After sneaking around for two years and trying to convince voters that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is the second coming of Donald Trump, GOP Senators are now breaking out in a flop sweat. In the latest poll from Fox News, the official Ron DeSantis station, Trump leads DeSantis by 15 points. In an even more recent poll, Trump is polling at 55% over DeSantis at 25%. Mitch McConnell must be starting to panic at the millions he’s invested into DeSantis.
And this isn’t a criticism of Ron DeSantis. He’s done a great job as Florida’s governor and is one of the most popular GOP figures in the country. Other than President Trump.
What the establishment Republicans in the Senate have failed to realize is that the GOP base is furious about the 2020 election being stolen. The voters want Trump back in the White House in 2024, so he can start the Revenge Tour on their behalf. Republican Senators fear the return of President Trump because he would set America back on the right economic course while putting an end to the stupid Ukraine-Russia war that the GOP keeps funding. There’s not nearly as much room for government graft with Trump in office, compared to Joe Biden.
In referencing the Fox News poll, GOP strategist Vin Weber notes, “Trump is running a very different campaign than he ran in 2016 or 2020. A formidable campaign with a disciplined candidate and 15-point lead in the polls today is more important than just a 15-point lead in the polls.”
This is why senators like Mitch McConnell, John Thune, and John Cornyn are suddenly starting to worry. Trump really is running a more disciplined campaign this time around. They’ve been working behind the scenes to try to turn the MAGA movement into a watered-down GOP machine that refuses to fight the left, just like they did with the Tea Party movement that sprang up more than a decade ago.
Following Trump’s visit to the beleaguered town of East Palestine, Ohio, last week, he’s blown the lead over DeSantis and the rest of the assumed primary contenders wide open. An Emerson College poll puts Trump 30 points over DeSantis, and no one else is even close. In that poll, more voters are abandoning establishment figures like Mike Pence and Nicki Haley completely, and flooding toward Trump.
One Republican Senator agreed to speak to The Hill on condition of anonymity. He notes that the establishment GOP’s efforts to prop up DeSantis are backfiring. If anything, they’re doing DeSantis more harm than good. The anonymous Republican Senator notes, “When you break down DeSantis’s support, it’s almost from self-identified moderates and then Never-Trumpers, which is fine but you’re not going to win a primary with that.”
That’s true. Trump’s support among bedrock conservatives and working-class voters is virtually unmoved from the two previous elections that he won in 2016 and 2020. Fox News and the GOP establishment have launched a major pro-DeSantis campaign in recent days, lauding the governor’s new book and even producing a one-hour DeSantis infomercial. Yet DeSantis is slipping backward. The endorsements from guys like Mitt Romney and Jeb! Bush probably isn’t helping, either.
The good news is that Governor DeSantis has time to make a decision. If it becomes obvious that he’d be flushing his political career down the drain by challenging President Trump, he has time to pull back. After repeatedly saying he doesn’t know if he’s going to run, DeSantis now says he’ll decide sometime in late May or early June. He’s a nice-to-have second choice to have on the Republican bench, but Mitch McConnell has to be hating life right now after investing so much in trying to pitch DeSantis as the anti-Trump alternative.
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