Article: “off ramp”.
Ron is walking the plank into the deep blue sea....
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My post from another thread:
This is good time to write the epitaph for the DeSantis campaign.
The first thing any campaign must do is clearly identify what their critical issues will be.
Those issues should be as simple as possible, easy to explain, easy to understand, and they must stir both the intellect and the emotions of the electorate.
If the candidate currently holds any public office they have one big advantage going for them—they can take specific actions to prove that they take their own critical issues seriously.
There is one other critical task.
The candidate must do focus groups and other market studies to find out what the voters in the district/state think are the most critical issues.
This is actually harder than it seems because it is easy to fall into the trap of the standard “laundry list” of issues and ignore anything outside the list.
The clearest example of this was the 2016 presidential season where the political professionals failed to identify that illegal immigration was a critical issue for many millions of voters. It was not on the standard “issues” list so they just missed it.
I would argue that the critical issue that is not polled in this election is one word:
Courage.
Courage is about being willing to fight the Deep State and every other large corporation, non profit, mass media on issue after issue where they are not serving average Americans.
A governor of a state could show that courage with one simple action:
Stand up—loudly and clearly—for the J6 political prisoners from their state.
DeSantis had a wide open door right in front of him. He was the governor of a major state who could dominate the headlines with a heroic and courageous stand demanding their release—including leading the legislature with resolutions of support for these victims of political prosecution. There are probably many other actions he could have taken to support them—including featuring their plight in his campaign ads. The hate that generated from Democrats and the mass media would have been pure gold for his campaign.
Then he could have argued that he had the courage of a President Trump and had earned the right to be his successor as head of the Republican Party.
It may be that his consultants and advisors were too ignorant to see it—or it may be he lacked the courage to walk through it.
Either way—that was a fatal error.
R.I.P.
It appears to me in retrospect, and from a distance, that he was misled by anti-Trump faction into thinking he could derail Trump and take the nom for himself. AntiTrump donors ponied up millions, which would always be persuasive.
“Consultants” from the Bush camp beguiled him with glib but catastrophic advice. Maybe his own heart really wasn’t in it until malicious people convinced him that “this is your time.” Too bad but won’t be the first politician who believed in the wrong people and ended up in a ditch.
DeSantis should have come out fighting…for Trump. He is (was?) viewed favorably by MAGA conservatives. I don’t see how anyone can be so blind as to see what happened to Trump, see what IS happening to Trump, then join the bandwagon attacking him. It should go without saying that whatever the Swamp is doing to Trump they will do to anyone else who attempts to drain the swamp, so DeSantis should have joined the fight to defend Trump. I think he can still come back from this, but he needs to step out soon and get enthusiastically behind MAGA.
DeSantis is a wonderful governor and I hope he’s re-elected.
Disappointing performance as prez candidate does not mean we should badmouth him. Eating our own sucks.