Among Current Topics . . . Could Gov. Sunshine State Outglow Mr. Mar-a-Lago For 2024?
By DEXTER DUGGAN
Did Donald Trump undercut his own political future by showing during his presidency that his brand of aggressive Republicanism could get the job done promoting conservative policies?
In other words, if Trump-like determination could produce a winning product, maybe it didn’t have to be only Trump who could sell it. And maybe an alternate candidate wouldn’t burn up so much oxygen focusing on his own tweets.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis quickly became a conservative star whose successful Sunshine State policies left recall-bait California left-wing Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom looking like bygone bad news. Why, only yesterday Newsom and fellow Golden State Democrat Kamala Harris were all the buzz instead of being the nasty bee stings on the body politic
No longer would the Republican base usually have to be satisfied with national nominees like Mitt Romney, who seemed eager to placate foes, but instead a man who stood up for what the faith-family-and-freedom base believed in and thereby also attracted members of minority groups like Hispanics and blacks with similar values.
Trump certainly wanted to be back in the White House despite cognitively impaired Joe Biden moving in. But if Trump’s deepest loyalty was to advancing conservative values instead of just his own personal success, what if someone like DeSantis looked to have a better chance of kicking the degenerate Democrat Party into the ditch?
Moreover, Joe Biden’s Democrats were discovering to their dismay that they’d fastened 200-pound weights on their running legs for 2022 by nurturing repellent Critical Race Theory. Outraged parents were turning up at school boards to demand that teachers stop indoctrinating their offspring with this Marxist-inspired hate, and they knew it hadn’t been dreamed up by the GOP.
Make no mistake, dominant left-wing media would come howling after whatever Republican got the presidential nomination, but would the younger DeSantis be better positioned to shrug off their bludgeoning? DeSantis, like Trump, certainly didn’t spend his time yearning for dominant-media love.
In quick succession in June, two straws in the wind, not scientific polls, showed good news for DeSantis.
The June 18-19 Western Conservative Summit, in Denver, had DeSantis narrowly leading Trump in a nonpartisan approval poll. This wasn’t head-to-head opposition, but a ranking by 371 respondents of who was most favored. Thus, the same voter could rank DeSantis as most-approved while Trump could be his second choice.
Of the top four, DeSantis had 74.12 percent, Trump 71.43 percent, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz 42.86 percent, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo 39.35 percent.
Joe Biden, by the way, got 2.43 percent, and Kamala Harris 1.89 percent.
The new Clay Travis & Buck Sexton national talk program that succeeded the late Rush Limbaugh’s started its first day on June 21 with a straw poll that drew a much larger response. No doubt the two radio hosts were looking for attention-getters as they debuted. This was a head-to-head presidential vote, unlike the conservative summit’s.
Of 87,936 votes for a person’s preferred candidate in 2024, DeSantis received 67.1 percent, Trump 28.1 percent, Pompeo 2.5 percent, and Cruz 2.2 percent.
The Washington Examiner posted on June 21 that Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said DeSantis wouldn’t run against Trump for the 2024 presidential nomination, but intends to seek re-election to the governorship in 2022.
It quoted Meadows: “You know, I think Ron DeSantis is identified across the country now for the courage that he shows for conservative solutions, and he would be the first to say that if President Trump gets in, that he would win the nomination and would clear the field, and so I don’t ever see it being a 2016 primary scenario,” when Trump was among a number of GOP hopefuls fighting for the nod.
Considering Trump’s oft-stated preference to be a winner, plus the fact that he believes, as do many of his voters, that he unfairly was deprived of re-election in 2020, he’d seem unlikely to welcome DeSantis or anyone else challenging his ambitions for 2024.
It’s probably safe to say Trump still can pull in large crowds for his personal appearances. He’ll be able to test this out as he resumes rallies, the first one scheduled for June 26 in the Cleveland area, after this hardcopy issue of The Wanderer went to press on June 24. Then there’s a July 3 Florida rally set for Sarasota.
The Wanderer asked national conservative commentator Quin Hillyer for his reaction to the two straw polls. Hillyer, no fan of Trump, replied on June 21: “Whether Gov. DeSantis is the ultimate answer or not, it is a very good thing to see someone outpacing Donald Trump in a conservative poll.
