Trump vs. DeSantis: An inevitable showdown for Republican control heading into 2024?

As “The Daily Show” noted, donald trump he’s worried enough to pull out the calculator. From Truth Social, the platform he created after being suspended from Twitter, the former president of USA shot the re-elected governor of Florida and rising star of the Republican Party, Ron DeSantis. “Shouldn’t it be said that, in 2020, I got 1.1 million more votes in Florida than Ron D got this year, 5.7 million to 4.6 million?”. It’s his way of minimizing it: there can’t be two sheriffs among Republicans.

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Trump also turned to comedy to hit him. At a rally a few days ago in Pennsylvanianicknamed him “Sanctimonious”, or, in good romance, sanctimonious. However, when she returned to Floridaasked that they vote for him without attacking him. Afraid of facing him in his fiefdom? Perhaps: DeSantis is much loved among his people, he has just been re-elected governor with an advantage of almost 20 points over his Democratic rival and part of that success is due to Trump himself.

“He was an unknown congressman. In fact, the Republican candidate for governor of Florida four years ago it was adam putnamonly that he came donald trump and supported it -remember Eduardo Gamarra, Professor at Florida International University-. Ultimately, she was victorious by just 33,000 votes. He owes a lot to the former president and that is why the complaints and attacks from Trump, who treats him as ungrateful and boasts of being his creator”.

Trump’s exact words were: “Ron came to me in desperation in 2017. He was politically dead. […] When I endorsed him it was like, to use a bad term, a nuclear weapon was fired. […] And now, Ron DeSanctimonious is playing!”.

And the viewer with the best place to appreciate these bickering is himself Joe Biden. In an interview this week, the current US president said: “It’s going to be fun to see how they fight”, in reference to what is coming in the Republican Party on the way to the 2024 presidential elections.

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successful strategies

Ron DeSantis got people talking about him all over the world for his management of the coronavirus pandemic. He fulfilled the dreams of the Republicans in Florida. “While several states in the country accepted the policies of Dr. Anthony Fauci and they ordered strict quarantines and took care to eliminate physical contact -score Rodrigo Murillo, historian and international analyst with a postgraduate degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science-, DeSantis saw how those decisions would affect the economy and opposed it. In fact, he annulled several of the measures that he proposed Washington”.

Support for his management seemed overshadowed by criticism, which was often scathing. However, Murillo says, DeSantis met them with “personality”. “He remained consistent with his decisions and, on balance, Florida was in the middle of the table of those most affected, while its economy suffered less than in other places”.

His success is also explained because he realized the problems that the Republicans had to take over the state. Gamarra says that he pointed to the urban cone and focused on Miami-Dade, county where the Republican Latinos are. “There he bet on Trump’s speech that the democrats are communists. It was a master move. He has now won re-election with almost 60% of the Puerto Rican vote.”.

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dispute the candidacy

How many options does Ron DeSantis have to compete against Donald Trump and win him the party’s presidential nomination? Murillo proposes to review the similarities and differences with the former president. “They both live in Floridathey are very well educated -he went to Yale Y harvardand Trump to the University of Pennsylvania-. In addition, they structured their political campaigns by creating and attacking enemies like the mediathe migrantsthe movement ‘woke’. In other words, his image is not based on proposals but on going against his enemies.”.

Gamarra adds: “They also look alike because they are two upper-class people who say they speak to and represent the poorest.”.

But a big difference is the experience. Murillo says:The numbers during the pandemic were not good, but Trump can say that before he got the economy from United States grew remarkably, that unemployment decreased and that, according to certain reports, the median income increased to US$65,000”.

Montage that faces Trump and DeSantis. REUTERS (GAELEN MORSE /)

Also, Trump will always stand out for his handling of foreign policy, a major issue for Republicans. Of course these, says Murillo, are not concerned about Russia either Ukraine; they look with great suspicion at China because they know thatis the rival, the power that can question them”. And now that Xi Jinping announced Chinese interest in recovering taiwan by 2049, confrontation is inevitable. It is there that the image of the former president becomes more relevant: he did not hesitate to declare the trade war Y “it was very harsh rhetorically”.

That is why Murillo considers that, within the party, donald trump would be imposed on Ron DeSantis without so much problem. “Ultimately, DeSantis has a lot more to lose if he decides to challenge him for the nomination. Nowa smart move for Trump would be to add him as vice president by 2024″.

For Gamarra, however, Ron DeSantis He would soon announce his candidacy. “He could deliver the coup, but we will have to see why Trump is not going to sit idly by”.

The analyst concludes:I think DeSantis hasn’t reached his ceiling yet and he could start trying to solve the problems he has at the national level and develop a good electoral base. What is clear is that Trump is scared. His candidates did not win in the ‘midterms’there was not the red tide that was expected, so we could think that the Republicans are pondering the possibility that Trump is harmful and that the future depends, to a large extent, on DeSantis”.

Source: Elcomercio