The Horse Race: 'Make America Florida': DeSantis Lays Out 2024 Blueprint, Takes Veiled Shots at Trump in New Book

with Brittany Bernstein

Wednesday, March 01, 2023

'Make America Florida': DeSantis Lays Out 2024 Blueprint, Takes Veiled Shots at Trump in New Book

Ron DeSantis's new book introduces a could-be 2024 slogan: "Make America Florida."

The Florida governor dedicates an entire chapter in his new book, The Courage to Be Free: Florida's Blueprint for America's Revival, to the topic.

"The divisions in our society are not merely about different policy preferences regarding taxes, regulations, and welfare, but about our foundational principles," he writes. "The battles we have fought in Florida—from defeating the biomedical security state to stifling woke corporations to fighting indoctrination in schools—strike at the heart of what it means to be a Floridian and an American."

"The right path forward is not difficult to identify; it just requires using basic common sense and applying core American values to the problems of the day," states DeSantis, sounding an awful lot like a presidential candidate. "But it will not be easy to achieve. It will require successfully combating a lot of powerful, elite institutions that have driven the country into a cycle of repeated failures."

To make America more like Florida, which he argues has "done a much better job than Washington in fostering accountability in government," DeSantis advocates for term-limits for members of Congress and to make 50,000 federal workers at-will employees who can be fired by the president.

The book, which debuted at No. 1 on Amazon's Top 100 list, paints DeSantis, a Yale University and Harvard Law grad, as an everyman who was raised in a working-class home with family ties to steel-country Ohio and Pennsylvania that made him "God-fearing, hard-working and America-loving." He describes summers spent working at a local electric company to help pay for college and feeling like a working-class outsider at Yale.

While DeSantis mentions Trump more than 100 times in the book, he is not outwardly critical of the former president, choosing instead to deftly remind readers of Trump's weaknesses in a GOP primary without making value judgments of his own. He writes of the 2016 Republican opposition to a Trump candidacy:

The Republican party hierarchy was, unsurprisingly, almost universally opposed to Trump during the primaries. Some of this opposition was rooted in Trump's liberal past, including his big donations to liberal candidates like Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Harry Reid; and his support for liberal abortion laws and restrictions on gun rights. Some of the opposition was rooted in Trump's unique but polarizing persona and his efforts to avoid being drafted, which they found unbecoming of a presidential candidate.

DeSantis will kick off a book tour this week beginning in Venice, Fla. The tour will crisscross the country, allowing DeSantis to fortify his already-bright national star power. He will headline two Republican fundraisers in Texas on Saturday before heading to an event for the GOP of Orange County, Calif., the next day. He's set to give a keynote speech for the Alabama GOP next week.

Last weekend, he hosted a "Freedom Blueprint" retreat with more than 150 donors, elected officials, and conservative influencers, including Senators Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Representative Chip Roy (R., Texas), and Texas-based donor Roy Bailey, a former member of Trump's national finance committee.

This weekend, DeSantis will also attend Club for Growth's annual donor retreat, which runs from Thursday to Saturday in Palm Beach, Fla., at a location just three miles from former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club.

Trump, who will instead attend CPAC, attacked Club for Growth in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, calling the group "Club for NO Growth" and "an insignificant group of Globalists who I have beaten badly because of their anti America First views. They will only get the 'stragglers.'"

Other 2024 hopefuls slated to attend the Club for Growth event include former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, former vice president Mike Pence, Senator Tim Scott, New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, and Woke, Inc. author Vivek Ramaswamy. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin were invited to the retreat but could not attend, CBS News reported.

DeSantis and Pence, meanwhile, declined to attend CPAC. Haley and Ramaswamy will attend both events.

The rift between Trump and his former ally comes after the former president and the Club for Growth supported different 2022 primary candidates in several Senate races, including in Ohio and Alabama. Club for Growth polling from earlier this month showed DeSantis defeating Trump in a hypothetical matchup.

"DeSantis has, in his style and the actions he's taken as governor, shown a willingness to fight the traditional powers that be, the establishment," Club for Growth president David McIntosh told the Associated Press. He called DeSantis's style "refreshing," as some critics have questioned DeSantis's "lone wolf" persona.

