But Republicans who doubt Trump’s comeback are uncomfortable not only with his bigotry and authoritarian streak but also with his disinterest in governing itself. And so, with Trump and his movement taking much of the blame for the GOP’s disappointing midterm elections, Trump-skeptical Republicans see a new weakness in the former president. High-profile conservative commentators are touting Florida Gov. Ron DeSandis, who easily won re-election in a once swing state, as Trump’s preferred alternative if he decides to run for president in 2024. As the governor of one of the largest states that has spent years building his conservative base, DeSantis has long been seen as a potential successor to Trump. But with Trump now running, the governor will have to give voters a reason to vote for him over the former president. “As far as I can tell, there are no serious policy differences between Trump and De Sandys right now. The biggest discrepancy between the two is ability and execution,” Matthew Continetti, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies the conservative movement, told me. “I wouldn’t expect a Trump-DeSandis presidential primary to come down to politics. Such a contest, if it happens, will be a test of Republican voters’ willingness for new leadership and an opportunity for victory.” But that still requires a substantive opposition to Trump — not something that, to date, DeSantis nor many other elected Republicans have been willing to do since Trump won the GOP primaries in 2016. So I asked a group of conservative politicians who saw or expected to see a distinction between Trump and DeSandis, who currently appear to be the strongest contenders for the 2024 Republican nomination. There was no obvious answer. Trump hasn’t stuck to a consistent policy platform, and DeSantis has governed largely as a conventional Republican for the past four years (and voted as one in the US House before that). There may be little space between them on typically important issues such as taxes or regulations. Trump, when he has paid much attention to policy, has mostly focused on immigration and trade. DeSantis, perhaps with future national ambitions in mind, has picked hawkish battles on both of these issues while also fanning the flames of the culture-war in a way that might resemble Trumpism (without Trump). Ultimately, this may be the playing field for the 2024 GOP primaries: less about specific policy differences and more about whether DeSantis can convince Trump’s base that they can also trust him on the issues where they strongly believe in him. former president. “It’s not going to be so much about political differences, but who do you trust to fight the awakening on the left?” Avik Roy, who heads the Equal Opportunities Research Foundation, told me. “This will be the ground on which the campaign will be fought.”
Where Trump and DeSandis may actually disagree on policy
There are early signs of where DeSantis might position his policy record or plans relative to Trump’s to loosen the former president’s grip on the Republican base. Ironically, it starts with the issue that helped topple the Trump presidency while also turning DeSandis into a national hero for many conservatives and a loathsome evil for Democrats: Covid-19. Roy said he thought the response to the pandemic would be a point of emphasis for DeSantis. While Trump often muddled and undermined his administration’s plans with his rhetoric, he was still the president who put Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx in charge — who became avatars for an overbearing response in the eyes of many GOP voters. It was his government that recommended a two-week partial shutdown of the economy to try to stop the spread of the new coronavirus in the spring of 2020. DeSantis took a deliberately different path. He resisted calls to close schools and businesses. Roy described the governor’s approach as one of conviction, based on data. Florida’s record on Covid-19 is more mixed than DeSantis’ fans believe — the state’s economy has rebounded more quickly, but it also ranks 12th out of the 50 states in coronavirus deaths per capita. But for Republican voters who are more skeptical of government intervention and have seen much of the pandemic response as an overreaction, DeSantis could criticize Trump for these unpopular measures while offering Florida’s experience as an example of an alternative approach — the substance of his argument against Trump, regardless of the specific issue. Roy described DeSantis’ potential argument for Covid-19 this way: “During the pandemic, when Trump was out to lunch, getting carried away by policy and politics, we were really consistent and the people of Florida benefited greatly from this”. It’s a case that DeSantis himself has begun to make, albeit obliquely, in national appearances that are helping to lay the groundwork for his expected presidential run. “Pile up their records on this issue,” Roy said. “In a Republican primary, this is a case where DeSantis can make a very convincing case.” Beyond that issue, however, the policy experts I spoke with didn’t see many obvious differences between Trump and DeSandis. On taxes, for example, “I’m not sure that Trump or DeSantis have or will articulate a position on tax policy that is different than the Republican position on lower taxes,” said Kyle Pomerleau, a senior fellow at AEI. . Part of the problem is that, as governor, “the totality of policy issues [DeSantis] focuses on is actually quite different from those that would be front and center in a national GOP primary,” said Oren Cass, executive director of the conservative political think tank American Compass. “I would expect him to start building a profile on this set of economic and foreign policy issues in the coming months.” Foreign policy will be an issue to watch. Trump ended the expansive neoconservative dominance of Republican politics, reigniting a streak of isolationism that had been largely dormant for decades. DeSantis generally took an aggressive stance as a member of the US House of Representatives, criticizing the Obama administration for prodding Cuba and Iran and ridiculing the nascent BDS movement that sought to punish Israel for its treatment of Palestinians. As governor he has also signed executive orders aimed at limiting his state’s trade relations with China and Russia. At the same time, DeSantis has taken issue with some of Trump’s more unorthodox foreign policy positions: In an interview during his first run for governor, DeSantis said he does support the NATO alliance, but credited Trump with drawing attention to to some of its problems. Then there’s DeSantis’ economic agenda, still a bit of a black box. As Michael Brendan Doughtery wrote in National Review this fall, DeSantis “isn’t Florida big?” The message may have limited resonance in the rust belt. States that voted for Obama and then Trump are looking for an economic plan to revive their industries. New tax cuts and infrastructure projects, two hallmarks of his time as governor, are not going to create any meaningful opposition to Trump. The 2017 tax bill remains Trump’s signature achievement, and he’s obsessed with infrastructure (though he failed to close the deal on a major bill as president). “What is DeSantis’ message about the American economic model?” Doughtery wrote, implying that the answer was not yet obvious.
What is DeSantis going to do for the next two years?
So the details of the disagreements between Trump and De Sandys will be hammered out in the coming months as the 2024 campaign heats up. But the stakes in this debate are already clear: To unseat the current GOP leader, DeSantis must win over some of Trump’s supporters. On this front, as Roy described it, it becomes a matter of trust. Who will fight the left? Trump’s entire personal brand is tied to the idea of him as a fighter. So it’s telling that DeSantis has spent much of his time as governor picking fights designed to upset the left and win praise on the right. Two specific episodes come to mind. First there was DeSantis’ confrontation with Disney over his state’s “don’t say gay” education bill. After some debate, the company announced its support for repealing the law and said it would stop giving money to politicians who supported the policy. DeSantis went on the offensive, creating legislation that would overturn Disney’s preferential tax status within the state. “It’s not that he’s deviating from free market philosophy, but his struggles combine traditional free market values with social conservative concerns,” Roy told me. Then there was DeSantis’ plan to move immigrants from the US’s southern border to Massachusetts. The maneuver was derided by many as inhumane and unfair to the people most directly affected. But for the Republican primary audience, it was a chance for DeSantis to show his willingness to fight, to stick it in the eyes of progressives, on an issue the conservative base cares deeply about. More stunts may follow. DeSantis’ office has already made plans to move even more immigrants from Florida to Illinois and Delaware, and more may follow in the coming weeks based on the contracts underlying the plan. He may look for more opportunities to compete with progressive…
