Nearly a billion dollars will have been spent to position US troops at the southern border. Ron DeSantis does some preliminary photo-ops for a 2024 run so that even if the GOP’s very orange “center of gravity” runs, he’ll be the best choice for Veep even if he’s not female or blonde.
Florida was all over the news this past weekend with one of the nation’s biggest spikes in COVID cases and hospitalizations.
And where was Gov. Ron DeSantis as this health crisis resurged? Visiting hospitals? Consulting with physicians and public health experts? Huddling with his staff to brainstorm ways of persuading more Floridians to take the vaccine that would nip this pandemic in the bud?
Nope. Florida’s governor was in Texas, 1,000 miles from Tallahassee, burnishing his 2024 presidential ambitions with a visit to the southern border.
The governor was back in Florida on Sunday but, once again, not to focus on the COVID health crisis but this time to make fun of Anthony Fauci in a speech before a crowd of young conservatives in Tampa.
“Fauci gets invited to throw out the first pitch at the baseball game last year but he doesn’t know how to throw a baseball,” the 42-year-old governor said of the 80-year-old public health official’s bungled attempt.
“He did the worst first pitch that I’ve ever seen anybody do,” DeSantis crowed.
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Donald Trump remains the king of the GOP. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is looking like the crown prince.
For months, DeSantis’ stature has been expanding within the party, marked by growing buzz among grassroots activists and GOP consultants who admire the pugilistic style of politics he wields against progressives and the media. He’s consistently won GOP straw polls of presidential hopefuls — provided Trump doesn’t run in 2024 — and he even edged out the former president in favorability in one of the informal surveys.
Now a new nationwide poll of Republican voters points to him as the front-runner in the event Trump does not run in 2024.
Trump remains the clear leader of the party. If he decided to run again for president in a crowded 2024 primary field, he would get roughly half of the vote, with DeSantis in a distant second place at 19 percent, according to a new survey of GOP voters from veteran Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio. Everyone else — including former Vice President Mike Pence — would be in single digits.
Trump’s support would likely be even higher because it’s extremely unlikely that DeSantis, Pence or the others would even run against the former president, who’s the undisputed center of gravity in the party, Fabrizio said.
www.politico.com/...