It's long past time to stop this absurd infighting and keep our eyes on the prize.
If you want to be added, please FReepMail me.
Posted on 07/26/2022 6:23:18 PM PDT by rintintin
I personally think a lack of "savviness" is what leads to poor appointments and being too easily stymied by Congress and the bureaucracy.
DeSantis is not a MAGA candidate. He is an Ivy League lawyer turned career politician … which means he’s an establishment GOP tool who has been groomed for a Beltway career.
Yes because Governor Lee Is so exciting. Lol. Has anyone even whispered his name for President? Not a once. DeSantis is the best Governor hands down. I’m just thrilled to have him as my Governor. If he wants to finish his next t term that’s fine. But if he runs for President, he’ll do well especially if trump doesn’t.
“A slew of ads asking “Why didn’t you fire Fauci?” Would make Trumps primary polls drop real fast.”
Covid hysteria is over, nobody gives a rip about Fauci.
Fauci adds would be a waste of money in a Republican Primary.
The only way to defeat Trump is to enter the 2024 Republican Primary and compete for voters.
His challengers will enter a ‘world of pain’ as the bounce their heads off the Orange Wall....again and again.
your posting history show clearly that you’re an anti-trump troll:
https://freerepublic.com/tag/by:rintintin/index?tab=comments;brevity=full;options=no-change
“Yes because Governor Lee Is so exciting. Lol. Has anyone even whispered his name for President?”
Why being up Bill Lee? Did someone mention him here?
I had to find out who your governor was. I was curious as you were meddling in Florida.
Florida needs him and he needs to finish his job there, maybe 2028.
TRUMP 2024!
There is PLENTY OF TIME FOR DE SANTIS, RIN.
WE WILL NEED SOMEONE AFTER PRESIDENT TRUMP, YOU KNOW.
BE patient, his day will come. Right now, President Trump needs our support.
By the way, as far as backgrounds go, DeSantis is more in line with mine...BUT, I am willing to wait.
This way we get twelve years and that makes me very happy.
It is because of Trump that someone like DeSantis is now viewed as the “moderate alternative” instead of a fringe crazy right-winger. (see my signature)
Still on your anti-Trump jihad using DeSantis as your current “ammunition” of choice?
I like Trumps new approach with the deep state. No more mr nice guy.
So why didn't he do all of this during the 4 years he was in the White House? Talk is cheap.
“DeSantis is … an establishment GOP tool”
No way. If he were of the establishment he wouldn’t say boo about Woke Disney or grooming children in schools. He’d be weak on immigration and wouldn’t relish confrontations with the media. The media, the Democrats and the RINOS, the creatures of the uniparty, the ones who used to try to get Rush to use his influence to squelch discussions of social and cultural issues, HATE DeSantis like they hate Trump.
Trump deserves victory and revenge. DeSantis is young and can wait.
You seem to not know what you’re talking about, particularly in relation to what the RINOs want and do not want. Reagan did not have McConnell anywhere near as much in control as he is presently (McConnell was quite constant in voting against Reagan; look at the record), and there was still the USSR to deal with, whom even the Democrats feared back then.
It was the House that got in the way of much of Trump’s agenda; that was led by Paul Ryan, not Mitch McConnell, from 2017 to 2019.
As for primary opponents, it’s a far different game in DC from in the FL state legislature; IOW, you look like you’re comparing apples and oranges. Ask McConnell’s opponents. Not to mention that Trump would be breaking Reagan’s doctrine of “Thou shalt not speak evil of thy fellow Republican” if he spoke up post-primary, not that POTUSes ever get involved in primaries too much while in office.
Since you've made the Trump appointments a major disputing point, I'll address them all here.
As you may recall, when Obama ran he was faced with the same issue: being an "outsider" (an Illinois creature who won his elections by default, and with only two years in the Senate), he had no "Rolodex," meaning he didn't know anyone to fill out a staff. Bill Clinton had an entire Arkansas machine that he build up and brought with him to DC (including Vince Foster, who became disillusioned and was terminated).
George W Bush, being a Texas politician, inherited his father's political machine, but he still needed the "gravitas" of Dick Cheney to round out his ticket in DC.
Back to Obama, his solution to the "gravitas" problem was, after a long VP search, to select Joe Biden as his running mate. Biden was said to be bringing the DC political connections after 40 years in Congress that Obama lacked. They wanted Biden's Rolodex, and the price for it was Biden himself.
Fast-forward to Donald Trump and we have the same problem. Trump was a Big Donor for sure, but he was on the other side of the check, the writing side and not the cashing side. Trump relied heavily on the recommendations of Reince Priebus for his early appointments, perhaps too much so, but he (in my opinion), didn't know better. He did have a track record of loyalty to his executive staff, but that worked in a corporate setting where the c-level were compensated based on the success of the company. In DC, people are compensated based on the side deals they make from the power of the positions they hold, with lesser regard to the person who got them the position they now hold. In DC, getting the position is key; it's politically much harder to fire some than to appoint someone, because firing someone becomes an attack on the Senators who endorsed the nominee.
