Will the real Ron DeSantis please stand up — on the debate stage? | Opinion
When Ron DeSantis jumped into the Republican presidential primary, he had two choices: run as a pragmatic moderate who’s more competent than Donald Trump — or from the far, far right.
The Florida governor chose the latter, taking his overheated rhetoric to the extreme — “slitting throats?!” And then there was that former staffer who’s since been fired after retweeting a now-deleted video containing an offensive symbol common in Nazi imagery. But, as his campaign began to implode, DeSantis changed direction. Recently, he finally — finally! — admitted Trump lost the 2020 election. He was just three years too late.
Even fellow Republicans are looking askance: “Well, this campaign of his has gone from up here to down here, because people are really beginning to wonder what the hell he stands for,” presidential candidate Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, said during a visit to Miami last week. “And if what he stands for is defending Donald Trump, then just drop out of the race and endorse him.”
National stage
We’ll all find out which iteration of the constantly morphing DeSantis shows up during the first debate in the presidential primary in Milwaukee on Wednesday night.
Christie’s question mirrors one the Editorial Board has asked: Who is Ron DeSantis, anyway? Is he Trump 2.0, the culture warrior who picks fights with gender pronouns and Mickey Mouse; or Florida’s twice-elected governor who can purportedly restore sanity to the Republican Party and beat President Biden? Is he willing to tell the truth, even if it hurts his standing with Trump’s base? Or does he talk out of both sides of his mouth?
Christie’s comments come on the heels of embarrassing leaked memos from a firm affiliated with Never Back Down, a super PAC supporting DeSantis. The documents advised him to “defend Donald Trump” when Christie attacks the former president in the Milwaukee debate. They also told him to talk about his family, “showing emotion,” and attack the media “3-5 times.”
Those documents have since been removed from the PAC’s website and DeSantis, when asked, said something akin to, “Never saw ‘em.”
Christie’s chances of winning the GOP presidential nomination are close to zero, but his words, said in DeSantis’ own state, were on point. Christie visited Casa Cuba in South Miami and was expected to head to Versailles, a must-stop destination in Little Havana for candidates courting Hispanic voters who strongly backed Donald Trump in 2020 and helped DeSantis win Miami-Dade County in 2022.
What a contrast the governor’s presidential bid has been to his landslide reelection by close to 20 points. As long as Trump is involved in GOP politics, DeSantis will be defined in comparison to the former president. Even when DeSantis was at the height of his national popularity he was considered “Trump without the baggage.”
Balancing act
How do you sell yourself to voters when your message is that you’re like someone, both more extreme, but also more reasonable, electable and appealing, while being branded “unlikable” all at the same time?
It’s a master class in inauthenticity.
Candidates like Christie, a former Trump ally, who now is trying to reclaim the Republican Party from the cult of personality the former president has created, barely show up in polling. Perhaps DeSantis fears that he, too, could face the same fate if he upsets too many Trump supporters.
But he probably cannot win the GOP nomination if voters continue to wonder who the real Ron DeSantis is. He has a chance to show them, authentically, at the debate.
This story was originally published August 18, 2023 at 3:46 PM.