CNN
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Ron DeSantis’ campaign launch failed like one of Elon Musk’s first rocket prototypes.
The Florida governor has been preparing for months to run for president, but his official campaign launch committed a cardinal political sin — offering his opponents, especially former President Donald Trump, a opening to make him something funny.
First, DeSantis made the unusual choice to make his long-awaited run official not to regular voters, but in a Twitter Spaces audio stream alongside Musk, the billionaire owner of the social media platform. , which means that the biggest moment of his political career played out. by a disembodied voice.
Worse, the launch interview was delayed and plagued by glitches. The cliche that the best day of any presidential candidate’s campaign is their first announcement doesn’t apply to DeSantis, who managed to nail down his own message. And even when the event was up and running, it felt like a fan fest for Musk, as various conservative opinion leaders called to boost DeSantis but seemed more aloof than his host.
“It came across like a talk radio host not the future leader of the free world,” former Trump administration communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin told CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
If DeSantis is to defeat Trump, who nearly doubled him 53% to 26% in a new CNN poll of the GOP race released Wednesday, he will need to run a near-perfect campaign. So his suspension from the launch is not a good start, not least because it undermines his core message that he has the kind of discipline and focus that will make his presidency more successful than Trump’s.
The former president’s allies – who have been wreaking havoc for weeks attacking the former Trump protégé, who he clearly believes is his greatest threat – can hardly contain their joy at the defeat that has surpassed the DeSantis’ big moment.
“Ron DeSantis’ sloppy campaign announcement is another example of why he is not ready for the job. The stakes are too high and the fight to save America is too critical to gamble on a first-timer who is clearly not ready for prime time,” said Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for the Trump-aligned Make America Great Again PAC.
Even President Joe Biden’s campaign got in on the action, tweeting a link to his fundraising machine, which, admittedly, worked — unlike the DeSantis audio stream.
DeSantis tried to walk away from the failure by releasing a video boasting that he “broke the internet” because so many people were eager to listen to him on Twitter Spaces.
But by giving an opponent as vehement as Trump an early gift, which will no doubt be retold by increasingly faded and embarrassing versions of the great showman at his future campaign rallies, DeSantis is guilty of a major mistake – one that is particularly surprising since his assistants had months to choreograph his first official step on the national stage. He is now under urgent pressure to change the narrative lest the chaotic events of Wednesday become a metaphor for his campaign.
Even before it became official, his shadow campaign appeared to deflate in recent weeks after Trump’s rebound, some surprising moments during a foreign trip to DeSantis , and his failure to prevent other opponents from jumping into what is now a crowded leading field. DeSantis’ floating start may now give hope to single-digit poll candidates — like former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott — that he’s in a irreversible downward path.
In the end though, if Florida’s governor pulls off Wednesday night’s embarrassment, his bid to win the GOP nomination won’t be decided by the infamous Twitter Spaces audio stream. It is worth noting that Trump, for example, carries more baggage than a lackluster campaign launch, due to his two impeachments, an indictment in a hush money case in which he pleaded not guilty, the $5 million judgment after he was found sexually liable. assault and defamation, and other ongoing investigations related to his conduct after the 2020 election and handling of classified documents. Trump has denied wrongdoing in all cases, but he also has a long catalog of wild and outrageous behavior that even some of his Republican supporters consider beyond the pale.
But DeSantis has a mountain to climb before he makes his bid officially official on Wednesday. He’s trying to do something the Republican Party hasn’t done since the former president came down his golden escalator in 2015 — beat him up. And while DeSantis’ opponents and what he calls the “legacy media” will fix problems with his campaign’s launch, the real test in the coming months will be whether he can pull off a compelling campaign. anti-Trump attack.
When the Twitter Spaces stream coughed to life, DeSantis laid out an unmistakable argument for why his discipline and record meant he, and not Trump, should lead the GOP into the next election. He presents a fierce brand of stripped-down conservative cultural ideology while bashing the “elites” and the media calculated to please the increasingly mainstream audience he will meet in the coming weeks. . DeSantis has left no doubt that he plans to lead the most unapologetically right-wing administration in history, which will hit Washington like a wrecking ball if he wins in 2024.
He accused Biden of imposing “medical authoritarianism” during the Covid-19 pandemic, vowed to change the entire “enchilada” of public health authorities in Washington, said that Democrats were surprised by the “woke ideology” and to arm the federal government to persecute conservatives. while violating basic American liberties.
DeSantis held up his own record of taking on liberals in schools, businesses and health care as proof that he could set the U.S. on a fundamentally different course that mirrored his leadership in Florida, while explaining that little can be done when the former president ends. back to the Oval Office.
“Governing is not fun,” DeSantis said, making a clear but vague critique of the pandemonium that has rocked the US during Trump’s presidency, before indirectly rebuking the former president for to lose in 2020 and hurt Republican hopes in the 2022 midterms.
“We need to end the culture of loss that has affected the Republican Party in recent years. We need to look forward and not back.”
It’s noted that DeSantis, while clearly appealing to a mainstream Republican audience, has almost nothing to say to Americans that doesn’t align with his more conservative ideology. No outreach to a wider, less partisan audience. And there is no sense that DeSantis, if elected, would represent all Americans or have any vision of how he would lead the Western world at a time of great international instability.
Instead, DeSantis concentrated on effectively arguing that Trump, for all his popularity with the GOP, has become a huge distraction.
But his decision not to mention the former president by name underscores not only the strength of Trump’s campaign, but also the fact that DeSantis has not resolved one of the most pressing questions of his candidacy — how to confront Trump without alienating his supporters who might be open to a less infallible “Make America Great Again” banner bearer.
Another challenge for DeSantis is that while he can make a perfectly logical case for why it’s time for the party to move on from Trump, Republican activists’ connections to the former president are more emotional than intellectual.
Nominating Trump may not be a good political move because it risks turning off the swing-state moderate voters who abandoned the GOP in last year’s midterm elections and in 2020. But Trumpism is a feeling. like an ideology. The former president’s supporters have an almost spiritual kinship with their hero. And even many grassroots Republicans who have doubts about his ethics have defended him against attacks by what he describes as his enemies.
This hard truth, more than a poorly organized and embarrassing campaign launch, could be the undoing of DeSantis, if he can’t overtake Trump.
Now, after a self-inflicted campaign disaster, he is under pressure to engage with voters quickly and show that Wednesday’s announcement won’t stop him from building strong campaign operations in early voting states. Iowa and New Hampshire, where he must act strongly. with any hope of taking on Trump.
His campaign can take solace in the fact that while Musk’s early attempts to join the space race were marked by frequent misfires with his rockets, his willingness to take risks and accept failures has ended with him playing a key role in the US effort to return to the moon and go to Mars. DeSantis can only hope he can replicate that trajectory.
