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Why it doesn’t matter that Republicans are divided between Trump and DeSantis

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All signs indicate that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former President Donald Trump are going to slug it out in the Fall of 2023 in preparation for a Spring primary, but it really doesn’t matter. Neither of them can win in a general election against a conscious, living Joe Biden.

Everyone is having a good laugh about Ron DeSantis, the undeclared opponent of Donald Trump, being outsmarted by Disney’s lawyers. Meanwhile, Trump is facing over 30 criminal charges in the “weakest” of the three legal threats currently winding through the courts.

DeSantis has the Republican money machine behind him, but his main legislative accomplishments are caught up in the courts and his “book tour” which happens to be hosting events in all the primary states has gotten off to a stumbling start. Donors are wondering if DeSantis is ready for the national spotlight. 

Choosy Donors Hear DeSantis Pitch

The DeSantis pitch to GOP donors goes like this, “You want somebody who pisses off your domestic enemies? I got all your culture wars without Trump’s drama and baggage. Wait, did I say that out loud? I meant to say I am low-drama and have no baggage.”

An anonymous GOP operative told Politico, “From what I’ve heard, he does not say President Trump is drama and chaos. He just says he’s not. So, what is that implying?”

Trump supporters have delicate feelings when it comes to their Dear leader, as is common in cults. In moments of passion, like when Trump laments his 2020 loss or makes a race-based criticism of an officer of the court for doing their job, his supporters will literally break down in tears. 

The stories Trump constantly tells of strongman types and generals with tears in their eyes always seemed like more transparent, bald-faced lies, but after Trump was indicted, various surrogates cried on national television. Truth is stranger than fiction.

Trump’s pitch is, “I’m the real deal, giving libs ulcers since 2016. But why do they treat me so unfairly? I’m the most innocent man in the history of the world. And they’re so mean. It’s not fair! Waaaaaaaaaah!” 

Trump has the grassroots, raising $1.5 million during three days after he falsely announced he would be arrested and another $4 million after the indictments came down, but DeSantis has the big-money donors who have mostly soured on Trump. 

While CPAC channels the cultural ethos of the GOP, the Club for Growth holds the wallet, yet because of Trump, the two are now working against each other. This was evident during CPAC, which was a three-day commercial for Trump, while DeSantis headlined the competing meeting of the Club for Growth. In chilly Washington, D.C., CPAC attendees bemoaned the heady, bygone days of the Florida hot tub, while Club for Growth was hosted in sunny Florida. 

Pro-DeSantis Donor Movement 

Trump has been fund-raising since he lost the election in 2020, and he has a sizeable war chest, although it’s nothing compared to what he spent on his 2020 campaign. 

The biggest donor of the GOP is Ken Griffin, a hedge fund manager who last year moved his company, Citadel, to Miami from Chicago. His firm echoes the move of similar funds like activist investor Carl Icahn and curmudgeonly hedge funder Paul Singer to the Sunshine State. 

Griffin has thrown his unlimited financial support behind DeSantis. Singer and Icahn seem to be staying on the sidelines, although Singer’s company, Elliott Management (which Disruption Banking wrote about here) purchased a seat on Twitter’s board and pushed to oust former CEO, Jack Dorsey.

It’s not just the never-Trumpers Singer and Icahn keeping their prodigious wallets closed, many other deep-pocketed Republican donors have misgivings. DeSantis is down in the polls and he doesn’t seem to have it in him to stop Trump’s momentum or to fight back against Trump’s deranged stream-of-consciousness social media broadsides. 

One such donor is Richard Uihlein, the conservative billionaire shipping magnate, and his wife who gave $500,000 to the governor’s re-election campaign. Seeing DeSantis’s drop in the polls, the Uihleins decided to pump the brakes, a source told NBC News

Meanwhile, Ken Cuccinelli, a former Trump-administration immigration czar, has joined Never Back Down, the new political action committee (PAC), that will serve as the outside spending vehicle for the DeSantis campaign. It’s notable that Cuccinelli is working for DeSantis when he was a crucial Trump defender throughout the first term.

Both DeSantis and Trump recently attended the wedding of Steve Witkoff’s son in Palm Beach so they could each beg for donations from the real estate elite who summer in Florida for 6 months and one day every year in order to claim residency in Florida and evade NY taxes.  

Trump will clear a crowded field

So, there’s movement from the stalwart Trump camp to DeSantis, but there are also conservative activists searching for a third option.

Former Vice President Mike Pence is still engaged in “prayerful consideration.” His prayers probably sound like this: “Oh Lord, if it is Your will, please make money fall into my SuperPACs like manna from heaven and please forgive my betrayal of Your chosen vessel, Trump.” 

Pence delivered some decent jokes at a recent donor retreat, but the man has about as much charisma as a rotten turnip, which since it attracts scavengers might actually be useful in drawing away Trump’s fire from DeSantis. 

