. But to those who track these things closely, it seems clear why Trump has chosen to go after the governor, even though the governor hasn’t done anything to Trump. It’s because Trump sees DeSantis as a direct threat, the one man who can block his dream of winning another shot at the White House.
This is why this moment feels different from all the rest. Not just because DeSantis provides the GOP with a real and viable alternative to MAGA, but also because Trump believes DeSantis is a real and viable alternative.
If Trump believes he can be beaten, and he believes he has identified the man to do it, perhaps the GOP should listen. Instead of suffering electoral loss after electoral loss with Trump dragging down the Republican ticket, and instead of putting up with the obvious poison of the MAGA brand, perhaps the GOP should look to the guy Trump fears. Perhaps the GOP should rally around the governor who won his reelection bid by nearly 20 points, pushing the rest of the Sunshine State into deep, deep red territory, all while Trump’s handpicked MAGA acolytes flamed out across the country in terrible fashion.
But to do this, the GOP will have to want to let go of the former president. It has had at least a couple of opportunities in the past to move on from Trump, but it has declined to do so each time, choosing instead to placate and humor the septuagenarian New Yorker.
Decline is a choice.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM RESTORING AMERICA
Becket Adams is the program director of the National Journalism Center.
