According to Navigator Research, which 538 rates as a 0.7 point bias toward dems:

From early April to now the idea of "Make America Florida" has gone from -5 with Independents to -31. And from +52 to +28 with Republicans.

The overall opinion of DeSantis has shifted -17 with Dems, -18 with Independents, and -19 with Republicans.

I just don't think that is in his DNA. It is far more likely he will scream the primary was rigged by RINOS and he will disenfranchise his base.

How much of Desantis fall is "He's taking on disney" or "He's taking on Woke, but not winning", and how much is "He spoke ill of God-Emperor Trump BURN THE HERETIC"

thestreet.com

(basically, after all of this, Disney's approval is unchanged, but Desantis went from +2 favorability to -19. Personally, I think it's the the 2nd and the third more then the "Hey, they're taking on Disney. BOO!" factor)

He hasn't said anything negative about trump. If anything he's been too subservient while trump just belittles him. I don't think his fight withr Disney can affect Disney's favorability in any way. It's only going to hurt DeSantis.

More accurately on my side, his supporters:

"“The Trump team’s obsession with men’s genitalia is more perverted than a woke grooming book.”

I think Desantis' drop is largely due to people getting to see more of him. Personality wise, he seems to have a lot in common with Ted Cruz. He's just unlikeable, about himself, and always thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. He has zero charisma and, politically, doesn't seem to know how to do anything other than fight culture wars.

He also has that bully impulse when dealing with the media asking questions he doesn't like. Reminds me a lot of former KY governor Matt Bevin. I think for anyone who is not aligned with his side, that comes off as very unlikeable and vindictive - or basically, Trump.

I suspect a lot of people who gave DeSantis a look over the Disney thing were already Trump supporters and were willing to give the new guy a look if he could do something. But when the Disney stuff ended up being a bunch of hot air and he didn't have a lot to keep it in the airwaves, they just went back to Trump and DeSantis got to reap all the negatives of taking on Disney in the first place.

I've heard a fair amount of this, but I don't understand it. I think to the degree this is true, it's just as much a problem and in most cases moreso for Trump. I.e. I think Trump is far more unlikeable than DeSantis.

Most people, even dems that have been around him, will admit Trump is charismatic. You see that word attached to him quite a bit. Never for DeSantis, and the Republicans that worked with him congress that I've seen quoted all seemed to hate the guy.

Huh. I don't see Trump as charismatic at all. I guess whatever other people see in him, I don't. I'd much rather listen to DeSantis speak than him. :confused:

Trump was charismatic enough to get a television show broadcast on a major network. Can you imagine DeSantis getting one? Trump's spiel worked because he was a known entity. DeSantis is not. I think the Ted Cruz comparison is spot on. The more you hear from him, the more his face is punchable.

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So DeSantis has gone to Massachusetts looking for folks for his campaign (the Politico stinger for the section about it was "Make Massachusetts Florida again", which gave me the shivers and a verbal "NO!"

Now he's gone to San Francisco and released avide where he said he saw "so much riff-raff around the area".

Dude. You are the Governor of florida. Your state is famous for the "Florida Man does something extremely dumb" meme. Your state literally is what people get in their head when people start talking about questionable life decisions.

edit: From the Politco article

"DeSantis’ campaign has activated volunteers, including MassGOP Vice Chair Jay Fleitman and state committeewoman Mary Lou Stuart, to build a supporter network in Massachusetts."

considering the GOP is an afterthought in MA (the D's have a 134-25 majority, with 1 independent in the state house, and 36-3 in the state senate), I wouldn't be looking towards Mass GOP to walk your dog, never mind build you a network for supporters for Super Tuesday.

Smacks of him wanting to be seen "going into the lion's den". Because he'd have much more success in, say, rural (or even outer suburban) Illinois, even though it too is a deep blue state.

