He is not a man of the people, but scores with many conservatives with tough right-wing politics. Ron DeSantis’ mantra is never give up. Now he faces Donald Trump.
Preserving the traditional family, cracking down on migrants and protection from “leftist agendas”: These are the policies that Republican Ron DeSantis has on offer.
The governor of Florida wants to become president of the United States – he made his application for his party’s candidacy public on Wednesday. At the moment, the hardliner among the Republicans is the only serious opponent of ex-President Donald Trump. Who is the man who wants to move into the White House after the 2024 election?
The 44-year-old has strategically positioned himself as a right-wing doer in recent years. And the current Kulturkampf in the deeply divided United States offers him the perfect stage for this: the tactic of the smart graduate of the renowned Harvard Law School and ex-Navy member is to occupy hot topics with radical right-wing politics in a media-effective manner, thereby leaving the conservatives behind to unite.
Anti-woke trademarked
DeSantis aggressively targeted trans people and sexual orientation education in schools. In doing so, he was primarily targeting the “woke” ideology. This term was originally used to describe an attitude against discrimination and injustice, but is now used by many in the USA to denounce exaggerated left-wing correctness.
Being anti-woke is DeSantis’ hallmark. He repeated the sentence “Florida is where Woke dies” dozens of times to the frenzy of cheering from his supporters. He sees himself as an aggressive opponent of the left-wing politics of the media and elitist mainstream, which right-wing circles have built up as an enemy. A man who doesn’t bat an eyelid in the face of evil, for whom giving in is not an option. He provokes criticism from liberal media, companies or individuals because it gives him impetus.
Corona policy without restrictions and coercion
Possibly the best example is DeSantis’ Corona policy in Florida, which managed almost without restrictions and state coercion. At the same time, the number of infections there went through the roof. He reaped a storm of indignation – but apparently he had a large number of people on his side, and the polls kept getting better. On Wednesday, too, he defended his lax line in fighting the pandemic and described the US government’s actions as authoritarian. On the subject of immigration, he flew migrants from Texas to the island of Martha’s Vineyard off the east coast of the United States, where a particularly large number of liberal and wealthy Americans have their summer homes, with an unprecedented PR staging.
With such provocations, some of the up-and-coming politician’s laws, which are also popular with Democrats, are forgotten, such as the expanded protection of wildlife reserves and salary increases for teachers. The governor with the conservative picture book family was finally re-elected in November with a historically strong result – contrary to the federal trend in the US midterm elections, in which candidates in particular performed significantly worse than expected that Trump had supported.
Live conference on Twitter at the start of the election campaign
DeSantis now chose a remarkable platform for his campaign start. In a kind of live conference on Twitter, he described his plans to the eccentric boss of the short message service, Elon Musk. The tech billionaire is known for acting as an amplifier for right-wing political theses and has had a number of accounts of unpleasant journalists and other critics blocked in the past. DeSantis paid homage to Musk in the audio box as an “advocate of free speech” – unsurprisingly, Musk and various questioners also had only words of praise for DeSantis.
It is unusual that DeSantis does not announce his plans in a huge hall with a glossy finish and is broadcast live by the major television networks, but instead expresses his ambitions in a chat with the Twitter owner. The strategy behind it could be that DeSantis relies on Trump’s former favorite platform and its boss as an advocate – after all, Musk is considered a rock star among business people with a large conservative fan base and guarantees attention. The help of the billionaire, who recently said he just wants a “reasonably normal” president, could hurt Trump and drive hesitant supporters to DeSantis.
Trump knows that DeSantis is probably his biggest internal party competitor – and is probably not entirely wrong when he says that he mentored him to the governorship. The former real estate mogul has shot at him, and DeSantis has even indirectly come close to having sex with minors. And on the particularly far-reaching law restricting abortions in Florida that had just been passed, Trump said that even many conservatives found it “too harsh”. He has often agitated himself as agitators and otherwise cares little about differentiation.
Image of the disloyal careerist could damage DeSantis
DeSantis, however, wants to be the eligible, better Trump: no drama, but results – and all of this without the ballast and burden of the ex-president. But he walks a fine line: Trump has millions of core supporters, observers say that around 30 percent of the voters must not be offended by the man from the Sunshine State if he wants to have a chance against Democratic President Joe Biden in 2024. And he has to reckon with the fact that Trump will incite his base against him if he expects an advantage from it. In any case, the name Trump was not mentioned once during the Twitter event.
DeSantis could also be fatal for something else: He repeatedly emphasizes that, unlike Trump, he is not interested in popularity. This doesn’t just seem to be a pose: Political companions regularly speak up and express their disappointment that DeSantis has ignored them. A lack of cliques and the image of a disloyal careerist could harm him in the election campaign.
DeSantis is not considered a jovial man of the people: he finds it difficult to make small talk, and events that involve close contact with the electorate quickly become uncomfortable. After a trip abroad during which he recently met British business leaders, Politico magazine reported that DeSantis appeared bored and uninspired. An eyewitness said that no one in the room got the impression that “this man is going to do anything”.
Does DeSantis stand a chance?
So far, little has been said about what a President DeSantis could mean for US foreign policy and allies like Germany. Most recently, he caused a stir with statements that Russia’s war against Ukraine should not be a priority for the United States in view of domestic political challenges. Nevertheless, from a European perspective, compared to Trump, there is hope that DeSantis could act more prudently and not jeopardize alliances lightly.
In polls, Trump was far ahead of competing presidential aspirants in his party. Observers also blame the investigations by the US judiciary against him, which the Republicans unite a little behind him. But Trump’s current lead in the polls does not mean that DeSantis has no chance. At the same time in the 2007 Democratic primary, Barack Obama was a clear outsider to Hillary Clinton. And in May 2015, a certain Donald Trump was even in the low single digits in polls.