The suck-up strategy
DeSantis and other Republicans are trying to beat Trump by [checks notes] defending him.
Imagine if Dr. Pepper launched an ad campaign making fun of Coca-Cola, and Pepsi responded with an advertising blitz savaging…Dr. Pepper, while issuing a statement insisting that New Coke was actually a brilliant idea and tasted much better than their own swill.1
That’s basically how the GOP nomination race is playing out:
Ron DeSantis needs “to take a sledgehammer” to Vivek Ramaswamy, the political newcomer who is rising in the polls. He should “defend Donald Trump” when Chris Christie inevitably attacks the former president. And he needs to “attack Joe Biden and the media” no less than three to five times.
A firm associated with the super PAC that has effectively taken over Mr. DeSantis’s presidential campaign posted online hundreds of pages of blunt advice, research memos and internal polling in early nominating states to guide the Florida governor ahead of the high-stakes Republican presidential debate next Wednesday in Milwaukee.
[…]
“1. Attack Joe Biden and the media 3-5 times. 2. State GRD’s positive vision 2-3 times. 3. Hammer Vivek Ramaswamy in a response. 4. Defend Donald Trump in absentia in response to a Chris Christie attack.”
The documents were posted this week on the website of Axiom Strategies, the company owned by Jeff Roe, the chief strategist of Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down.
The New York Times was alerted to the existence of the documents by a person not connected to the DeSantis campaign or the super PAC. After The Times reached out to Never Back Down for comment on Thursday, the group removed from the website a key memo summarizing the suggested strategy for the debate. By Thursday night, all the other documents that were posted had been taken down.
That DeSantis’ operation is called “Never Back Down” is…[chef’s kiss].
To be fair, though, this is also the Vivek strategy. And the Haley strategy. And the Tim Scott strategy. Vigorously defend the four-times-indicted defendant currently crushing them in the polls (while looking ever more unelectable in the general election, and I will say no more lest I jinx it like I did in 2016) while secretly hoping he dies and/or goes to jail.
The sad thing is, this would probably make sense if you were the only candidate making that argument. When the publicly-pro-Trump-in-the-hope-of-grabbing-his-leftovers lane is extremely crowded, you’re going to fight over an extremely competitive share of electorate even if the pins in your Trump voodoo doll actually work.
Say what you will about Christie or Asa Hutchinson (or arguably Mike Pence) but at least they’re trying to appeal to the approximately 25% of GOP voters who say they have ruled out supporting Trump again.2 I don’t expect any of them to win, but it still makes more sense that doing what everyone else is doing.
There is a way DeSantis and other Republicans could have attacked Trump head-on, by publicly supporting all of his policies while simultaneously savaging the front-runner as an incompetent loser who failed miserably in actually implementing his policies and actually lost to Joe Freaking Biden, and viciously mocking his legal troubles, his appearance, and his very obvious stupidity at every possible opportunity. Sometimes, the only way to beat a bully is to be a bigger bully.
DeSantis isn’t the type to fight people he thinks are more powerful than him, though. Honestly, the only candidate in the race who could plausibly go toe-to-toe with Trump in a trolling competition is…Christie, who makes no effort to hide his true feelings about his old boss. And it might be paying off.
Paying in fractions of a cent, to be sure, but at least it’s something.
I’ve been binging true crime podcasts, books and documentaries this summer, and you know what trope really annoys me? The idea that you can easily tell someone is a psychopath because of their “crazy eyes.”
It’s ridiculous, of course. If it were that easy, we’d have these people off the streets long before they actually do anything. It’s just a way to greatly oversimplif- [record scratch]
On second thought, I’m not sure where I was going with this.
“No one is trying to cancel Judy Garland.”
“Only some fringe characters are trying to cancel Judy Garland.”
“Surely we can understand why Judy Garland is problematic.”
“Being a Judy Garland fan is yt supremacy.”
“We applaud Warner Brothers for removing ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ starring racist Judy Garland, from streaming services.”
Okay, maybe this won’t happen. But if you’re a fan you might want to get her movies on DVD and Blu-Ray just in case.
New Coke actually tasted fine. It was a lot like Pepsi, if I recall correctly. There was nothing at all wrong with the drink, except that it wasn’t Coca-Cola.
I wish they made New Coke (or Coke II, as they called it for a while) was an option in these Freestyle fountain pop machines, which are the only way we Canadians can get Mr. Pibb.
In the primary, at least. If Trump actually makes it to November 2024, we’ll see how many of them stay home, write in a candidate or - gasp! - vote for Biden.