It could also just be a strategy for getting delegates in the primary. Obama had a similar strategy where he targeted areas of the country that were not friendly toward Democrats. A delegate in Mass counts the same as a delegate in Alabama.

Moderate Republican/anti-Trumper Will Hurd is now joining the field.

Knew Will from my days at aTm. Fantastic human being. Just born in the wrong time to be a Republican with a brain. Was disappointed he bent to some of the Orange Fuck's early bullshit but was glad to see him eventually stand up to him. Not sure this Prez move is his best option but we're in crazy times these days.

He seems like a decent guy, but he won't win a single delegate.

I wish Will would go after Cruz instead. I think he could easily primary him just based on likeability alone.

DeSantis on immigration. Same old Trump stuff.

But wait, something new ... deadly force.

I absolutely have no problems shooting cartel members. The real problem is distinguishing cartel members from regular undocumented.
Let's hope we have the new immigration bill by then.

I'm sure the guy whose state literally has crops rotting in the fields because he drove away all the immigrant labor has some stellar ideas regarding immigration reform.

Cartel members aren't cutting through our border fences to smuggle their product. They're using ports of entry. Just more dumb statements that either ignore or don't understand where the problem is.

Just feeding the maga wet dreams of shooting brown people.

If one agent can monitor .5 miles of wall, that would mean basically doubling the number of agents.

The right has a lot of non-serious ideas.

Report is older but call it 10-15% at non-legal ports of entry.

Fact-checking Trump team: most drugs enter U.S. through ports of entry

The DeSantis campaign is such a mess. Trump doesn't hate gay people enough is a terrible message even for the primary.

I think I have received in the mail every day this past week a mailing DeSantis or his Super PAC where they are tearing down gay and "woke" people. I honestly don't understand how he thinks he can win a general election where the people he wants to vote for him are even more far right than MAGA. Does he just think he's going to outlaw the Democratic Party and every one but white Christian straight men?

Running one of the worst campaigns I've ever seen. The only thing he knows how to do is say "woke". He literally tries to tie everything to it.

His war on woke is going to look awful 6-8 years from now when we can get solid economic data to look back at.

Outlaw or shoot/permit to be shot.

DeSantis is one of the most awkward public figures we have ever seen. 100% he is on the spectrum. I suspect his wife is actually using him to try and gain power.

Can't remember seeing a big name politician crashing and burning this bad. Maybe the Trump indictments will change things but he sure feels like Bobby Jindal right now. Guy isn't going to make it to Super Tuesday at this rate.

Jeb!

That is the perfect comparison. Florida governor who raised a bunch of money and had high expectations. But then didn't have the personality to run nationally.

"please clap"

“Aides said he talked about Ivanka Trump’s breasts, her backside, and what it might be like to have sex with her, remarks that once led John Kelly to remind the president that Ivanka was his daughter,” Taylor wrote, recalling an alleged exchange with Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff between 2017 and 2019.


“Afterward, Kelly retold that story to me in visible disgust. Trump, he said, was ‘a very, very evil man.’”

{this man wants your votes}

The 2024 GOP platform will be pro incest before they get offended by anything like this.

heh Lindsay Graham got boo'ed and called traitor at a Trump rally 15 minutes from where he was born in SC today. :)

DeSantis is a very successful GOP governor. He's implemented a lot of pro-GOP policies and gotten re-elected easily in one of the biggest and most important states in the country.

But his presidential campaign seems to be a series of mistakes and missteps.

I wonder if the right analogy is how sometimes a coach is a great coordinator but a lousy head coach.

Because of the margin of his win and his apparent reputation, a year ago I wondered about him. Could he finally get his party past Trump?

Then he took on Disney. OK, whatever. People I know with kids are more concerned about the price of a visit than their kids being taken aside and groomed by Goofy. Seemed like a bad issue to hang a campaign on.