“The sooner Trump seems to be old news, the sooner conservatives can be heard again by the tens of millions who sometimes voted Republican but who couldn’t stand Trump — and the better chance conservatives will then have for achieving a lasting political re-alignment,” Hillyer said.
Conservative GOP political consultant Constantin Querard told The Wanderer on June 21 that “DeSantis is currently the flavor of the day within conservative circles, and he’s benefitting from that.”
About The Future
Pundit Bill O’Reilly told his daily radio update audience on June 23 that based on talking with Trump, “I can tell you he would like to run for president again.” But, O’Reilly said, he “does not need to be so provocative.” His record as president “was pretty strong,” the pundit said, so he should run on that, without “the small stuff.”
Everybody knows how Trump feels about the 2020 election, O’Reilly said, so he can go ahead and mention it, but any campaign against the Democrats “has to be about the future, not the past.”
Another political drama was the continued negotiation between D.C. Democrats and Republicans over spending. As sleepy as Biden may seem with his halting, confused talks and the light scheduling for his White House days, his spending plans seemed to have the energy of a dozen dynamos. Not that Biden drew them up himself, but the Marxist dervishes named to his administration.
The ruling theory seemed to be that Americans exist mainly if not only to provide government with as much revenue as it can take from them. That’s a true form of slavery in these days when we hear so much from left-wingers about the scandals of servitude — not that they object to this form of it to enlarge their own political-plantation mansions.
The question never seems to be how much of their earnings people can be allowed to keep, but how much can they be compelled to surrender. Not only must blood-sucking leeches count on you for their nutrition, but politicians think they have every right to put innumerable more of the repellent parasites on you and you dare not take offense.
When Republicans are in power in D.C., they’re pretty good at keeping the spending flowing, too, but Democrats are the true masters of this corrupt universe.
Commentator Hillyer told The Wanderer, “At some point, the federal debt bomb is going to explode, doing vast damage to the nation’s economy and culture — unless we aggressively begin deactivating it, and soon. On top of all Biden’s other spending, his proposed infrastructure bill is a disaster waiting to happen, because it will light yet another fuse leading to the bomb.”
Does the name King George ring a bell about Boston Harbor?
GOP consultant Querard, on the other hand, commented, “Infrastructure is interesting to watch because taxpayers generally agree with spending on infrastructure, so a large spending bill may not stir much voter anger, unless Congress lards it up with garbage projects or things utterly unrelated to infrastructure.”
One part of Biden’s costly plan is actually to tear up some highways because they’re supposedly racist — like about everything is as seen through the Marxist sunglasses that impede vision in his administration. And making it harder for people to move around probably would be a boost to more government-beloved mass transit.
When Phoenix city government a few years ago decided to push additional mass transit right through some lower-income, minority neighborhoods that didn’t want it but preferred to keep their roadway, the people’s voice counted for as little as it often does against all-wise bureaucrats.
And when a new north-south freeway was cut through established Phoenix neighborhoods more than 30 years ago, there were a lot more Caucasians’ residences than others’ that government paid to take.
These days, the Biden administration hopes to destroy suburban living as much as it can in the name of anti-racism anyway — not including, of course, his and his pals’ mansions, which are not slated to have apartment buildings on their charming lawns.
So whether it means tearing up highways or forcing through light rail, we can thank more weird ideas percolating up in Biden’s mind.
And think about this. A half-century or so ago in the U.S., the prices of homes and automobiles were calculated mainly for a one-earner family income. Generally Dad went to the office downtown and Mom raised multiple kids. Then different factors like the phony fear of a “population bomb” and anti-family radical feminism started shoving their way around.
Voila, forcing Mom into the office, too, would turn her away from some of that now-unfashionable childbearing. And what stronger reason to have to go to the office than homes and cars with prices that required two-earner families? Funny how that works out when corporatists and social radicals manipulate little us in their war games under the table.
Say, where does Biden manage to get so many bad ideas? Hmm, do those aviator sunglasses he loves so much have little speakers next to his ears? Miniaturization, it’s wonderful.