This brings us to the particular position of Chris Wray. Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, and others made it clear to President Trump' whom they would support for certain positions, and who was off-limits for being fired. If there were any root-cause for this Sword of Damocles being held over Trump's head, it was his nomination of Jeff Sessions for Attorney General.
Trump was being loyal to Sessions for him being the first DC heavyweight to get on the Trump Train, and made Sessions the Attorney General. Some of us thought that Sessions, while a genial person with Biden-like connections in the Senate, was not a strong personality to hold such an important role in the administration. He may have been an effective Alabama "country lawyer" in his youth, but his casualness didn't serve him well in the federal positions he held until he became a Senator. Sessions would eventually undermine President Trump by so easily being duped by Democrat pressure to recuse himself at the beginning of the Russia hoax, instead of holding strong until he could see beyond the initial headwinds to assess what was really going on.
Ron DeSantis has a stronger background than Sessions:
I think comparing the CV's of DeSantis and Sessions, it suggests that DeSantis clearly has what some might call "the mettle of the man." DeSantis does appear to be the stronger-willed type, a product of Yale/Harvard/Navy training. That said, what he still lacks is the same DC insider experience that Obama, Bush, and Trump lacked; the Rolodex. DeSantis was only in Congress for five years (zero for Trump or Bush, two for Obama plus his stint in the Illinois statehouse).
Sure, DeSantis was a Founding Member of the House Freedom Caucus, but the Freedom Caucus (42 members at its peak) might be considered to be "fringe" when compared to the Congressional Black Caucus (57 members), the LGBTQ+ Caucus (175 members), the Congressional Progressive Caucus (95 members), and Non-Aligned Republicans (116 members).
Right now, DeSantis is "earning his chops" as Governor of Florida, a seat he won by barely beating charismatic black Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, who was later discovered intoxicated in a hotel room containing crystal meth, a gay prostitute, and an overdose victim. I hope that he's winning over more residents of Florida since taking office, and that he improves his turnout in 2022.
The lesson that DeSantis needs to learn now is the story of George Allen of Virginia. After President Bush beat John Kerry in 2004 due to the so-called "values voter," Allen was seen as the next up-and-coming talent for 2008 and beyond. In law school, Allen was chairman of the "Young Virginians for Ronald Reagan," and his father was the famed NFL coach of the Los Angeles Rams and later the Washington Redskins. This made Allen the prime target for political kneecapping by Democrats when he ran for the Virginia Senate seat in 2006. Democrats hired hecklers to attend Allen rallies to try to goad him into making gaffes that they would record to use against him. One day, he retorted to a heckler "Macaca," his made-up word to essentially yell "Bull----!" back to the heckler (Trump would have just said it).
The Washington Post went on a search-and-destroy mission against Allen, using the word "macaca" to gin up story after story, for nearly three months, alleging racism, claiming that "macaca" referred to a Portuguese word for "monkey" (the heckler was of Indian descent). They even found references to Belgian slurs of African Congolese in the early 20th century colonial period. This all led to The Post successfully ending the Allen campaign and any chances of an Allen presidency, and struck a mortal blow to the rise of "values voters" as a faction until it reemerged as the Tea Party in 2010.
DeSantis needs to focus on his 2022 reelection as Florida Governor first. If DeSantis thought he was getting a bad rap during the COVID-19 lockdowns, and then again with the "Don't Say Gay" slurs, just wait until after the 2022 mid-terms when the Democrats turn their full force on DeSantis to try to clear the field for California's Gavin Newsom. You can bet that DeSantis will get the George Allen treatment x 100.
In my opinion, DeSantis can't be looking to a presidential run in 2024, he's going to have too much of a target on his back to take him out before then. DeSantis needs to be a Florida Governor first, a Trump supporter second to deliver Florida to Trump, and then a future presidential candidate third. DeSantis should be looking to 2028, meaning he should be looking for a position in the Trump administration for 2026 (or sooner), perhaps as President Trump's Attorney General. He can then leverage that position to build up his own Rolodex as the foundation for his presidential run in 2028.
-PJ
… (T)he governor has defended his decision throughout the week, despite the pushback, and even Trump on Wednesday morning appeared to cheer on governors who were choosing to reopen their states. …Nice try. And I see you chose to defend Kemp in particular.
DeSantis has been copying Trump’s mannerisms and way of talking since 2015. You don’t remember him prior to then? I do. He was in Congress and appeared on Fox all the time. He never talked or acted like he does now. He’s emulating Trump because of Trump’s success. I like DeSantis, but he’s not ready to be POTUS yet, and he’s definitely not more of a leader than Trump. Quit pretending he’s his own man. 🤣
4 more years...
desantis for florida governor 2022...
florida first!... 😎
It's long past time to stop this absurd infighting and keep our eyes on the prize.
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