Was Ron DeSantis lacklustre campaign doomed from the start?

Ex-GOP strategist believes the governor’s mix of awkwardness and nastiness will end his campaign, while a pollster says nothing can be predicted when it comes to the Iowa caucuses where it comes down to what happens in the room on the night, Gustaf Kilander reports

December 2, 2023

Ron DeSantis entered the Republican primary this spring as the preeminent challenger to former President Donald Trump and as the heir apparent taking on the old guard.

The Florida governor was “Trump without the baggage,” a far-right fighter ready to rumble with the “radical left” and govern more productively than the chaotic reality TV star, blustering real estate mogul and grievance-filled showman.

In a race against the oldest president in US history, being born in the late 1970s instead of the mid-1940s would also be helpful. Part of the thinking was that Mr DeSantis could win the White House by simply standing next to President Joe Biden on the debate stage and not looking old.

But was his floundering campaign always inevitable?Was Mr DeSantis always too awkward to be president?

Former GOP strategist and Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson certainly thinks so.

“I said as early as in the spring of 2021 that Ron DeSantis was the most overpriced stock in American politics,” he tells The Independent. “He didn’t win in Florida by some magical gift of his own, he inherited the best Republican machine in the country – it elected him, he didn’t win – he was hustled in there on the backs of 30 years of Republican dominance in the state and an infinite amount of money.”

Calling Mr DeSantis “the opposite of political charisma”, Mr Wilson adds that “the initial idea of Ron DeSantis being a great campaigner was rapidly put to the test and discovered to be a lie”.

Mr Wilson says the governor is “without a question, the worst-performing, best-funded primary candidate I’ve seen in a long time”.

Rich Lowry, the editor of the conservative National Review, disagrees.

“I think the fundamental factor is Trump’s strengths,” he tells The Independent. “It’s not as though Trump calling him ‘DeSanctimonious’ has destroyed him, or there’s any particular hit that’s hurt him, it’s just that Trump is just incredibly strong among Republican voters and became even more so after the first indictment, and has kind of dominated the attention space.”

Mr Lowry notes that the DeSantis campaign “overspent” and “overemphasized cultural issues at the beginning although not for crazy reasons”.

“But they adjusted and widened out their message. He just hasn’t proven to be an electric campaigner,” he adds, noting the difficulty of “running against the greatest showman on Earth”.

“He’s in a bad place now,” Mr Lowry says, adding that “there’s a potential path… but he basically has to win Iowa. And he’s not close to being there at the moment”.

‘His numbers there aren’t moving in a good direction’

Mr De Santis’s support in Iowa is actually on the decline, Ann Selzer, a prominent pollster in the Hawkeye State. “His numbers there aren’t moving in a good direction,” she says. But she cautioned that the result is still up to the voters.

“I have been active in enough caucuses – I’ve seen everything happen. So I cannot say whether this will or will not result in success for DeSantis”.

There has been reporting on how the pandemic, Mr Trump’s dominance, and the increasing use of social media, have led to less campaign activity. “There are not a lot of yard signs. I will say the only two yard signs I’ve seen were for DeSantis, but there’s just no visibility out there,” Ms Selzer adds. “Those are the things that in the olden days used to be a gauge of how active the campaign is. They’re not setting up their headquarters for phone banking, because volunteers can do that remotely.”

“It’s just very hard to see except if you tag along with him and go to his events, and get a sense of the crowd size. And that’s what likely caucusgoers are doing,” she says. “That is meaningful – if he’s not able to gather very many people at the Pizza Ranch it’s possible for likely caucusgoers to say he just doesn’t have the stuff.”

Des Moines Register politics reporter Katie Akin has been to countless Desantis events in Iowa this campaign season. She notes that Mr DeSantis’s tour of Iowa’s all 99 counties, known as the “full Grassley” – named after the 90-year-old senator – is set to finish Saturday 2 December…..continued..

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/ron-desantis-2024-donald-trump-b2457149.html

>>20021634

A split campaign with ‘a lot staff’

After driving all over the state to cover the governor, she noticed that he does have a large footprint. “He has a lot of staff. I don’t know exactly how many, but he definitely has a lot of people,” she tells The Independent, adding that, unlike with most other campaigns, she interacts with two separate groups – the campaign and the Never Back Down Super PAC.

