GOP insiders think DeSantis could beat Trump in 2024. Here's how.

The reason, according to Longwell, isn’t the hearings per se, which Trump voters still see as a “witch hunt.” Rather, it’s the way the hearings remind them of “how much baggage Trump has.”

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Republicans “want someone who can win in 2024 and [they] are increasingly unsure he can,” Longwell concluded.

DeSantis’s goal would be to crystallize that concern — then offer himself up as a winning alternative. He could point to President Biden’s approval rating: just 38% right now, lower than any other modern president at this point in his first term (including Trump and Jimmy Carter). He could note that, despite Biden’s paltry numbers, the damaged Democrat is still leading his predecessor in most nonpartisan national polls. And without directly contradicting the “stolen election” lie that has sadly become table stakes for GOP candidates in the Age of Trump, he could remind his fellow Republicans that Trump has never actually won the national popular vote.

Trump is still the GOP alpha, Schweppe said, so attacking him directly will almost certainly “backfire.” But if Republican voters are “presented with an alternative they think is even stronger — who happens to maybe be more electorally viable in a head-to-head matchup with a Democrat, with Biden or whoever — I think they’re going to jump at it.”

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If DeSantis can destabilize Trump, Republican strategists say, it wouldn’t be hard for him to pivot to a positive case for his own candidacy. “It’s a message that’s very forward-looking, but also not anti-Trump,” Schweppe said. “Let’s go defeat woke-ism. Let’s run it out of our institutions. Let’s take this country back and actually make America great again.”

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