The Case For Ron DeSantis 2024 by Kurt Schlichter for Town Hall
It’s going to be King Kong vs. Godzilla and, while a few pipsqueak Rodan’s might be flapping around (Hi Mike Pence), this bout is the battle royale. The 2024 primary will be Donald Trump v. Ron DeSantis. Everyone else is barely relevant – can you feel the Larry Hoganmania?
Not unless you are Larry Hogan or one of the 1% of Republicans eager to set fire to stacks of Never Trump donor dollars.
Back in June, I wrote, “The Case For Donald Trump 2024” (I followed that up with “The Case Against Donald Trump,” just as this Thursday I will offer “The Case Against Ron DeSantis”). My goal was not to provide some panegyric to the then-potential candidate but to objectively assess his strengths and his weaknesses. We must be cold-eyed and ruthless in our candidate analysis – 2024 is too important to risk by following our hearts and embracing tired clichés. We cannot exploit strengths we have not specified, and we cannot mitigate weaknesses we have not identified. 2024 is the whole enchilada, and it is too important to play it by ear. We must be strategic, and we must select the candidate most likely to win in the general. That means assessing both good points and bad points. And we must undertake the process for Donald Trump as well as his number one competitor.
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And Ron DeSantis is Trump’s number one competitor precisely because of his greatest strength – competence. Not just competence in running his dinosaur-ridden state but in turning it bright red and annihilating the competition. “Competence” is going to be the watchword in 2024, along with “normality.” People want to go back to “normal,” which some think of as American life before the drama that began when Donald Trump came down the escalator (note that these people do not necessarily see Trump as the cause of the abnormality; his rise is seen by many as a reaction to the abnormality). But many of us older folks see “normal” as the America we grew up in, before 9/11 and the 2000 election (an election that was A-OK to deny because of reasons and shut up you transphobe). We want a prosperous America and an America that is not constantly in turmoil and at war, facing alleged (and not-so-alleged) existential threats from outside and within. We want an America where weird perversions are not declared awesome and where those of us who oppose groomers waving their tu-tu-clad man-butts in the faces of kindergarteners are not declared dangerous terrorist bigots. We would prefer a country where mean tweets don’t happen because they are not necessary since the ruling caste is functioning and not in need of radical push-back.