Both the campaign and the PAC have been beset by infighting and high staff turnover – most recently the head of Never Back Down – 2022 Nevada GOP Senate nominee Adam Laxalt – did just that when he backed down and left the PAC late last month.

Mr DeSantis has often been seen as combative with the press, taking a card from Mr Trump’s playbook. But on the trail, Ms Akin says he’s “not too hard to get hold of … I wouldn’t say he’s been particularly aggressive”.

“He’s pretty good at staying on message, which doesn’t always make for the answer that you’re hoping to hear from him,” she adds.

‘Hillary Clinton looks like Ronald Reagan compared to Ron DeSantis’

Part of that may be what some see as his robotic nature and reliance on talking points.“Hillary Clinton looks like Ronald Reagan compared to Ron DeSantis,” Mr Wilson says. “He’s literally among the worst candidates I have ever seen in any race at any level for human connection.”

“You can give him the best speech writers in the world and he still would deliver it in that robotic, snipping, nasty, totally flat effect,” he adds. “And it’s weird because his wife, Casey, who is going to run for governor of Florida by the way, she’s a former television anchor, so she’s a trained performer. They had a guy giving him speech prep and debate lessons – it clearly did not take.”

Mr Wilson says Mr DeSantis’s awkwardness and lack of charisma aren’t fatal in and of themselves.

Speaking of the 41st president, the strategist says, “George Herbert Walker Bush, who I worked for as a young man, was what I call charmingly awkward. He had a sort of New England preppy aspect. And it was a little goofy, a little silly sometimes, but he still had a certain charm”.

“Richard Nixon was in many ways an awkward man,” Mr Lowry notes. “It’s just hard to do it against Trump.”

“You can’t get away with it if you’re just awkward, or you’re just weird,” Mr Wilson adds. “Trump is a great performer. I hate him on every conceivable axis, but you have to see that the guy is a showman. He understands how to put on a performance – not everybody can do that in politics, and DeSantis least of all.”

Mr Lowry says he “certainly didn’t think” Mr DeSantis’s supposed awkwardness doomed him from the get-go. “That was one of the many hostile narratives about him before he got in.” But he notes that “there’s clearly some truth to” the narrative that Mr DeSantis isn’t the most personable of candidates. “He’s fine on the stump, but it’s not like Bill Clinton lining up with every person he sees.”

Will the DeSantis campaign end in Iowa?

“I think he sticks it out to Florida because he’s arrogant. From what I’m hearing in Tallahassee,his wife doesn’t want him to quit and hand it to Nikki Haley,” Mr Wilson says. “None of this had to go this way for him. He could have run a different campaign, he could have been a different candidate.

“His people were literally talking about ‘I’m gonna be the secretary of this,” ‘I’m gonna take over in the Commerce Department’ … astounding hubris. “Politics punishes hubris like no other business I’ve ever seen,” he adds.

Not all Republican voters see this awkwardness and nastiness in the governor.

“He’s had pretty good attendance at his events,” Ms Akin, the Iowa political reporter, says. “If you look at some of the candidates that have polled lower or some of the candidates that are lesser known, at some of these Iowa caucus campaign stops for them, it’ll be like five people. Consistently, DeSantis is bringing out a couple dozen even in small rural areas.”

“Everybody’s perspectives on him are so different based on who they are and what they believe,” she adds. “I’ve talked to people after his events who think he seems very charismatic and charming and I’ve talked to people after who do think he seems a little bit stilted and weird … I really have talked to people who will come away from the same event with opposite opinions of how he seemed on stage.”

‘The key in Iowa is you never say never’

“I think the key in Iowa is you never say never,” Ms Akin says. “Looking back at previous cycles, there have been people who saw a surge in support just in the last couple of weeks before the caucus, even in the last couple of days.” “Iowa is the least predictable,” Ms Selzer says. “We look at the most the largest number of candidates…..

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/ron-desantis-2024-donald-trump-b2457149.html

>>20021674

The end:

“Keep in mind that in 2012, [former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum] had polled only as high as maybe five or six per cent poll after poll after poll. In the final poll was the first time he ever hit double digits.” “Our polling showed him on an upward trajectory – that didn’t happen until the final week ahead of the caucuses,” she says. “And by caucus night, he won.”