It’s the same story with Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, and New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu. Are they competent? Yes. Are they principled? Yes. Do they have name recognition? Perhaps. Can they excite a GOP base addicted to Trump’s vindictiveness? Not in a million years. 

They will only be useful as patsies to be sacrificed on Trump’s Satanic altar of suffering and abasement.

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who used to prep Trump for debates, is branding himself as the Trump slayer. He recently made headlines due to his blunt assessment of the race with an adept analogy of Trump coming back like a vampire until a stake is driven through his heart. 

Christie knows how to drive a stake, but Christie running against Trump is like Dr. Frankenstein telling the villagers that he is the best bet to save them from the monster he created.

Drew Sheneman wrote a masterful satire for the Star-Ledger capturing the irony of Christie’s declaration that he is the perfect candidate to beat Trump: “I stand as a bulwark against the same conspiracy-driven extremism I enabled up until the very moment it became disadvantageous to do so.”

Christie has more gumption than the others, but he has nowhere near the popularity to move the needle in a nationwide contest, even his record in New Jersey is spotty, as his former constituents fondly recall to anyone who will listen.  

The thing is Trump is able to maintain a galeforce tornado of insults, lies, and general bullpuckey. The guy hardly sleeps and is relentlessly driven by perceived slights or “disloyalty,” no matter how small, so anybody who jumps in the race can expect to be bathed in Trump’s excrement firehose 24/7. 

What the base wants, the base gets

Most Republicans, even if they pretend to be Christians, are macho, spiteful, and gossipy. This reporter grew up in a family of evangelical preachers, so he oughta know. They love nothing more than a good grudge match, which is why the World Wrestling Federation was a massive cultural force in the Bible belt, a collection of “flyover” states so red that abortion is now mostly banned in them, if not already a felony.

Trump understood this better than anyone, which is why it has been said that Trump connects better with the audience of Fox News better than Fox News itself.    

Even worse, a crowded field of Trump imitators only redounds to Trump’s advantage in the primary. And donors know this only too well. The memory of Jeb Bush in 2015 still smarts. Donors put together a war chest of $100 million, and Jeb Bush got hornswoggled by Trump. 

So, it’s DeSantis in the short-term, with the hope that maybe somebody else can rise from the ashes of the Fall 2023 GOP free-for-all.  

Florida: the DeSantis Policy Laboratory

DeSantis policy platform is being played out in Florida. DeSantis’ famed “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” bans books that make White people feel bad, so aggrieved Karens have been targeting various writers who offend them.

Already, public school libraries in Pinellas County removed a book by Toni Morrison. James Patterson was too radical for Martin County, and Miami-Dade, Broward, Duval, Escambia, and Manatee Counties have been feverishly removing controversial books from their shelves. 

However, a federal judge in Texas ruled that book bans by county officials violated the 1st and 14th amendments, ordering books to be restored to the library shelves within 24 hours.

That decision, as precedent, likely dooms DeSantis’s signature legislative achievement for White victimhood.

Besides censoring teachers when it comes to the existence of gay people, DeSantis wants to remove race and racism from the teaching of U.S. history in Florida public schools. 

Most astonishingly, this caused textbook publishers to draft a new version of the Rosa Parks story that doesn’t mention her being Black or the racist segregation policies of the South. 

In short, the law is being used to remove the whole impetus of why Parks refused to move to the back of the bus. In the new version of the story, Parks becomes the villain who refused to move from the front seat of the bus.  

DeSantis in the bedroom and the boardroom

Disney stood up to DeSantis for his “Don’t Say Gaybill, so DeSantis used the power of the state to retaliate, threatening to take away a tax covenant established more than half a century ago by which Disney governed itself.

DeSantis made a big sideshow of his squabble with the company, creating a new oversight board with five handpicked right-wingers who would be the new sheriffs in the Magic Kingdom.

Except Disney’s notoriously wily and tenacious lawyers figured out a way to keep the company’s autonomy in tact until the English monarchy dies out by passing a restrictive covenant that strips the new board of its power.

DeSantis is so mad he’s threatening to punish the company yet again using the power of the state, this time with the Florida inspector general. Demanding an investigation, he claims the will of the Florida man has been defied. Oops, I mean, the will of Floridians. It was Floridians that were angry the state won’t control the state’s biggest employer.

In the Florida legislature, a six-week abortion ban is in the works, which even pro-life radicals find extreme, but DeSantis is jockeying for the endorsements of hardcore anti-abortion groups, so he can’t afford to take a position that might appeal to moderates.

It doesn’t matter that 57% of Floridian voters were opposed to the law banning most abortions after 15 weeks. Evangelicals are a crucial constituency in the GOP base, so a six-week ban is what Floridians will get. Only the Florida man can defy the will of Floridians.

If you listen closely, you can hear the clapping of Democratic politicians and consultants across the country. They all know DeSantis has launched a torpedo at his viability as a candidate for the 2024 general election. Democrats will hammer him with ads about this cruel, stupid, and dangerous ban, and it will completely tank his candidacy.

