Ron de santis

The biggest question for the future of the Republican Party is not whether Donald Trump runs for president in 2024 — he will. It is whether Ron DeSantis chooses to challenge him, or jumps the shark instead. Henry Olsen, the esteemed election analyst and Washington Post columnist, has a new column arguing that the overall lesson from the midterm primaries that have played out over the last several months is that the appetite for Trumpian populist candidates exists almost everywhere. The GOP electorate doesn't just want the policy priorities of populists — they want the style and attitude Trump brought to bear against the media and the Republican establishment.

I’ve never been blessed enough to vacation on Martha’s Vineyard, but if you’re an illegal alien who’s always dreamed of biking with the Obamas, you might be in luck. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has just sent two planeloads of migrants to the New England paradise. You’d think the residents of Martha’s Vineyard would be thrilled at the opportunity to increase the diversity of the approximately 80 percent white island. Oddly, there have been reports of elderly women in straw hats and kaftans packing up their “no human is illegal” signs and marking their doors with the blood of slaughtered lambs.

Cockburn has made it about halfway through the third rendition of the National Conservatism Conference and he's already identified some major winners and losers. Loser: Cockburn, whose room was not ready when he arrived drenched in sweat from the airport and thus was forced to change in a hotel lobby bathroom ahead of the conference's VIP welcome reception. Winner: Florida senator Marco Rubio, who made an actually decent joke about the Dallas Cowboys during his keynote address. Loser: New York magazine's Jonathan Chait, who was ratio'd on Twitter when he claimed Florida governor Ron DeSantis's speech was courting "anti-vaxxers" and has now been deemed an enemy of the NatCons. Technically, everyone at this year's conference is a winner.

I was hoping that I wouldn’t have to write about Liz Cheney again. After she was crushed by the Trump-endorsed Harriet Hageman last week in the Wyoming GOP primary, I figured the self-obsessed crusader would retreat to her boudoir to dress up in top hats once worn by Abraham Lincoln while guzzling a brand of whiskey favored by Ulysses S. Grant, both of whom she invoked in her petulent non-concession concession speech. But Cheney is not quite done making a spectacle of herself. A couple of weeks ago, the Trump-deranged congresswoman sniffed that she would find it “very difficult” to support Ron DeSantis because he had aligned himself with Donald Trump. That remark garnered some portion of the contempt it deserved, but it was nothing to her latest foray on to the public stage.

What’s left of the Bush-Cheney wing of the Republican Party doesn’t like Ron DeSantis. But it’s eager to see him run for president anyway. For if DeSantis challenges Trump for the 2024 GOP nomination, the old establishment stands to gain no matter who ultimately gets the nod. The Florida governor certainly seems to be ideologically closer to Trump-style populism than to the neoconservatism that prevailed among elite Republicans from the end of the Reagan era to the defeat of Mitt Romney in 2012. Why, then, would those who pine for the likes of Bush and Romney want to see a choice between Trump and DeSantis, both right-wing populists, two years from now?

Pittsburgh Fresh off the campaign stage in Arizona, where he stumped for gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, Florida governor Ron DeSantis made his way to Pittsburgh for another Turning Point Action rally. This one was supposedly for Doug Mastriano (DeSantis was headed to Ohio for J.D. Vance right afterward), who’s challenging state attorney general Josh Shapiro to replace Democratic governor Tom Wolf — but his address sounded every word a DeSantis 2024 presidential speech. The polls suggest Mastriano needs all the help he can get, as Shapiro — who has already spent $12 million on ads — leads Mastriano — running a “shoestring campaign” — by a healthy margin (one recent poll has Shapiro leading by fifteen points). But DeSantis hardly mentioned Mastriano at all.

This week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made another shrewd political move, showing why many Republicans think he is their best shot to win back the White House. DeSantis suspended Tampa’s woke prosecutor, Andrew Warren, for failing to do his duty and enforce the law. The governor didn’t just assert his power. He laid out a clear, detailed, substantive case for why he is suspending Warren from office. DeSantis’s move was both smart politically and sound constitutionally (assuming the courts uphold his suspension). Let’s take the politics first. Poll after poll shows rising crime is one of the country’s top issues, second only to inflation. What DeSantis’s suspension of Warren did was to make crime and punishment his own issue — one he was willing to act upon.

In all likelihood, Donald Trump will soon announce his re-entry into the presidential stakes — a decision that, with the exception of Grover Cleveland and Teddy Roosevelt, is largely unique to American history. In so doing, he plans to build on the success he had in office, the Supreme Court's decisions on abortion and other matters, and the Biden administration's mistreatment of the economy, the border and the culture. But one thing that will absolutely prove to be problematic for Trump when it comes to a primary — which he will absolutely have, given the machinations of multiple politicians who take issue with his approach or who will seek to supplant him — is a defense of his own performance in the last year of his presidency, facing a global pandemic.

As the war on normal escalates, and a silent majority nationwide grows weary of blue-state chaos, GOP opportunities in the midterm elections and 2024 are vast. But Donald J. Trump and his client army stand in the way of broad Republican victories, impeding the revival of values — freedom, faith, and family — they brandish exclusively as their own. Trump empowers the progressive left. Red-Meat Republicans and Devil-Trump Democrats are locked in a never-ending scorpion dance. For many voters, especially women, Trump’s astonishing boorishness preempts policy evaluation. The nation is the loser. Nonetheless, Donald J. Trump has millions of devotees who — fed up with gilded deceit and leftist disdain — like his crazy.

I regret to inform you that America’s decrepit media commentators are once again attempting to play a game of rope-a-dope with Republican voters. This time around, their choice is Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, who has experienced increased media attention of late as a potentially less divisive alternative for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, compared to the supposedly more controversial potential of Florida governor Ron DeSantis. The Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty writes: There are plenty of Democrats who believe the man who campaigned as a sunny suburban dad in a zippered vest is really a Trump in fleece clothing. But Virginia — which was trending blue until his victory — is clearly warming up to Youngkin.

Americans are voting with their feet and the results are in: red states are winning. An incredible 46 million people moved to a new ZIP code over the year to February 2022, the highest annual total since Equifax, a credit agency, began tracking moves in 2010. Republican-leaning red states gained the most residents — led by Florida, Texas, and North Carolina — while the blue states of California, New York, and Illinois were the biggest migratory losers. The most popular pandemic-era moves were from New York to Florida and California to Texas — so much so that U-Haul ran out of moving trucks leaving California last year. Given the chance to flee high-cost cities, Millennials did so in droves.