In 2016, in the Democratic primary, Ms Clinton was “leading, leading, leading”…..

“[Vermont Senator] Bernie Sanders never dipped in our polling and he started at three per cent. And by caucus night, he lost by less than one delegate equivalent. It’s just as it is designed, for things to happen late, and for there to be surprises,” she adds.

But the longtime pollster notes that when Mr Obama was running “you could kind of feel the contagion of a candidate picking up momentum and I can’t say that I feel that for DeSantis”….

‘You never know what’s going to happen in Iowa’

“You never know what’s going to happen in Iowa until it happens,” she says. “I was just looking back at some data from past years – we’ve had people who poll first in November or October … and then they come in third or fourth on caucus night.”…

One of Mr DeSantis’s main arguments, Mr Lowry notes, was that “‘I can be Trump, but more successful and I can win’. And I still think he’d be the better general election candidate than Trump, but it’s hard to make the argument when Trump is beating Biden in the polls and beating DeSantis and everyone else by 30 or 40 points in the primary.”

By going hard in Iowa, visiting all 99 counties and getting the endorsements of Governor Kim Reynolds and Bob Vander Plaats, the leader of a socially conservative group and a serial gubernatorial candidate, Mr Lowry says Mr DeSantis is “playing the only hand he can”.

“He’s done the work. He’s done the trips. He’s done the campaigning, he’s done the full Grassley … but the hour’s late and he needs to show movement,” he says.

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/ron-desantis-2024-donald-trump-b2457149.html

1 Dec, 2023

West blocked Russia from international maritime body – Moscow

The Foreign Ministry blamed an “unhinged” campaign for the IMO vote

Russia failed to secure re-election to the executive body of the UN ship agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), on Friday. Moscow has blamed the setback on the efforts of Kiev and its Western backers.

The London-based IMO is responsible for regulating the safety and security of international shipping, preventing pollution, and governing other issues. It brings together 175 member countries.

A long-time member of the IMO Council, Russia was oustedfrom the executive body after asecret ballot to select 40 supervisory members.

The outcome of the vote was the result of an“unhinged and politicized campaign,”unleashed by thecollective West, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “From the very beginning of the election cycle, Western countries and their Kiev protégés set the only goal for themselves – to prevent our country from being re-elected to the Council at any cost.”

In recent weeks, Russia has repeatedly warned the IMO was apparently losing its impartial role and was facing enormous “external pressure.” The anti-Russia campaign apparently culminated with an address by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who spoke to the agency on Monday via video link. Zelensky urged the body’s members to oust Moscow from the Council, claiming that Russia has inflicted the “worst [damage] in decades”to the “freedom of navigation.”

Roughly half of IMO member-states supported Russiaeven after “unprecedented pressure”from the West, the ministry noted. “We are grateful to all our partners who found the strength to resist the neocolonial ambitions of the Euro-Atlantic allies led by Washington and Brussels and cast their vote for Russia.”

The ministry described Russia’s ouster as a “Pyrrhic victory” for the West, given that the actual work of the IMO is largely conducted within its subcommittees rather than at the executive body itself.

“Russia, together with its allies, partners and like-minded nations, intends to continue to play a significant role on the platform of the IMO, including in its Council as an observer. Efforts to counter the Westerners’ line of politicizing the work of the agency, as well as to return the IMO to its original purely technical mandate, will continue,” it concluded.

(UN is filled with cowards)

https://www.rt.com/russia/588366-un-maritime-body-election/

4 Dec, 2023

Russian MP proposes taxing childless people

Evgeny Fyodorov said the measure would help fill the state’s coffers and incentivize population growth

A member of Russia’s State Duma has proposed to revive a tax on childlessness, which existed during the Soviet times, citing the need to boost population.

“We must encourage the birth of children,”Evgeny Fyodorov from the ruling United Russia party told Govorit Moskva radio on Saturday. He added that the tax revenue could be used to fund existing and future welfare programs designed to help families with children.

“Should we introduce a tax for this cause? If we won’t have enough money for such projects, we should,” the MP who sits on the parliamentary budget and taxation committee said. “It is not a punishment, but a solution to the problem.”

The tax on childlessness was adopted during World War II and existed until the breakup of the Soviet Union. The tax applied to men aged 20-50 and married women aged 20-45.