Aside from that, the “success” of Florida depends on who you ask. Some residents don’t see the reign of DeSantis in the rosy light that it is sometimes cast.

DeSantis v. Trump

DeSantis has chosen to echo Trump in most policy questions, perhaps so that he can’t be attacked from the right. He owns the libs, but without Trump’s death threats, immorality, pettiness, and daily drama. 

DeSantis is trying to thread the needle, knowing that any movement to the center alienates some constituents. If he is for a 15-week abortion ban, he loses the hardcore pro-life evangelicals, many of whom think that carrying your rapist’s child to term is God’s will, and all of whom show up for the primaries, Bibles in hand.

If DeSantis is pro-Ukraine, he loses the pro-Trump isolationist wing, but if he calls the invasion a “territorial dispute” as he did recently on Tucker Carlson’s show, establishment Republicans raise a hullabaloo, which led him to walk back his comments

Trump has an advantage in his pugilistic style. In comparison, DeSantis is too scripted, fussy, and awkward. Where Trump would double-down, DeSantis waffles and backs off, making him look weak.

Whereas Trump can be charming off-camera, DeSantis comes off as plastic and petulant, yelling at a reporter over a normal question and at high school kids who were supposed to serve as silent political props. 

Damned if DeSantis does, damned if he don’t 

It’s hard to figure out what people want DeSantis to do in response to Trump’s onslaught, and the speculation is tireless, breathless, and contradictory. 

Everybody pressured DeSantis to respond to Trump’s indictment meltdown, but when he leveled a mild criticism of Trump’s clear and obvious immorality of paying to silence a porn star for an affair that Trump totally didn’t have in the course of his response, Trump supporters hyperventilated.   

A GOP operative told The Hill, “These attacks are being perceived as cheap shots. Kicking someone while they’re down. So I don’t think they’ve helped [DeSantis]. If anything, they’ve helped Trump.” 

This pearl-clutching by Republicans shows how protective they are of Trump’s notoriously sensitive feelings and whether he gets the kid-gloves treatment Trump and they believe he deserves. Nobody is allowed to criticize Trump. Everybody knows he’s a criminal and a sociopath. 

Due to the constant legal peril following those close to Trump, some speculate that maybe MAGA means “Making Attorneys Get Attorneys.” Many Trump aides have been charged and more than a few gone to jail, but saying what everybody knows to be true, now that’s a bridge too far! Most bizarrely even evangelicals claim this is no problem with the big Guy in the clouds.

You can point out numerous Bible verses about selling one’s soul and supporting evil until you’re blue in the face, to no avail. All they need is the odious fiction peddled by Roger Stone that Trump loves the Bible and that they often pray together over the phone.

Brand Management in the Trump Era

DeSantis may be able to take on weaker foes, like Disney or Black history teachers or Black ex-cons who were told they could vote, but he gets fussy when faced with reporters with the temerity to ask real questions.  

The Florida legislature just rubber-stamps whatever DeSantis puts forward, so he has never had to build any sort of consensus among ideological enemies. Even after years of being a governor and serving in Congress, he lacks experience on the national stage and it shows, as Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post columnist and the voice of the Democratic Party, correctly points out

Branding himself as less dramatic or more morally erect than Trump is meaningless to evangelicals who have already sold their souls for Trump. Greed and cattiness are Trump’s superpowers. Although exhausting for most people, they are crucial variables in the equation of how Trump is the ultimate “owner” of the libs. 

Robert P. Jones, President of the Public Religion Research Institute, explains, “To those who have long abandoned their posture as ‘values voters’ and have fully embraced an authoritarian figure they see as the savior and protector of white Christian America, the moral repulsiveness of the crass violation of his marriage vows and the legal evidence of a coverup, even if they are substantiated in a court of law, will likely have little weight.”

In other words, nothing matters to the Trump cult members. No matter how much money flows into the coffers of his opponents, the GOP base will stand by their man, but maybe donors can wield Chris Christie as a cudgel and Ron DeSantis as a wedge to dislodge the malignant tumor of Trump.

Even if Trump loses the primary, DeSantis will be dogged by his extreme abortion stance, which has delivered overwhelming defeats to other candidates.

The strategy is not about winning the election because it’s already been demonstrated in 2018, in 2020, and in 2022 that MAGA doesn’t win. It’s too repulsive to independent voters. Instead, it’s about what will unify the base, a small but not insignificant minority of American voters. That’s the best they can hope for. 

The inability of the MAGA faithful to control their emotions makes them easy to manipulate, weakening the entire movement. If riled up by Trump, they will attack cops. They will try to burn down the courthouse. They will try to overthrow democracy again. And again they will lose.

Author: Tim Tolka, writer, journalist, and BI researcher

The editorial team at #DisruptionBanking has taken all precautions to ensure that no persons or organizations have been adversely affected or offered any sort of financial advice in this article. This article is most definitely not financial advice.

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