Now he's just trying to be Trump, but without the charisma. He's got a nickname for Trump ("Old Orange"), which feels like he took a focus group and picked the nickname that evoked the most halfhearted chuckles without offending anyone. And he's all-in on culture wars, which helps our country about as much as you'd think it would.

I think he's done. Complete self-implosion, coming at Trump from the wrong side with the wrong message. He got the most pictures marching in the right parades in New Hampshire this week, but it won't be enough.

I have no idea what the rest of them are doing. Scott got a boost for standing up to the women of the View. But that's not a presidential campaign. I think Haley is in Witness Protection right now. Pence is doing exactly what he needs to do to finish in third place down the road. And then there are a bunch of others fighting to claim a stray delegate or two. Even the Professor and Mary Ann had a better chance of winning.

Meanwhile, Trump draws 50,000 in South Carolina where they boo the local senator who isn't even running this time... the primary system has to be the worst system imaginable for picking leaders.

It's crazy because Trump has mostly been sleepwalking so far and has sounded more like the typical politician that the MAGA voters usually hate this time around.

There's a path to a non-MAGA GOP win, but it's going to take charisma and the courage to go directly at Trump, highlight his weaknesses and point out that he's lost far more than he's won and taken the party backwards in some areas. Unfortunately, no one seems to check one of those boxes let alone both. Well, maybe Christie for the first one but he lacks charisma and was a damaged politician before this primary.

I'm not sure his success stands for very long. He's traded short term wins for likely long term losses because he saw the job as a stepping stone to the white house. The longer he stays on the job, the more his policies get undone by the courts and the more likely he is to face the long term damage he's done to those short term wins.

He's also making enemies within his own party in the state because he's prioritized his agenda over the party's wants/needs.

Kansas 2.0?

If it is not completely obvious from my postings about him, I am not a fan. But it would be foolish to say that DeSantis is not a very successful governor. The issue is I can't say that he is a successful governor because he is Ron DeSantis. Think about it, before DeSantis there was Rick Scott. Before Scott was Charlie Crist and before that was Jeb Bush. Anyone noticing a pattern? All of those GOPers were considered successful governors who won two terms except for Crist who had the gall to support Obama's stimulus plan and left the party. All except Crist have at some point been considered to have at least a decent shot at the GOP presidential nomination. Maybe winning the governor's mansion in Florida has little less to do with the GOP candidates for governor and more about the dumpster fire that is the Democratic Party in Florida.

I am not saying that the GOP could put anybody on the ballot and win. I am saying as long as the Dems just throw anybody on the ballot every four years with no real plan as to who and why, the GOP might be able to just put anybody on the ballot and continue to win without much need to run a proper campaign.

DeSantis is cooked and I think that even if Trump dropped out, died, or whatever, he would still struggle to win the nomination. He just has no charisma and his campaign focus has been on weird cultural issues that are mostly for online folks.

Most people in the real world don't care about Disney culture wars. The brand is actually seen positively by most people. Even for someone like me who is online a lot, I don't even know what he's angry with them about. It's just such a bizarre issue to build your entire campaign around. At least when Trump ran in 2016, he had some issues that people might care about (drain the swamp, build the wall).

As for other candidates, Haley and Pence seem to be trapped in 2008 Republican politics and just don't understand that they are not what the party wants. Scott seems hellbent on angling for a VP spot while Christie seems to be in it for spite.

My guess is Trump wraps this up pretty early and I can see DeSantis pulling out right after New Hampshire. It's tough to compete with Trump when your base are people who post on 4chan and closeted men.

Whoever is running his campaign is a complete disaster. I still look back at his big campaign launch which he decided to do on Twitter in audio format for like 80k people.

It has been widely reported that Casey DeSantis is the show runner for his campaign. I still wonder if this is a situation where she is a easy target to blame because the campaign is flailing and of course it would be the wife's fault. However, whenever I have hear her speak on Ron's behalf, it is clear that many of the talking points are more important to her. Maybe they are her talking points as opposed to his which would make it more understandable that she can express them more passionately. Maybe that is the charisma that people are talking about and she has that while Ron does not. Either way, she feels more authentic and intentional about the points.

