For a guy who hasn’t even announced his candidacy — we’ll see what Wednesday brings — who’s down double-digits in the if-he-does-run polls, and still has bills to (presumably) sign, Ron DeSantis sure gets plenty of attention from the national politisphere.
Listen, I get it. As a former sports writer, I totally get it. During training season, no story is beyond relevance. That’s why fans learn about the ranch-hand upbringing of the undrafted free-agent signee from North Dakota State, or the long-shot ambidextrous pitcher from Paducah who, besides being a spring training invitee, also dreams of becoming a concert pianist.
Not that there’s anything wrong with those stories. In fact, they’re some of the most fun to tell, as anyone who followed the Cinderella story of club pro Michael Block at last week’s PGA Championship can affirm.
Political reporters are no different. Absent the meat of a gone-live DeSantis campaign for president, we get tales from the periphery — tales that, like our ranch-hand linebacking prospect and the Mozart-influenced pitcher — are unlikely to have any influence on the regular season.
Tuesday’s sideshows include the reports of handwringing among “Never Trump” “Republicans”; more on the NAACP’s fainting spell over Florida’s ongoing field-leveling in the socio-cultural battles; an interestingly timed unpacking by USA Today of old news (Florida’s tangle with The College Board over its AP African American Studies curriculum) with zero new information; Donald Trump allied super PACs paranoid preemptive strikes on DeScaresTrumpBigly; and, from NBC News, the breathless revelation that “not every state wants to be Florida.”
(We’ll save you the trouble on the last one: In his travels, DeSantis and his counterparts in other states have engaged in the good-natured jabbing typical among all elected officials.)
It’s the first story, the oh-woe-are-Never-Trumpers tale, that parallels most with the early training camp backgrounder on the seventh-round draft pick from Slippery Rock. If you wait until after the second exhibition game, fans may never know the prospective receiver is the youngest of eight who credits milking cows and building rock walls with his dad and siblings for making his hands flexible and strong.
Similarly, the likelihood of Never Trump Republicans queasy about Trump-without-the-drama making much of a dent in the GOP campaign after, say, the first debate (like NFL exhibition season, in August), is ephemeral at best. So, sort of like ticking another box on the must-do box, Tuesday McClatchy’s estimable Alex Roarty provided a stage for the neither-of-these-sharp-elbowed-guys set.
Fergus Cullen is wary of Ron DeSantis’ conflict with Disney, dislikes how the governor once used his kids in a campaign ad, and doubts he’d support the Florida Republican’s presidential candidacy if it were any other election.
And yet Cullen, the former chairman of the New Hampshire GOP and an avowed member of the “Never Trump” movement, is still open to the Florida Republican’s White House bid — almost exclusively because of his deep dislike of former President Donald Trump.
“We have a dilemma on our hands,” Cullen told Roarty, one in which certain disaffected members of the GOP will have to weigh conscience against pragmatism.
If the choice is between Trump and DeSantis, “a small but influential contingent of Republicans” will agonize between the “clear and present danger to the republic” and alternative who might ratchet up “the GOP’s turn to anti-democratic demagoguery.”
Really? That’s how they see it? How would you like to live in their world?
“I’m depressed in either case,” said longtime conservative leader Bill Kristol, who called Trump the more “talented” demagogue of the two men.
Roarty quotes a representative sample of prominent Never Trumpers who also feel icky about DeSantis, and some of whom even manage to squeeze out grudging compliments for their perception of the lesser of two evils.
Former Florida congressman-turned-MSNBC analyst Carlos Curbelo, who served in the U.S. House with DeSantis, describes the Florida governor as a political pragmatist who could ally with Republicans of moderate persuasion.
“I think he’s entirely different than Donald Trump,” said Curbelo, who declined to support Trump in 2016. “I’m just not sure he wants everyone to know that.”
That sort of reassurance is not enough for some in the anti-Trump realm. Roarty reports that GOP strategist and The Bulwark publisher Sarah Longwell, who’s helped raise and spend multiple millions of dollars opposing Trump, would pick the Democrat incumbent in a Ron DeSantis-Joe Biden showdown.
DeSantis, she said, reminds her of Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, an authoritarian leader who has spoken out about mixed race marriages and sharply cut the rights of the country’s LGBTQ citizens.
Yes, well, obviously wanting to keep erotic drag performers away from children, remove sexually provocative books from elementary school shelves, prevent confused and perhaps trend-seeking youngsters from submitting to permanent medical or surgical alterations, and make sure public school curricula is even-handed is exactly the same as supporting anti-miscegenation laws and campaigning to reverse the legality of gay marriage. You don’t have to be MLB umpire Angel Hernandez to see that’s a totally overlapping Venn diagram. Right?
Geez. With Republicans such as Longwell, who needs Democrats?
As DeSantis’ Season of Coy comes to a close, this old sports writer notes being old enough to remember when another mold-breaking Republican threatened to fracture the Grand Old Party by speaking in bold colors that clearly delineated himself from traditional country club conservatives. And that when push came finally to shove, they swallowed their squishiness and helped launch a Republican golden era.
Ronald Reagan was no Donald Trump. Praise the Gipper, neither is Ron DeSantis. As we shall see when this campaign — knock wood — gets going.
