Pundit World — your humble correspondent included — spent much of Tuesday afternoon absolutely transfixed, swept up in the throes of prognostication stuffed inside speculation wrapped in anticipation. There also was a fair amount of intrigue.
Ron DeSantis was airborne once more, like those good old days of his quixotic quest for the Republican presidential nomination, headed for — you can’t make this up — South Carolina, next up on the GOP’s so-called primary election season.
And — And! — he had scheduled a just-in-time-for-the-6 p.m.-news press conference.
What was so important that the governor of Florida, he of the suspended hunt for the White House, had to be making a public appearance in Columbia four measly days before Palmetto State voters allocate 50 delegates to the Republican National Convention?
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis just announced a media availability this afternoon in... Columbia, SC... days before the South Carolina GOP primary.
— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) February 20, 2024
Don't know what this is about yet, but as they say, when you see a turtle on a fence post.... it didn't get there by accident.
Why, there could be only a meager handful of reasons, plainly.
What will Desantis do in South Carolina tonight?
— Just Chris (@thisjustchris) February 20, 2024
Yes, we were breathless. And more than a little bit enthralled. Four days until the South Carolina primary? Four days before Donald Trump is expected to do to Nikki Haley what he did to Liddle Marco Rubio in 2016? (To refresh: humiliate a rival in her/his home state.) What could possibly have been on DeSantis’ mind?
And there was the timing, coming on the heels of Haley’s campaign speech in which she vowed to stay in the race “until the last vote was counted.” For media folk and online kibitzers frozen in pre-spring stasis — Trump has the GOP nomination locked up; Shufflin’ Joe Biden refuses to go away (or, ever so kindly, be shown the exit door) — here was a spanking new, unexpected development to get them through February’s 19th Groundhog Day.
Ron DeSantis Will Make a Trip to South Carolina Following Haley's Speechhttps://t.co/gfU0qkboTF
— RedState (@RedState) February 20, 2024
Yes, it was lively entertainment there, for a while.
🚨New: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will hold a media availability today at the South Carolina State House at 5:15 PM EST.
— The Calvin Coolidge Project (@TheCalvinCooli1) February 20, 2024
What is DeSantis doing in South Carolina? pic.twitter.com/JbLlrbBQP0
Then the truth of it came out, and, mostly, it just wasn’t that much fun: DeSantis barnstormed Columbia’s state house to argue on behalf of a Federalist Society wet dream: an Article V constitutional convention to weigh, among other less significant things, term limits for members of Congress.
Not that there’s anything wrong with term limits. The founders imagined citizen representatives populating our federal capital, doing their bit for good, wise and strictly circumscribed government for a handful of terms before diving back into private life, where they could fully experience the America wrought through their collective decisions. Careerists would have been anathema to Madison, Hamilton, Payne and the like. George Washington would have galloped back to Mount Vernon in 1783 if he hadn’t succumbed to the tug of duty.
From Tallahassee and beyond, wherever the folks at U.S. Term Limits say they need him (as his less-ballyhooed appearance last Thursday in Indianapolis suggests), DeSantis is down with that.
We need term limits for members of Congress. Florida has already certified a proposed amendment under Article V of the Constitution and other states are poised to follow suit.
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) February 20, 2024
At the invitation of the U.S. Term Limits organization, I traveled today to encourage other state… pic.twitter.com/H6yET97LBl
Tuesday, America’s Governor also did discuss, prompted by questions, the state of the Republican primary. Trump would win again in South Carolina, he forecast, “because he appeals to core Republicans in way that Nikki Haley just does not, or is not trying to.”
Core Republicans who rejected the most Reagan-like candidate since, well, Reagan. There is no salve for that sting. Anyway, once he got his feet wet, DeSantis plugged on in a way that was anything but flattering to No. 45, who — because DeSantis is a man of his word — nonetheless carries the governor’s promised endorsement.
Continuing to string out the primary season when the outcome is no longer in question, he said, squanders scant resources.
“The RNC is basically broke. We need to get our act together and start focusing on having the resources we need to carry a message against Biden, to turn out voters, and we have to have processes in place where we are going to utilize whatever rules in an individual state are there,” he said.
“If you have a path, you have every right to be running,” DeSantis said. “But if the path isn’t there, then I think at what point is the purpose of this.” …
Geez. The RNC, basically broke? Wonder how that happened. Perhaps Axios is onto something:
President Biden's re-election team now has $130 million in the bank, while the Republican National Committee has little cash and Donald Trump's team is spending tens of millions on legal bills.
Anyway, the man who turned Florida from purple to crimson also had some thoughts — one in particular — about the Republican National Committee’s failure to capitalize on favorable seas in recent elections. And we don’t think his focus was on rearranging the RNC’s leadership.
[H]e pointed to a long string of election losses since Donald Trump has led the party.
“When you lose election cycle after election cycle, at some point you gotta try something different,” DeSantis said.
What’s this all mean? Perhaps, for once, the punditry is right, and DeSantis’ partnership with U.S. Term Limits is part of a grand strategery aimed at keeping him in the national spotlight.
In a visit that stoked more speculation that he still has his eyes on the White House, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis traveled to the South Carolina State House Tuesday to promote his push for a Constitutional Convention on congressional term limits.
DeSantis' trip to speak with South Carolina lawmakers came just four days before the state's Feb. 24 Republican presidential primary, and was another example of the governor angling for national attention despite dropping out of the presidential race.
But for which cycle? Ah, there’s the rub. While Donald Trump dominates the Republican landscape like some bronzed Jumbo from P.T. Barnum’s Greatest Show On Earth, this much also is true: His legal troubles, only just beginning, are daunting, possibly even crushing.
Yes, much of it is banana republic lawfare, beyond despicable in its form and function. But some of it — the documents kerfuffle (on which the enfeebled Biden skated) — may be explosive.
In the event of a pre-election conviction, what does the RNC do? We speculated about a rise from the ashes for Ron DePhoenix not so long ago. Clearly, we are not alone in our fantasies.
If nothing else, the nuclear agitation provoked by DeSantis boarding a plane bound for South Carolina days before a primary indicates there’s a voracious appetite for ultra-dimensional chess in 2024.