It reminds of a spouse having their partner call a business to complain about a shoddy product or service the second partner has no idea had occurred. Then the first partner ends up standing next to the partner on the phone aggressively gesturing and angrily whispering the things that should and should not be said to said business but refuses to take the phone to voice those complaints themselves.

Doug Burgum, in an attempt to get to the small donor number needed for the Iowa debates, is giving away $20 gift cards for each $1 donation. For the first time in my life, I donated to a GOP candidate.

I got an email from Country First/Adam Kinzinger asking us to donate $1 to Chris Christie's campaign just so he can get on the stage and talk shit about Trump since none of the others will.

The RFK/climate change farting argument story is certainly something.

I feel personally attacked

Trump has a nonstandard charisma, for certain. He's very gifted at a certain kind of persuasion-based communication/messaging... it's not for everyone, but it's very effective with the swath of people who respond to it.

Not everyone buys the snake oil, or falls for the predatory traveling revival, either -- but that brand of hucksterism has made plenty of people wealthy over time. That's the comparison, I think, not actual statesmen.

MSN

I learned that once-far-left-darling-turned-fox-news-contributor Dennis Kucinich is RFK Jrs campaign manager.

Cult of Personality/Narcissist who has been enabled by his family and people with money around him. He's honed the things that work, and he's had good reinforcement along the way of what doesn't. Cult leaders don't need practice. They feed off that adulation and it just makes them a bit crazier and their followers more extreme and devoted. You see it across many, many cults.

DeSantis was the keynote speaker for the TN GOP and after the event all 8 members of the TN GOP congressional delegation endorsed... Trump.

He's being fully Little Marcoed.

I saw that he is already firing staffers, but of course the campaign is "fine"

I nominate Grantdawg for the republican candidate

Oh boy. I will say that I'm more Republican in the classic sense than most MAGA fans.

Please don't make me vote Republican GrantDawg

shhh you're bringing down the system from within

I am absolutely willing to run on the Trout and Giant Squid ticket.

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and Thomkal is your running mate

I'll manage your campaign and grift all that cool hard cash

Tim Scott numbers improving.

It would be great for the GOP, and therefore for America in general, if he got the nomination. He's got something to offer besides owning libs.

We of the Trout and Giant Squid party denounce Tim Scott as too conservative (if you hate conservatives) or too liberal (if you hate liberals). He has refused our many requests to take a stand on the Giant Squid issue, and we have been told he hates trout! That is an abomination and completely un-American!

I could completely live with this

Gov. Brian Kemp officially ruled himself out in an interview today. He said all the things that Trump tried to pressure him to do to turn over the 2020 election made him embarrassed that he endorsed him. But he still said he would vote for Trump if he was the GOP nominee, because of course he would.
That is a sure sign the Federal campaign money Kemp is raising is to take on Ossoff for Senate in 2026. And he will most likely win.

Fuck Tim Scott

Any member of the Republican party who does not denounce Trump and find him repugnant is complicit and will do the same shit but just with window dressing

This surprises me a bit. Knowing you a bit away from the board I am surprised you could support a black man who refuses to denounce Trump.

I think he's saying that he just wants trump to fuck off and lose so we don't have to deal with him anymore. Doesn't mean he wants scott to win

Tim Scott is a drug addled moron who is just as proud of being a moron as the other idiots. He's exactly the same as the others but with a more palatable skin tone for liberals.

seriously tho no one will vote for him. it's like another herschel walker case

Tim Scott's whole campaign is centered around being Trump's VP. I don't think he has any delusions of winning.

New polls shows Desantis now tied at 12% with Vivek. But don't worry, Desantis has a plan to get back in the race. He's going to open an inquiry into Bud Light for an instagram ad they ran a few months ago. Trump is going to bury this guys political career by the time they get to New Hampshire.

