Meeting with bundlers recently, high-level DeSantis campaign aides assuaged donors’ concerns over the governor’s pro-life stance and the impact it might have on his electability and fundraising.
Via Florida Politics:
“My Republican friends who have daughters and wives are upset,” one donor stated.
Pollster Ryan Tyson acknowledged the issue could prove divisive, but said DeSantis already showed the ability to address the matter. He pointed not to a Twitter Spaces event with Elon Musk generating headlines, but to an interview with Fox News host and former Congressman Trey Gowdy. There, DeSantis suggested the issue largely rests with states.
Tyson called that the best position for a Republican to hold on the issue politically.
“His position is while he understands that there are ways that the federal government can be helpful to preserve life,” Tyson said, “the best way that you will preserve life is at the state level.”
To the DeSantis team’s credit, they pushed back on the apparent suggestion by some attendees to lie to pro-abortion donors in a bid to “get more dollars”:
Our candidate, our Governor, he is who he is. … I totally understand how difficult that is when you’re talking to a pro-choice donor. I get that. Sorry. One of the things I’ve said for a long time is if we want a man in the White House capable of standing up to Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, we want him to be able to stand up to donor pressure on issues that are difficult.
The (unfortunately poor-quality) audio from the meeting can be found here.
The issue here is not about abortion policy; it’s that unseen, mega-wealthy donors influence politicians’ platforms behind closed doors. There’s no such thing as a free lunch; they all want something in exchange for their “donations” that in a sane world would rather be described as “bribes.” Whether a donor influences the right or wrong decision, depending on one’s perspective, is irrelevant to the foundational issue of who gets to dictate government policy when those candidates end up in office.
Aside from billionaires bankrolling their own runs, the candidates all — not just DeSantis — know that if they don’t get the cash, their viability takes a massive hit, no matter how innately talented they might be as politicians. The only glaring exception to this rule was Trump in 2016, who steamrolled the donor class.
The counterargument to the anti-donor position, which is fair enough, is that by the nature of the American electoral system, it’s impossible to win without catering to donors.
For the few actual voters who miss Mitt Romney and Karl Rove steering the party (or, more accurately, their donors steering the party using them as proxies), it won’t matter much that DeSantis is fleshing out his policy based on input from a highly curated segment of the electorate with the cash to make or break presidencies.
The party will ideally have the debate over donor influence out in the primary. The 20% minority of the base that feels nostalgia for the George W. Bush days are free to show up and vote for transgender activist Asa Hutchinson or whatever candidate the donor class ultimately coalesces around. Maybe that’ll be DeSantis ultimately, but even he is probably too populist for their tastes in his current posturing.
This backroom dealing — which, again, nearly all candidates for the presidency do, not just DeSantis — is reminiscent of Brandon’s pledge to the donor class in 2020 that “nothing will fundamentally change” once he got elected, which bore fruit. Nothing, indeed, has fundamentally changed — at least not for the better. The Deep State remains safely intact. Anthony Fauci was permitted to squirm away unscathed, free and rich and happy, and the NIH quietly replaced him with another Pfizer stooge. The Wall Street bankers who wrecked the economy in 2008 and will again are still doing business as usual. The bottom line for defense contractors has never been healthier thanks to the never-ending Ukraine war.
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