Opinion: DeSantis 2024?

[Dill]

(02-21-2021, 01:46 PM)samhain Wrote: DeSantis and other MAGA clingers will pose an interesting challenge to GOP leadership over the next 2 years.  The base largely remains in the grip of MAGA politics, and it will be nearly impossible for any candidate to win a Republican primary without support from Trump, or at least without avoiding his wrath for daring to cross him.  We're seeing this in Ohio as well with candidates for Rob Portman's senate seat.  The Republicans declaring are all too ready to pledge allegiance to all things Trump, and in fact going out of their way to crap on John Kasich.  Kasich hasn't held office since 2018 and was elected by large margins when he did.  It's a strange form of political jockeying to say the least.

The big problem for people like DeSantis and the like is that they won't see a real test until they face a full electorate nationally.  What wins in a GOP primary or even a Florida senate or governor's race is much different that what will play in a national general election.  A majority of the country holds Trump and his policies responsible for both pandemic and insurrection.  Once red states are now purple, or in various states of turning blue.  Going full authoritarian facist isn't going to do much to win the voters in the middle, the independents, or the GOP voters seeking to put the embarrassment of Trump behind the party.

Cllinging to MAGA in the twilight of Trump's decline could very well destroy the GOP as we have known it.  It's already hurt the party in Georgia and the senate.  It would be pretty hilarious to see the MAGA masses that the GOP manipulated throughout the Trump era come back to cannibalize and historically damage the party in a real long-term sense.  

C'mon GOP, a storm is coming.  Gear up the base and slap on the red hats.  You are all Q now.  Better hurry before the left fires up the Jewish space lasers!

I would say that GOP leadership will pose an interesting challenge to MAGA clingers over the next two years. The MAGA base are the ones in control of the party, not the "leadership."  The MAGAs will want to weed out those RINOs who "caved" on voter fraud.

That leadership, like you, will pose rational questions about looming problems like the difference between what wins local primaries and what wins national elections. That won't much interest illiberals going "full authoritarian," who by now will be telling themselves stories about how the RINOs let the Dems steal the election by not backing Trump enough and stopping the steal.

So yes, they will possibly destroy the party. But I am not sure. I am pretty confident, though, that this superminority will be able to keep enough people in the Senate to repeat Obama era levels of obstruction.  Biden has learned a lot from that, but even so, it is still going to be a problem.