Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign is spiraling around a toilet filled with Republican names like Tim Scott, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Asa Hutchinson, to name most but not all of the conservative detritus out there right now. In recent weeks, the DeSantis campaign has fired staffers to cut costs and, in a desperate ploy for attention, even agreed to get eviscerated in a debate by the considerably more impressive Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California.
But it would be unfair to say that DeSantis is any less viable a candidate than the rest of the field. In fact, if it weren’t for the enduring presence of Donald Trump, DeSantis would almost definitely be the odds-on favorite to win the Republican nomination. That’s the rub for the Republican Party: Trump is the party. DeSantis has tried to out-Trump Trump and, having failed miserably with that pointless strategy, is now testing the waters of the Christie strategy of going directly at Trump.
However, the same problem persists: DeSantis’ sorrowful lack of solutions in an ever-changing world is a losing position when you are trying to convince people you are a leader of some kind. A perfect example of this is a recent DeSantis campaign stop, where he spewed one of his factually incorrect talking points about how Florida is great and people are fleeing there from blue states.
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The opposite of this is true (more Floridians per capita are moving to California than the other way around). The real story here is how little enthusiasm DeSantis received from the Iowa crowd as he laid out how California and San Francisco were failed “leftist” places. He began by claiming somebody told him how “they” use drugs in public with “no problem.”
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He went on to say he visited San Francisco, “and within 10 minutes of me being in the city, I see some guy relieving himself on the sidewalk with number two.” Whether or not this story of DeSantis’ grand arrival in San Francisco is true means nothing. Here’s DeSantis’ solution to this problem:
“And I mean, it's just I've never seen things like this before, but it shows you this is driven by leftist ideology.”
Yes, DeSantis offered exactly zero solutions, other than to blame "leftist ideology." The audience reacted to DeSantis’ story with silence.
So we can assume DeSantis’ take here is that homeless people, people with mental health issues wrestling with bad public health outcomes, and Americans living in unsanitary conditions who are down on their luck … should be disappeared? Removed? Jailed? Invisible? Executed? Dropped in the ocean? DeSantis and the Republican Party's stances don’t leave many solutions to the imagination other than abject cruelty. That’s the problem in a nutshell: Most people aren’t interested in being cruel.
After polling well as a corrupt Florida politician, the national stage has exposed DeSantis as an uncharismatic and bewildering presence. DeSantis does represent the essence of the Republican Party. His bigoted book bans, his fascist-level public health policies, and his racist voter suppression tactics are all endorsed and promoted by the GOP—as well as by Trump himself. But Republican voters don’t like thinking too much about their politicians’ utter lack of viable solutions. That’s why the most ardently conservative voters seem to enjoy putting their blinders on and slathering themselves in Trump’s snake oil.
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Conservatives cried about how the “woke” (whatever that means) “Barbie” movie would fail. It didn’t. In fact, the film has struck a chord with American and international audiences. Daily Kos writer Laura Clawson joins Markos to talk about the film and the implications of the Republican Party’s fixation on mythical culture wars, which is failing them in bigger and bigger ways every day.