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