Welcome Home Governor DeSantis - Top 3 Takeaways – January 22nd, 2024
- The writing was on the wall. Florida has a full-time governor again. While DeSantis’ second place finish in the Iowa caucus may have “punched his ticket”, as he put it, to tomorrow’s New Hampshire primary – in reality it only slightly delayed the inevitable with DeSantis choosing not to remain in the race with what was sure to be an embarrassing showing in the nation’s first primary. Much was made of last week’s decision by Governor DeSantis to essentially skip out on campaigning in New Hampshire – where he’s averaged support of only 6% in the polls - for Nikki Haley’s home state of South Carolina – where he’s still only pulling an average of 11% in that state’s polls. Maybe he was tired of the cold, maybe he was seeking a firsthand reality check on the ground about whether he realistically could stir up new support in the Palmetto State. Whatever the thought process was, and whatever the mission may have been, it abruptly changed on Saturday when DeSantis announced a sudden change of plans. Rather than continuing to canvas South Carolina, we were told that he switched gears to go back to New Hampshire. As it pertained to the presidential campaign of Florida’s governor this was notable for a couple of reasons. First, that there hadn’t been a clear strategy executed, but rather a fluid situation that felt a lot like a somewhat desperate effort to throw some stuff at the wall in a few different places in the hope that it would stick somewhere. Second, because of what DeSantis subsequently did in theoretically making the move back to New Hampshire and Saturday, strongly contradicted something he just said on Thursday. And it’s what he said on Thursday that effectively summed up his presidential campaign. In an interview with Hugh Hewitt he said: Look, I’m a Florida guy. I don’t do negative temperatures ever, and I was trudging through that. In other words, maybe it’s not just a joke that the weather has factored into some recent decision making...After all, the one thing that’s worse than losing, is freezing your butt off while you’re doing it. But more substantively there was this comment by DeSantis when asked by Hewitt if there were decisions he made during the campaign that he regretted: I should have just been blanketing. I should have gone on all the corporate shows. I should have gone on everything. I started doing that as we got into the end of the summer, and we did it. But we had an opportunity, I think, to come out of the gate and do that and reach a much broader folk. So, America’s Governor regrets not working to reach the “broader folk” sooner which is illustrative of what perhaps his Achilles heel was in his campaign from the beginning...which actually is identical to what his issue was during his 2018 campaign which left Florida about 40,000 votes away from having Florida’s favorite bisexual substance abuser, Andrew Gillum as governor. DeSantis is a wicked smart person and has been a terrific governor for Florida, however...
- His inability to connect with people on a personal level, especially when contrasted with the former and perhaps future President of the United States’ innate ability to do so, remains as present as ever. In connecting with people, it’s critical to talk in the way that the people you want to connect with talk. It’s not just that people don’t say things like “monkeying it up” or “broader folk” when talking with each other. Seriously, when was the last time you or someone you know said either one of those? It’s what those types of terms represent, which is a disconnect with the average voter, defined as the broader folk, as the case happens to be. But that’s only one piece of the revealing puzzle from that statement last Thursday from DeSantis. The other perhaps more revealing aspect of that statement is what he did when he abruptly changed course on Saturday to head back to New Hampshire from South Carolina. He canceled his Sunday morning show appearances on CNN’s State of the Union, NBC’s Meet the Press and Media Buzz on Fox News. Here he was just on Thursday saying that perhaps his biggest campaign regret was not doing more of those types of appearances and the next significant decision he made while campaigning was canceling those appearances. That type of immediate turnaround was the writing on the wall.
- Welcome home Governor DeSantis. On Sunday, back home in Florida, America’s governor made it official when he dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed the former and perhaps future President of the United States - Donald Trump. On July 22nd of 2022 when asked about the potential of a DeSantis presidential run I said this: First, my preference would be for Governor DeSantis to be fully focused on being our governor for the next four years. Especially since at least half of that time will be spent with Joe Biden as President of the United States. I think it’s hard to argue that anyone could be as effective traveling the country while running for president as they would be if they were focused on the job they were elected to carry out. And if he were to win, we’d lose our governor after only two years of his 2nd term. None of that is ideal from where I sit. But then there’s the political calculation I’ve referenced as well. Let’s say for a moment DeSantis were to run against Trump and managed to win. Do you think Trump simply rides off into the sunset having lost a Republican primary? I don’t. My opinion is that if Trump runs, DeSantis shouldn’t. And to be clear – this isn’t simply about a Republican winning the presidency. There's a reason why the dishonest news media types are throwing the kitchen sink at trying to take out Trump. And no, it has nothing to do with truth and justice. We literally have Hunter Biden on video with guns, crack and hookers. And we literally have Joe’s voice mail telling Hunter he’s in the clear with China. It’s hard to fully articulate the extent to which these people are dishonest and nefarious. It’s because they’re terrified Trump will finish the job he started. All that’s changed is a year and a half. I’ve not made a career out of being wrong. Welcome home Governor DeSantis. It’s better late than even latter.