Wednesday’s night debate went almost as well as it possibly could have for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. None of his other rivals attacked him, he got out his message, and he even carved out a couple of clip-worthy moments to blast out on social media.
But his performance also illustrated his key vulnerabilities as he tries to build a coalition of voters from all wings of the party who are still skeptical of Donald Trump.
The challenge for DeSantis is that he is trying to be the candidate for two disparate factions. The first is the traditional establishment Republicans who are desperate to get Trump finally off the political stage. These are the voters who thought Trump was good on policy but terrible on personality and were appalled by January 6.
The second are those in the MAGA wing of the party who nonetheless have qualms about Trump as the nominee. Some of them think he didn’t go far enough in office (he never fired Anthony Fauci) or are simply unsure Trump can win in 2024 with all the attacks they see him facing from the “deep state.”
As Vivek Ramaswamy, who is the personification of this faction, put it when describing why some of these voters might be hesitant to make Trump the nominee: “About 30 percent of this country just become psychiatrically ill when he’s in office.” Ramaswamy’s pitch is that he is just as MAGA as Trump without causing liberals to suffer “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and turn out to vote in droves against the GOP.
DeSantis is neither fish nor fowl in this internal tussle. The Florida governor has tried to appeal to both constituencies and seems caught in between. The most obvious example is the muddled mess of his views on US support for Ukraine, the clearest divide between traditional Republicans and those who embrace Trumpian isolationism.
Most Republicans onstage Wednesday vigorously defended US aid to Ukraine. In contrast, Ramaswamy derided the idea of further US support. He described Ukrainian…
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