The first shots of the 2024 presidential campaign were fired even before the 2022 midterms had been decided. And those shots escalated just last evening. The race for 2024 is, it seems, already very much on.
The target thus far has been Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose successful first term running the Sunshine State has made him a conservative hero and led to a historic landslide reelection victory. He was already in the conversation for 2024, but the scope of his epic triumph on Tuesday may have made it inevitable that the governor will enter the 2024 fray.
That's what put him in the crosshairs of both former President Donald Trump and The New York Times. On the same day last weekend that Trump first unveiled a derogatory nickname for DeSantis—which he doubled-down and expanded upon last night—the Times published an article taking a deep dive into a hitherto unknown chapter of the governor's life: his year-long stint as a prep school teacher/baseball coach between his undergraduate days at Yale and his matriculation at Harvard Law School.
The assignment had obviously been to find out if there was some scandal in DeSantis' past. But unlike similar investigations into the lives of Republican candidates, such as The Washington Post's discovery that Mitt Romney had taken part in a prank haircut of a fellow high school student, the Times article turned up nothing useful for Democrats.
Like the failed efforts to claim that Florida did worse, rather than better, than the rest of the nation during the pandemic or to misrepresent his side of the fight against Disney ("don't say gay"), this interest in DeSantis' past showed just how much Democrats and their leading organs fear and loathe him.
Unsurprisingly, Trump also regards the media interest in DeSantis with envy and resentment.
Unwilling to cede the spotlight to other Republicans, Trump is reportedly getting ready to announce his 2024 presidential run next week, and teased it in Ohio the night before the election.
Despite widely held concerns that Trump carries too much baggage from the disputes over the 2020 presidential election, the January 6 riot, and Democratic attempts to prosecute him on various pretexts, most Republicans still support him.
Yet even as conservatives cheered DeSantis' handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and willingness to take on the Left on cultural issues that matter to the grassroots, Trump watched his rise from an obscure member of Congress to national prominence with growing dismay.
As Trump pointedly reminded everyone in last night's attack, the two were allies in 2018, when Trump endorsed him in his first run for governor.
DeSantis' first gubernatorial campaign is best remembered for an ad in which he is depicted playing with his three children and teaching them the basics of MAGA Republicanism, including "build the wall" with blocks. But while liberals blasted this as an example of toadying, by parodying over-the-top Trumpism even while reminding Florida GOP primary voters of his Trumpist credentials, DeSantis perhaps also sent a subtle message that he was more than just another sycophant.
Up until recently, Trump's jealousy of DeSantis was under wraps. But now it's very much out in the open.
Last weekend, Trump campaigned for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, whom he mocked mercilessly during the 2016 presidential primaries. DeSantis wasn't invited to that rally. The day before, Trump tried out a derogatory nickname for the governor at a GOP event in Pennsylvania: "Ron DeSanctimonious." He doubled down on that moniker in last night's sustained attack.
In Trump's dramatic escalation last evening, he derided DeSantis as an "average REPUBLICAN Governor." Trump, whom The New York Times reported had been privately testing jibes aimed at DeSantis, is determined to dispatch him with the same contempt dished out to his presidential primary rivals in 2016.
Given that early polls show Trump with a hefty plurality among Republican voters in their 2024 preferences, that might give the runner-up in those surveys—DeSantis—a reason to think twice about running.
Another reason to stay out could be the possibility that the former president would either not accept defeat in the primaries or might counsel his voters to stay home in November if he lost, thus damaging the GOP's general election chances. The slavish devotion of some to Trump—which is strengthened with each unfair attempt by the Left to take him down—might give him a potential veto over any prospective challenger.
Still, there are powerful reasons that militate in favor of DeSantis taking the plunge anyway.
If DeSantis defers his ambitions to 2028, his moment may pass. He will never again have the kind of momentum that he has now, following an election in which his transformation of Florida from a swing state to a deep red one was demonstrated. Though DeSantis is young enough to wait until future election cycles, it may nonetheless be 2024 or never for him, especially if he's seen as having been intimidated into stepping aside for Trump.
Beyond that, DeSantis needs to ponder whether it is in the interest of his party or the country to cede the race to Trump before it even begins.
As Trump's dismissive attitude toward DeSantis shows, he is not interested in building a movement or a party. If the GOP is to expand its reach, it needs a leader who is invested in fighting for conservative issues and also able to show the administrative competence that Trump's chaotic four years in office often lacked. DeSantis' governing skills and defiance of liberal conventional wisdom on COVID-19 restrictions, woke ideology, and illegal immigration changed Florida's electoral landscape.
Whether or not Democrats stick with a visibly declining Biden in 2024, Republicans would be better off with a leader who, unlike Trump, won't be in his 80s during the next presidential term.
The more disciplined DeSantis would also avoid the self-inflicted mistakes the former president makes, even if many of his ill-considered statements delight his followers because they provoke the political establishment.
Trump's firm hold on the loyalty of so many Republicans is rooted in the success he had as president before the pandemic, as well as in those voters' sense of outrage about the way he is continually attacked by the Left.
They know that Democrats will besmirch any Republican with the same viciousness they direct at Trump. That's something DeSantis has already experienced. But moving on from 2020, rather than again immersing the party in the grudges about that election, is clearly in the interests of the GOP and the nation. While Trump continues to do well in head-to-head polling against Biden, DeSantis does just as well if not better in matchups against Democrats.
Trump remains the idol of the GOP base and changed it into a working-class, rather than a country club, party. Republicans should be grateful for his presidency. But the Republican future must belong to DeSantis or someone like him.
Braving Trump's brickbats won't be easy, and the odds would be against DeSantis—though perhaps not quite as much as they might have been before his smashing re-election win on Tuesday. But DeSantis owes it to his party and his country to give Republican voters a choice that will allow them to concentrate on stopping the Democrats and the woke Left from transforming the nation for the worse, rather than re-litigating one man's grudges about the past.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org and a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter: @jonathans_tobin.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
