We have moved into the part of the exhibition season where nothing happens, but everything has meaning. It’s the race before the race, where touts on the rails lean into their bets based on how their preference looks trotting by the bandstand.
Consider:
I haven’t seen one Iowa poll since Kim Reynolds endorsed Ron DeSantis. If you think that’s a coincidence, you haven’t been paying attention to the entire election cycle.
— Jim Abbott (@JimAbbo67226878) November 13, 2023
As well as:
If you are still not convinced that the entire Establishment media wants Donald Trump to be the nominee, I urge you to look at all the Iowa polls that have come out since Kim Reynolds endorsed Ron DeSantis. I’ll wait while you do the research.
— Jim Abbott (@JimAbbo67226878) November 13, 2023
And also this:
Sudden big money push by Haley in Iowa is NOT to her benefit. Coming this late with little ground game prep, she has essentially no chance of winning & very unlikely to get anything but third. But it IS to TRUMP's advantage, to try to bleed off enough non-Trump voters from…
— Yoda4Sanity (Michael Openshaw) (@mopenshaw) November 14, 2023
And furthermore:
Trump has spent well over 20M attacking Ron DeSantis.
Nikki Haley just emptied her war chest and spent 10M attacking DeSantis.
Weird considering I've been told the DeSantis campaign is dead and he's at 8%
Pay attention to what they do not what they say.
— Unfiltered☢Boss (@Unfilteredboss1) November 13, 2023
In short, nothing happens during this pre-New Year’s Eve post-parade that isn’t open to a dozen-times-a-dozen interpretations, and, utterly without penalty, we get to pick the ones (as I just did) that best suit your worldview.
That doesn’t mean there’s neither fun nor usefulness to the exercise. Especially when it comes to eager beavers overrunning facts to pop what they believe are the hubristic bubbles of the influencers’ influencers. There’s been plenty of fun, for instance, pouncing on a gleeful (apparent) misquoting of Rush Limbaugh half-heir Buck Sexton.
Did the radio talker really say — as X/Twitter’s eagerest beavers claim — he’s never met a former Donald Trump supporter who now rallies for DeSantis? That’s easy to debunk, as countless fans of America’s Governor did.
Hey @BuckSexton @clayandbuck — I voted for Trump in 2016 (voted for @tedcruz in the 2016 primary) and in 2020.
I'm #withDeSantis now.
I hear you claim you don't know any Trump voters who switched to @RonDeSantis . Call me.
Don't believe me? I'll give you my Texas bar #.— Wes🐊 (@Wes65570474) November 13, 2023
I voted for Trump in 2020 and will vote DeSantis 2024 https://t.co/bEXBSiqg87
— Just Mindy 🐊 (@just_mindy) November 13, 2023
Apparently @BuckSexton doesn’t know anyone that has switched from trump to DeSantis.
Well Buck, here’s my story.
First image is my framed inauguration tickets & invites for trump’s inauguration in 2017. I worked on the campaign in Florida & was invited to attend the… pic.twitter.com/aDnVFiqsx0
— I Support Ron DeSantis (@SupportDeSantis) November 13, 2023
This is merely a representative sample. The queue winds beyond the horizon. Not that it matters much in this time-beyond-meaning, but Sexton claims he was misrepresented.
You are misquoting what I said-
Obviously there are many people who have switched their support from Trump to DeSantis since 2020.
I said that I don’t know anyone personally who began supporting Trump *in this primary in 2023* and has changed their mind in the last 6 months
— Buck Sexton (@BuckSexton) November 13, 2023
In other words, in Sexton’s experience, all those newly arrived in the Trump camp aren’t — or haven’t yet — thought better of their alliance. You can believe they’re locked in if you want to. Or you can believe Buck’s bubble is vanishingly tiny. It’s all fodder for the interminable post-parade when we’re still two months from the starting gate.
What’s clearly more interesting than crystal ball gazing, however, is what the guy who’s having all that money spent against him in Iowa is doing at Florida’s top elected official. Those with eyes to see will recognize that when he’s not beefing up his presence in Iowa, or his credentials in New Hampshire, DeSantis is, by deed, auditioning for the White House in his eye-catching governance of the Sunshine State.
During a media presentation at Jacksonville Port Tuesday, DeSantis, accompanied by UK Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch, announced a robust commercial pact between Florida and the United Kingdom. The agreement emerged from DeSantis’ whirlwind around-the-world tour last April that included stops in South Korea, Japan, Israel and London.
“It’ll deepen economic cooperation and trade relations. It’ll help us identify barriers to trade and overcome them together,” Badenoch said. “But it will also foster business links and help unlock new investment opportunities for companies on both sides of the Atlantic. Because at the end of the day, it’s not government that creates economic growth businesses, so we want to help support them to do that.”
Derided at the time by the customary critics, DeSantis springtime global barnstorming has clearly begun to bear savory fruit.
Witness, too, Florida’s tightening alliance with Israel during its war with Hamas in Gaza. Beyond funding flights that retrieved Americans from the Middle East war zone, DeSantis summoned the Legislature into special session specifically to address strengthening Florida’s ties to Israel while also squeezing longtime terrorist supporter Iran.
Monday, DeSantis signed just-passed measures clapping sanctions on the ayatollahs and protecting Jewish institutions in Florida.
Moreover, making certain there are no hints of ambivalence regarding Florida’s official position in the Israeli-Hamas conflict, DeSantis declared during last week’s Republican presidential debate he’d moved to shut down chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine.
“I already acted in Florida,” said DeSantis, who has made strong support for Israel part of his GOP presidential campaign. “We had a group, Students for Justice [in] Palestine. They said they are common cause with Hamas. They said, ‘We’re not just in solidarity. This is what we are.’ We deactivated them. We’re not gonna use tax dollars to fund jihad.”
For the record, those deactivations remain on hold while the affected schools — the University of Florida (Gainesville) and the University of South Florida (Tampa) — seek to understand their legal situations.
That’s all well and good. Meanwhile, unlike the equivocating Biden administration, voters know where DeSantis is willing to invest his political capital, and can judge from there his suitability as president.
As the Man in Black told Princess Buttercup, “I am no one to be trifled with. That is all you ever need know.”
