DeSantis is not giving sane conservatives reason to join his bandwagon

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who officially announced his entry into the presidential race on Wednesday, is Donald Trump’s top rival in the GOP field. His candidacy gives “Never Trump” Republicans and old-school conservatives a tough choice: back DeSantis as someone who can save the GOP from Trump — and perhaps, given President Biden’s weak approval ratings, save America from the disgrace of another Trump presidency — or oppose him as a slightly less toxic version of the same poison?

There is no question that DeSantis, an experienced politician, does not have Trump’s vulgarity, erratic temperament, or rampant egomania. He does not post barely coherent rants against his enemies or tout his lovefests with foreign dictators. As governor of Florida, he has been mostly competent and pragmatic.

But DeSantis the presidential candidate is, like Trump, a culture warrior. To some extent, he champions a reaction against progressive cultural trends that can and should be challenged. The excesses of radical racial and gender ideologies in public schools and in many workplaces are not a right-wing myth.

However, DeSantis’ answer is to counter perceived “woke” tyranny with “anti-woke” authoritarianism. After moving to ban instruction related to sexual orientation and gender identity in elementary school — which many see as reasonable — he has expanded the prohibition to middle and high school. He has tried to implement broad, almost certainly unconstitutional, bans on “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs in higher education and the workplace.

No less concerning is DeSantis’s flirtation with the far-right fringe that has captured much of the Republican Party since the rise of Trump. Nowhere has this been more evident than on COVID-19. One can defend some of the Florida governor’s controversial decisions on COVID mitigation, such as keeping schools open, a strategy now widely regarded as correct. But in the past year, DeSantis has increasingly thrown in his lot with the looney faction which promotes the idea that COVID was no big deal and that the public health measures against it were far worse.

Bizarrely, DeSantis is now attacking Trump on one of his administration’s clearest achievements — “Operation Warp Speed,” which produced the COVID vaccine quickly. Most recently, he has accused Trump of destroying “millions of people’s lives” by “turning the country over to [Anthony] Fauci,” the right’s favorite bogeyman. The million-plus lives literally destroyed by COVID itself got no mention.

But DeSantis does align with Trump on another issue: painting the rioters who stormed Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021 trying to hijack a presidential election as persecuted dissidents and promising pardons.

And let’s not forget the flip-flops on support for Ukraine’s fight against Russian aggression — an issue on which DeSantis has clumsily tried to pander to the anti-Ukraine far right without alienating the pro-Ukraine conservative base. When questioned on the issue on Fox News Wednesday, he tried to dodge by deploring “wokeness” in the U.S. military.

DeSantis’ attempts to lure away Trump voters are unlikely to succeed, since he lacks Trump’s charismatic ability to connect to this base. DeSantis’ woeful campaign launch in a conversation on the Twitter Spaces platform, which was plagued with technical difficulties and wandered into such fringe issues as digital currency regulation, may prove symbolic.

Anti-Trump Republicans have been criticized as hypocritical for refusing to back DeSantis. But so far, DeSantis is giving sane conservatives few reasons to get on his bandwagon.

OPINIONS EXPRESSED BY CATHY YOUNG, a cultural studies fellow at the Cato Institute, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.