DeSantis Is Done - Here's A Better Option For Him
Originally published to Blogger on April 19, 2023
Unlike some liberal political media outlets, we at the Dash Files are unafraid to make bold predictions about the future. Since our creation in 2022, our predictions have held to be very accurate. We correctly predicted the outcome of every single Senate race in the 2022 midterms, we predicted all but one gubernatorial race correctly (the exception being Kari Lake's loss in Arizona), and while we incorrectly predicted Democratic hold of the House, we were only 7 seats off - better than FiveThirtyEight.
We're ready to call the 2024 Republican primary. This thing is OVER. DeSantis is done.
Ron DeSantis was never going to win the 2024 Republican primary. He enjoyed a brief stint in the sun, starting at exactly 8 PM on November 8th, 2022, when he won re-election by 19 points against Charlie Crist. Republicans spent the month of November fuming over their stinging losses in the midterms resulting from flawed, Trump-endorsed candidates. It looked like conservatives in Congress and the media had finally turned on the MAGA King and were ready to move on. People like CNN Commentator and former Bush campaign officer Scott Jennings fawned over DeSantis and Brian Kemp, two electorally successful GOP governors who looked like they could be the future of the party moving on from Trump. Then Donald Trump embarrassed himself with a sad, low-energy campaign launch at Mar-a-lardo. The pieces were coming together for the old guard of the Republican party. This was their moment! Trump was on his way to electoral armageddon!
And, nope. We have seen this same movie - over and over and over again. Donald Trump will say or do something that makes Republicans unhappy, and for two weeks, they will moan about it on CNN. Then Trump will make headlines after he insults "RINOs" for not standing up for him. Republicans back off. Trump wins the battle. We said this back in January: Republicans simply do not have the strength, nor the willpower to collectively rid Donald Trump from their party. To paraphrase Dan Pfeiffer, it is like Republicans are using a fire hose on a burning house, but hoping the House will burn itself down.
For god sake, it's only April, and DeSantis has already made a complete fool of himself. He can't answer normal media questions like an actual human being, such as "Do you remember where you were on 9/11?" When his garden-gnome brain doesn't short-circuit, he makes a fool of himself by calling the war in Ukraine a "territorial dispute." Congratulations, he managed to win an election as an incumbent governor of Florida, a state with the best GOP campaign infrastructure in the nation, making his 19-point victory the equivalent of the "just don't murder someone in broad daylight challenge." And then after his victory attracted hundreds of rich donors, he's already made them run away at Warp Speed by attacking their rich friends at Disney. With abortion bans now seen by the entire country, including Kansas and Montana, as just as desirable as injesting radioactive Uranium, DeSantis has already put himself behind the 8-ball by signing a draconian six-week abortion ban. And he wasn't even brave enough to sign the bill in front of a single camera. He can't survive an innocuous story about eating pudding with his fingers without getting broadsided with attack ads about his efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare. Trump already has photos of DeSantis drinking with high school girls when he was a history teacher in his 20s (which is the reason I suspect he magically can't remember where he was on 9/11), and I'm sure there are more photos ready to hit the cover of the Times when (and at this point, I think its reasonable to put "if") DeSantis actually declares his run for President. This thing is done and dusted. Donald Trump has won the primary before it even started. It. Is. Over.
One of the common suggestions made by conservatives is that Ron DeSantis should simply wait until the 2028 election to make his run for the White House. As we have discussed in previous articles, DeSantis' entire political strength is derived not from his words, but from his actions. The policies he sets as governor and pushes through the Florida Legislature are what capture the attention of Republican voters - not the things he says. Most voters haven't even heard his voice. The 2024 election is DeSantis' only chance to run for President, because the unamendable Florida Constitution limits him to two terms (unless 60% of Florida voters actually voted to change it, which they won't). In 2027, he will be a normal citizen, unable to sign a single bill or executive order. By 2028, he'll just be an angry white guy who just hates wokeness and using spoons to eat pudding. So Plan A, which is running for President in 2024, is circling the drain, and Plan B, which is running for President in 2028, looks like it will end just as well as letting a 5-year-old drive a semi-truck on the Interstate. DeSantis needs a Plan C. I think I have one.
DeSantis desperately needs to stay in political office for as long as he can, but he is running out of time and offices to run for. Running for a House seat would put him back in an office with no term limits, but it would be an embarrassing downgrade. A cabinet position would be helpful, but after Biden dispatches Trump for the second time, I don't think Pudding Fingers will be getting a job offer for the executive branch. So then there's the United States Senate. But Florida already has two Republican Senators: Marco Rubio, who just won re-election, and is only 51 years old, and Rick Scott, who is 70 years old, but is going to be running in 2024. So on the surface, it might look impossible for DeSantis to crack open a spot in the Senate. But here's how he could change that:
Rick Scott was the governor of Florida from 2011 to 2019, and got his current job by barely winning in 2018 against incumbent Democrat and current director of NASA, Bill Nelson. But before his time as governor, he was the CEO of a company called Columbia/HCA. In the early 2000s, they had to pay the federal government roughly $2 billion in fines for Medicare fraud, and in a deposition, Scott had to plead the fifth 75 times. Somehow, in the U.S. state with the most seniors, he has managed to survive three statewide elections with this headache tied around his neck, but he might be vulnerable to an ambitious Florida Governor. DeSantis practically owns the entire Florida Republican Party, from the legislature to the executive officials. He also has a major bargaining chip to cash in with Donald Trump: His possible candidacy. While Trump is going to beat DeSantis, it would be much easier for Trump to clear the field and set his eyes on Biden before the New Year. While Scott never actually faced criminal charges, his 75 pleads-of-the-fifth mean that there is something out there to be discovered. Remember that Donald Trump has a track record of keeping dirt on all of his enemies - DeSantis knows this well after the picture of him with high school girls surfaced. DeSantis could cut a deal with Trump to release all of his dirt on Rick Scott in exchange for not running in the 2024 election. At the same time, DeSantis could go to Ashley Moody, the Republican Attorney General of Florida, and convince her to pursue criminal indictments of Scott, and in exchange, Jeanette Nuñez, the lieutenant governor of Florida, who would become Governor of Florida upon DeSantis' resignation in 2025 to ascend to the U.S. Senate, could promise Moody a slot on her LG ticket when she runs for a full term in 2026. Another person who despises Rick Scott: Mitch McConnell. Scott is partly the reason McConnell is still minority leader, after Scott mismanaged the RNSC during the midterms, and his positions of Social Security have been a major headache. McConnell would like to see nothing more than Rick Scott's political career burning to the ground, and if DeSantis opened that door, McConnell certainly has connections with people in the U.S. Justice Department who could join the pile-on of Rick Scott.
If DeSantis can quietly pull off an indictment of Rick Scott before the 2024 election, it would be his golden opportunity to jump to a job without term limits and stay relevant when the 2028 elections come into the forefront.
I also think DeSantis has the possibility for a Plan D. Kevin McCarthy seems to be struggling mightily with the issue of the debt ceiling, and the far-right members of his party are going to be demanding things that he simply cant deliver. And if McCarthy fails to deliver for the crazies, they may take him out with a motion-to-vacate. The House Republicans do not have a real leader in their ranks ready to step up and take the job as Speaker. But let's remember: You don't have to be a member of the House to be Speaker. DeSantis could be the perfect uniter for the far-right members who love his culture-war agenda, and moderates who see him as a possible alternative to Trump. Perhaps DeSantis should wait for McCarthy's downfall, and slip in to fill the power vacuum.