DeSantis: We are going to launch an inquiry about bud light and it could lead to a derivative lawsuit filed on behalf of the shareholders of the Florida pension fund pic.twitter.com/iAkaknc0fm

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 21, 2023

This is not actually support, it is sadly a reflection on how fucked up all the other candidates are, that I would settle for him. :(

If I could pick a Republican candidate I would support, that list starts and ends with Adam Kinzinger, who has a snowballs chance in hell, even if he did run.

Let me get this straight. DeSantis helped create this social warrior "woke" BS among conservatives, which is precisely why Bud Light stopped selling and AB InBev's stock prices fell! He helped create the drop-off in sales, and then on the back-end, is going to investigate/sue because the stock price fell. If it wasn't so blatantly cynical, I'd call it brilliant.

Kinzinger's a really good example of the type of Republican who would have been comfortably in the center of the party in the 80s and 90s and is now on its outer leftwing fringes.

Hard to swallow a guy like Romney as the guy in the middle, dare I say, middle left, in his own party. He's never been that guy imo.

Guys like Romney and Ryan are on the far loony left-wing fringe of today's GOP. Which is hilarious when you consider that only 10-15 years ago Ryan was touted as a new conservative wonderkid.

Ryan was supposed to be the future, and his far out libertarian economic ideas almost seem tame now.

Yeah, Ryan's innumerate re-cooking of trickle-down economics would be seen as suspiciously academic for today's GOP.

Ryan or Romney would probably beat Biden.

Anyway, another bang up job by the Desantis campaign today. The person running that campaign has to be a plant from Trump's camp.

DeSantis campaign deletes video after Nazi images found - Raw Story - Celebrating 19 Years of Independent Journalism

Romney would clearly be a favorite, but Ryan's policies on SS and Medicare are pure poison. That's one thing that Trump understood well.

Agreed. Romney would walk away with it right now.

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So DeSantis's campaign is a literal car wreck right now.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/202...ssee-rcna96167

held up well

It was probably an angry, trans, illegal, communist immigrant trying to assassinate him!

Romney or Ryan might beat Biden in a head-to-head matchup if a) they could get over their charisma deficit and b) MAGA nation didn't avoid voting in the GE overall but realistically neither would make it out of the GOP primary.

Does he make it to Iowa at this point?


DeSantis Caught Using Taxpayer-Funded Florida State Vehicles to Campaign

It's super difficult to continue that kind of spectacular faiilure for months on end....lord knows I've tried

This is seriously the most enjoyment I have ever gotten watching someone crash and burn

Pretty much everyone makes it to Iowa. You need to screw up really, really, badly to not make it to Iowa.

It's the blatant, premeditated corruption. He pushed for legislation to shield him from disclosing travel right before he starts his campaign. I wonder why.

And absolutely nothing will be done about it.

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At least 2/3 of that not open to Trump group will end up voting for Trump.

In the general, yes. This is dealing with the primary. They may hate him, but they can't let the poors get any ideas.

Not sure, in spite of the intensity of his support, you can discount the many numbers he's taken out of the republican party altogether. Percentages of a smaller pool isn't showing lock solid support. I really wonder also, if we'll see the covid impact on the parties in the elections too?

Around January 10, 2021, my wife and I changed our party affiliation to Independent from GOP, so now we can't vote in the primaries. But, at least in KY, the GOP is gaining party affiliation, not losing it, so...

I suppose this is as good a place as any to post this. I read this new article about young GOPers buying into "ID politics," but in attempting to google more info, I then stumbled across an article from 7 years earlier that said exactly the opposite. Remarkable how things have changed, even amongst at least some of the young core conservatives.

July 29, 2023
Young conservatives buy into 'identity politics,' a shift from free-market focus - MarketWatch

July 21, 2016
Young Republicans Want GOP to Back Off Social Issues | Time