Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ somewhat glitchy entrance into the 2024 presidential primary on Twitter brought the expected collection of cheers and jeers from the usual list of suspects. One of the first rounds of “friendly fire” coming from inside of the Governor’s own party came from former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. He had been standing by for an interview with Newsmax in anticipation of the announcement. Rather than attacking DeSantis’ record in Florida (which would be almost impossible from a conservative perspective), Huckabee questioned the Floridian’s commitment to the job. He’s claiming that DeSantis “promised four years” to the people of Florida but now he’s asking for a new four-year job only months after starting his new term as Governor. (Townhall)

Former Arkansas GOP Gov. Mike Huckabee fired shots at Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla) after launching his 2024 presidential campaign.

Huckabee criticized DeSantis’s decision to run for president after he just ran for governor last year, saying he promised Floridians four years.

“One of the challenges that he’s going to have to answer is a very obvious question: If you want to be president, how come you ran for governor just last year?” Huckabee told Newsmax. “You asked for a four-year job, and then you barely had gotten into it before you were looking for another four-year job.”

If we were talking about any other job outside of politics, this argument might have some merit. After all, if you apply for an engineering position at Lockheed and you’re taking interviews with other firms only a month later, both your current employer and the one you’re applying to might give you some sideways glances. Unless you immediately found your current working conditions to be intolerable for some reason, why take the job in the first place?

But this is politics, and the majority of candidates are typically already in another elected position. You’ll notice that no prominent Republicans said a word about Tim Scott throwing his hat in the ring despite the fact that he was only elected to another six-year term just a few months ago. That’s probably because nobody is taking Scott’s candidacy all that seriously for now. (Which is kind of a shame because I think he brings a lot to the table as one of the “not America first” hopefuls, and he at least deserves a voice in the debate.)

The stronger argument against DeSantis, at least to me, is that he’s essentially running as the guy with “all of Trump’s policies but without the mean tweets.” That makes him very appealing to the never-Trump crowd as well as nervous Republicans who fear that the Bad Orange Man might drive away wavering voters who are disgusted by the failures of the Biden administration and might consider an alternative but will be unwilling to pull a lever for the widely villainized former president.

But the counterargument to that is equally obvious. Why vote for “Trump light” when the real deal is also on the ballot? Also, any Republican entering office is going to face endless, withering attacks from the mainstream media and all of the other usual suspects. Trump is the only one with a proven record of standing against those storm winds and remaining upright. Ron DeSantis is only now getting his first taste of that sort of treatment on a national level, and it remains to be seen how well he will handle the pressure.

Donald Trump is currently “unemployed” in political terms, despite still running a massive business empire. But he spent four years proving that his family and his surrogates can continue taking care of business if he’s currently occupied with the duties of being the leader of the free world. He’s already fully aware of all of the snakes and alligators waiting for him in the swamp. I’m waiting to see if Ron DeSantis demonstrates any awareness of just how rotten DoJ and the intelligence agencies are and how they will actively seek to thwart him if he wins the presidency or if he’s truly ready to take on the massive housecleaning that is required of the next Republican president.

Perhaps it’s too early to call the GOP primary a “two-man race” at this early stage. There’s a long way to go. But unless someone else starts moving the needle by the middle of summer, these may wind up being our only choices. To be clear, I will vote for whoever winds up being the eventual nominee. (I don’t get to vote in the primary, so that’s not really up to me.) I will encourage others to do the same. Joe Biden or whoever has been pulling his strings has been a complete disaster and brought the country to the edge of a potential collapse of our union. But simply removing him isn’t enough. We must replace him with someone who will be capable of handling an increasingly monumental challenge in terms of restoring America to greatness.