Over the years, politicians and church officials floated the idea of a similar tax. The proposed measure has its opponents, however. Nina Ostanina, chair of the Duma family affairs committee, said on Sunday thatsuch a tax could only work under a socialist system. “We are living in an absolutely different society,”she said.

MP Svetlana Bessarab told news website Lenta.ru that a tax on childlessness would amount to “discrimination of people who have no children.” She added that it would “really be a punishment, regardless of what we call it.”

https://www.rt.com/russia/588446-russian-mp-proposes-childless-tax/

1 Dec, 2023

Russian ships loaded with free grain have started reaching Africa. What you need to know

The first batch of humanitarian aid, consisting of 25,000 tons of grain, has arrived in Somalia

Russia has started sending the first batches of free grain to struggling African nations under a deal announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this year. This week, Somalia became the first to receive a shipment of 25,000 tons of grain.

1. The Russian grain promise

The delivery comes as part of an agreement announced by the Russian president during the Russia-Africa summit in St Petersburg back in July. During the event, Putin promised to provide food assistance to a number of African nations free of charge after the UN-brokered Black Sea grain deal fell through.

In his pledge, the Russian leader stated that Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, Central African Republic, and Eritrea would each receive up to 50,000 tons of grain from Russia and that they would be completely free of charge.

Russian Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev has said that Moscow expects to deliver a total of 200,000 tons of free grain to Africa by the end of the year.

1. More shipments

Russia has also provided free fertilizer shipments to several other countries. The director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Second Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Department, Aleksey Polischuk, stated last month that Moscow, together with the UN World Food Program, had sent 20,000 tons of fertilizer to Malawi, 34,000 tons to Kenya and was waiting for approval of an additional 23,000 to Zimbabwe, 34,000 tons to Nigeria, and 55,000 tons to Sri Lanka.

1. The Black Sea grain deal

Russia’s move to send free food aid to Africa came after it unilaterally withdrew from the so-called Black Sea Grain Initiative earlier this year. The deal, which was initially brokered by the UN and Türkiye in July 2022, was meant to facilitate the export of Ukrainian grain, such as wheat, corn and sunflower products, to world markets, primarily to poorer countries, such as those in Africa.

In exchange for allowing the shipments of Ukrainian grain, Moscow was promised that Western sanctions would be lifted from its own agricultural exports.

However, a year after it was struck, Russia abandoned the deal, arguing that it was still unable to get any of its grain or fertilizer out to world markets, and that the West had completely ignored its end of the bargain.

Additionally, Moscow noted that more than 70% of the shipments under the initiative had failed to reach poor countries and were instead delivered to wealthy nations.

1. Russia accuses West of hoarding agricultural goods

Aside from blocking Russian agricultural exports, Russia claimed that Western countries have been hoarding Russian fertilizer that had become stuck in EU ports. Russia’s Foreign Ministry claimed in October that over 96,000 tons of fertilizer intended as free humanitarian aid for poor African nations were being held up in ports in Latvia, Estonia, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Moscow described the situation as “yet another example of the hypocrisy of Western countries,” noting that despite saying there were no sanctions applied to Russian agricultural exports, Brussels was blocking “even purely humanitarian, free deliveries” of Russian supplies.

1. Revival of the Black Sea Initiative

Meanwhile, the UN has been attempting to revive the Ukrainian grain deal but so far to no avail. Russian Ambassador to Türkiye Aleksey Erkhov has explained that the efforts to restart the initiative have been “fruitless” because the West has continued to impose sanctions on Russian food and fertilizer.

https://www.rt.com/russia/588351-free-russian-grain-africa/

Tucker Carlson: Want to be happy? Care only about the opinions of people who love you

8:13

https://rumble.com/embed/v3wvdpg/?pub=4

#Trump2024

Blacks for Trump

2:06

https://rumble.com/embed/v3wuah7/?pub=4

Dang Fox is showing The Boss Rip Biden!

Anon mentioned earlier FOX personalities are supporting Trump, I think the pivot has happened.

0:32

https://rumble.com/embed/v3wodgv/?pub=4

“Kek, Colton its called the Mute Button”! Colton Moore- what’s going on in Georgia

Work on Fani Willlis!

4:49

https://rumble.com/embed/v3wc0lj/?pub=4