DeSantis writes in his book that he has been able to achieve "great electoral triumphs by taking the political road less traveled." He does, however, acknowledge Trump's contribution to his upstart political career, explaining that he knew an endorsement from the then-president in the 2018 gubernatorial race would "enhance my name recognition."

"I knew that a Trump endorsement would provide me with the exposure to GOP primary voters across the State of Florida, and I was confident that many would see me as a good candidate once they learned about my record," he writes, adding that he had "developed a good relationship with the president largely because I supported his initiatives in Congress and opposed the Russia collusion conspiracy theory."

In November, Trump infamously took credit for DeSantis's 2018 victory and nicknamed the Florida governor "Ron DeSanctimonious." Trump claimed at the time that his endorsement of DeSantis in 2017 served as a "nuclear weapon," propelling DeSantis to the top of the GOP primary for Florida governor. He went on to falsely claim that he stopped DeSantis's election from being stolen.

DeSantis writes in the book of meeting with Trump in the Oval Office to request additional federal assistance to the Florida Panhandle after Hurricane Michael in 2018. Trump agreed to send the funds but told DeSantis he had to give the president credit when discussing the funding with the area's residents, DeSantis writes. However, the governor goes on to claim that Trump's acting chief of staff at the time, Mick Mulvaney, asked DeSantis not to announce the funding because the president "doesn't even know what he agreed to in terms of a price tag."

He also writes of being a driving force behind Trump's decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

DeSantis, meanwhile, has been an "effective governor," according to former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who suggested in a recent Fox Nation special that Florida "could be a model for the country." In the special, Who Is Ron DeSantis?, Bush went so far as to say that DeSantis could help lead a generational change in national politics and that it was the right opportunity to run for president.

But Bush, after a backlash from Trump loyalists, was left to clarify that his recent acclaim was "praising, not endorsing" in a statement to Politico Playbook. He avoided a question asking about his preference as to who should become the GOP nominee.

As DeSantis's star rises, Trump has latched onto a Fox News clip that, while anecdotal, suggested a lack of enthusiasm for the governor in a Ponte Vedra, Fla., diner. Brian Kilmeade asked diners: "All right. 2024, who is pumped up for the election? Rapid fire. Who is your man? Who is your woman?" The first six people Kilmeade approached all listed Trump as their preferred candidate, including two who also mentioned Haley and one who also cited South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. Kilmeade then approached a woman wearing a DeSantis shirt and asked, "what about President DeSantis?" "Oh, gosh, I don't know," she replied. "Trump or DeSantis, either/or."

AROUND NR

• While California Republicans have no say in general elections for national and statewide office, a new BerkeleyIGS Poll for the Los Angeles Times that shows DeSantis's eight-point lead over Trump is newsworthy because those voters can "still matter quite a lot in a presidential-primary contest," Dan McLaughlin writes.

DeSantis leads Trump in the poll 37 percent to 29 percent, a reversal from the same poll taken in August 2022, when Trump led DeSantis 38 percent to 27 percent. Nikki Haley runs third at 7 percent, and nobody else is over the four percent who back Liz Cheney. Chris Sununu polls at zero. However, 11 percent say they are undecided, a measure of how much flux remains in voter preferences a year out, in a race with only three announced candidates, in a poll where 27 percent of respondents were either undecided or backing someone other than the top three potential contenders.

• Trump surged ahead of DeSantis in a hypothetical 2024 head-to-head match-up, a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll found. The new poll shows Trump leading DeSantis 47 percent to 39 percent among Republican voters, after previously trailing the Florida governor for the last three months. The poll also found 65 percent of Americans believe that Biden, 80, is "too old for another term as president," while just 45 percent said the same of Trump, who is 76. More here.

• Former vice president Mike Pence suggested that there will be "better choices" than former president Donald Trump in 2024, as Ari Blaff reported. "I think the times call for different leadership," Pence told NBC's Ali Vitali. "I'm confident we'll have better choices than my old running mate."

"I'm very confident that Republican primary voters are going to choose the right standard-bearer for this moment in our nation's history," Pence added. "Someone that can provide not only the policies in leadership but the style of leadership that will help bring our nation back."

• Jill Biden indicated on Friday that her husband will run for reelection in 2024, saying he's "not done." The first lady told the Associated Press that there is "pretty much" nothing left to do but set a time and place for the formal announcement, which will likely come sometime in April, according to the report. More here.