The Morning Briefing: DeSantis Seems Content to Let Trump Run Against Trump for a While

Top O’ the Briefing

Happy Tuesday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. Elwyn felt that he did his best work when Jupiter was in retrograde and Lawrence Welk reruns were playing on the Laserdisc.

It was an interesting beginning to the week on the “Is Ron DeSantis Running?” front.

Spoiler alert: thus far, no.

On Sunday, Team DeSantis released a video that certainly seemed like it might contain an announcement about the governor’s plans. Stephen Green shared it in this post, along with some of his observations on what DeSantis is up to these days:

DeSantis is calmly but quite publicly holding up his state as a model for the nation, just like a governor running for president would do. Except that he has yet to announce that he’s running. He hasn’t even formed one of those exploratory committees that allows a not-yet candidate to fundraise.

But he is meeting with potential donors, over a hundred of them this weekend, just four miles from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago retreat. Some in attendance were described today by CBS News as “longtime supporters of former President Donald Trump.”

I’ve been writing for a couple of months now that everyone is talking about Ron DeSantis running for president except Ron DeSantis. Trump has definitely been acting like DeSantis is already in the race. This is the closest that the governor has come to making it seem as if he’s opening the door to a run.

DeSantis is in a unique position in that he doesn’t need to put much effort into getting publicity for himself. Friendly and unfriendly media devote a lot of attention to him. The negative publicity doesn’t hurt DeSantis at all, at least not with the people he needs on his side if he is going to run for president. They all know that the Democrats’ flying monkeys in the mainstream media are lying about him. The relentless anti-DeSantis propaganda may very well be some of the best promo he gets.

Paula notes in another post that there is no reason for DeSantis to hurry the process along:

I don’t see how it’s a bad thing for DeSantis to wait to announce, if he does indeed plan to run. Does anyone really think the primary season is too short and needs to be lengthened? The 2016 primary seemed like it would never end—and the personal attacks and circular firing squad did nothing to help spread the message about the benefits of conservatism.

We’re still more than a year out from the primaries. What’s the rush? If DeSantis can run a soft campaign, while continuing to notch more conservative wins on his Florida belt, he can stay above the fray and avoid some of the pitfalls that early announcers often run into, including candidate fatigue.

If I were in charge of things, I’d cap the length of presidential campaigns at three weeks, but I’m not known for my patience.

Speaking of publicity — the longer DeSantis waits to announce his candidacy, the more the buzz will build about whether he will or not. It’s free press on autopilot. By the time he does get around to formalizing things, he will have gotten almost as much press to bolster his run as he would have if he’d been amassing a campaign war chest and buying ads.

And then there is former President Donald Trump. The race for the 2024 Republican nomination is — by the indications of most polls — his to lose. Despite the polls — and his trademark bravado — Trump has been behaving as if he’s already losing to DeSantis. It’s gotten a little bizarre. The mere specter of a DeSantis candidacy has Trump committing unforced errors that aren’t helping him at all.

More autopilot for DeSantis.

One thing that DeSantis has not done in the past few years is get in his own way. Haters, both Republican and Democrat, have been waiting for him to trip up, especially since the COVID madness. He’s a cool customer who just keeps winning.

If he can continue to do that for a few more months while letting Trump run against himself, we may actually end up with an interesting race on our hands.

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