Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is trying to set himself up as the Republican savior for the 2024 presidential race—but to succeed, he’s going to have to win over the hardest-core opponents of abortion, and so far, he’s not there.
Last spring, before the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, DeSantis signed a 15-week abortion ban with no exceptions for rape or incest. He clearly hoped that was enough to stake out ground as an acceptably anti-choice Republican without angering too many Florida voters, and spent his successful reelection campaign doing his best to avoid the subject of abortion, dodging questions on whether he would sign harsher restrictions.
Now DeSantis is under pressure to go further as he tries to build support for a presidential run. He’s struggling to find that extremist-enough-for-Republican-primary-voters-but-not-too-extreme-for-a-general-election line, and the political calculation is starting to show.
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“So far, we’ve actually been quite disappointed with Governor DeSantis,” the head of Florida Voice for the Unborn told The New York Times, adding that, in a presidential primary, “if there’s a big pro-life champion to contrast their record with Governor DeSantis’s record, there’s no doubt that he will be hit. That is his weak point.”
Until this week, DeSantis still wasn’t elaborating on his abortion-related plans. On Thursday, though, in response to a question about a six-week abortion ban, he said, “I’m willing to sign great life legislation. That’s what I’ve always said I would do.”
The odds that DeSantis will sign such a bill are high, but he is still being cautious. That answer is not extremely specific and stops short of a commitment to fight for such legislation. The forced-birth crowd is noticing that this is the one culture war fight DeSantis isn’t super aggressive about picking.
It’s not that DeSantis isn’t being aggressive on various far-right causes. He is asking the legislature for a law allowing people to carry guns in public without a concealed weapons permit. He’s called for a grand jury to investigate (translation: serve as a vehicle for promoting) “any and all wrongdoing” by pharmaceutical companies around COVID-19 vaccines.
“We’ll be able to get the data whether they want to give it or not,” DeSantis said. “In Florida, it is illegal to mislead and misrepresent, especially when you are talking about the efficacy of a drug.” He seems to be planning a lengthy show trial to whip up the anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists, but also—based on his talk about side effects—to feed the fears of the vaccine-hesitant.
The man loves picking a fight as a way to solidify his culture-warrior credentials. He’s just being cautious about this one specific fight that’s incredibly important to his party’s base—but was electoral poison to Republicans this year. Funny, right? It’s kind of almost like what DeSantis really cares about is politically calculated performance to position himself juuuuuust right for that presidential primary he is still playing coy about getting into.
Jenifer Fernandez Ancona from Way to Win is our guest on this week’s Daily Kos’ The Brief. When we spoke with Jenifer back in April, she was right about Democratic messaging—and had the data to prove it. More election data has been rolling in from the midterms, and Jenifer is back to talk about what worked and what needs to change in order for the Democratic Party to keep winning.