Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, widely regarded as the top contender to challenge former President Donald Trump’s bid for the presidency in 2024, hasn’t formally declared his interest in running for president, but his State of the State speech to legislators in Florida capital of Tallahassee suggests that he will be playing the right-wing tune for his election campaign.
DeSantis’ speech alluded to a national platform built on right-wing causes, which means that he will be focusing on the Covid-19 pandemic restrictions and culture war issues, such as legislation aimed at gender, race and sexuality education. But more than anything else, the fulcrum of his campaign will be around his performance in Florida state, which he proudly projects as a unique model in the US.
“We defied the experts. We bucked the elites. We ignored the chatter. We did it our way, the Florida way. And the result is that we are the number one destination for our fellow Americans who are looking for a better life,” he told the legislators in his speech being considered the “kick-start” of his presidential campaign.
DeSantis has in the past cited his plans for Florida as an example for the rest of the country. Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival is the subtitle of his latest book, The Courage to Be Free, which elaborately expresses his point of view on this matter. For sure, along with the Florida success model, the right-wing vision will be the main tenet of his campaign. He is trying to appear more and more conservative in his approach. Under DeSantis, state lawmakers want to extend a contentious ban on discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in the classroom to eighth-graders, who are typically 12 or 13. The ban is currently in place through to third grade.
The law has been derided as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by opponents.
DeSantis also approved a law that forbids teachers from introducing specific concepts related to race education in public schools. Along with extending gun rights, limiting diversity initiatives at state-run universities, ending the “medical authoritarianism” of Covid-19 vaccine mandates and tightening abortion restrictions, the state legislature is led by him in its efforts to pass these measures.
DeSantis is highly unlikely to formally launch a presidential campaign before the culmination of the Florida legislature’s session in May. Donald Trump and Nikki Haley have officially declared their candidacy for the Republican nomination and both of them have already embarked on high-octane campaigns.
However, DeSantis appears to be laying the groundwork for a presidential bid. In early March, he took part in a prominent donor retreat in Florida before travelling to California to deliver a speech criticising what he believed to be liberal excesses.
Trump appeared to be very pumped up during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland (CPAC). Trump, as expected, is going full-throttle to slander and bully his opponents, particularly Haley and DeSantis.
Trump seems to be reverting back to his old tactics of excessively bullying his opponents, which he profligately employed in 2016 and 2020, to grab the attention of voters through populist sensationalism.
In his desperate attempt to win the presidency in 2024, Trump has taken a belligerent stance towards all of his rivals, inside and outside the Republican Party. Whether it is the deep state, Democrats or the Republican Party establishment, he is getting ready to engage in a direct confrontation with each of them.
Twitter was stormed by tweets from allegedly fake accounts in favour of Trump. Along with praising the former leader, the fake accounts are mocking Trump detractors from both parties and attacked Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and US ambassador to the UN for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, an ambassador who is taking on her former boss. When it came to DeSantis, the bots aggressively asserted that the Florida governor couldn’t defeat Trump but would make a fantastic running mate.
Whoever created the bot network is trying to tip the scales as Republican voters evaluate their candidates for 2024. They are doing this by using online manipulation strategies and taking advantage of Twitter’s algorithms to increase their reach. Trump has given him various nicknames such as “DeSanctimonious” and “Meatball Ron”. Despite being labelled as the “Florida fascist” by his detractors, DeSantis has never reacted to such bullying by Trump and others and dismissed it as “background noise”.
Trump is also targeting President Joe Biden for his generous financial and military support to Ukraine. While Trump says he’d end the war in Ukraine in one day and avert World War III, DeSantis is keener on waging a culture war than a proxy one to save a foreign democracy.
However, DeSantis also favours the Republican Party’s isolationist tendencies in the global arena. But beyond this, DeSantis seems almost clueless about American foreign policy. In The Courage to be Free, DeSantis completely ignores the Ukraine war. But he does criticize the mantra laid out by President George W Bush in his second inaugural address — that “the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on liberty in other lands.
DeSantis argues that this idea of a “messianic impulse” — where the US has the right and the duty to promote democracy worldwide, even by force if necessary — was rooted in Wilsonian moralism rather than a pragmatic consideration of US interests.
DeSantis has kept his foreign policy views mostly undisclosed, and, unlike Trump, he hasn’t been explicit on his stance regarding Ukraine. Though he considers that getting entangled in a “territorial dispute” between Russia and Ukraine is not part of “vital” national interests, he has no alternative proposal on the matter.
Otherwise, he may struggle in differentiating himself from Trump on general policy matters.
Dr Imran Khalid is a freelance columnist on international affairs based in Karachi, Pakistan.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.