The much-derided omnibus spending bill was inevitable when Republicans decided to make Trump the centerpiece of their 2022 Congressional election campaigns.
House Republicans, and even some dissident Senate Republicans like Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida), are whining about the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill is about to become law; but really, they have no one to blame but themselves.
These “MAGA Republicans” tied the party’s political fate to one, Donald J. Trump, and, as a result, lost big-time in the 2022 midterm elections. The GOP lost one Senate seat and now is in the Senate minority, while badly underperforming in House elections nationwide.
GOP Disarray. Moreover, House Republicans cannot even agree on whom their leader should be. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California) should be the next Speaker of the House; but that is far from assured, since a renegade group of kamikaze Republicans seems intent on blowing up the House GOP majority.
So you can understand why most Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), are eager to pass legislation now—before House Republicans set up their circular firing squad and begin taking aim at each other.
“No question, there are many Senate Republicans who worry that the new House Republican majority will not be able to pass spending bills with 218 Republican votes come January or February,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) told radio host Hugh Hewitt.
Consequently, he explained,
Speaker McCarthy would have to go to the Democrats and ask for their votes to pass a bill. And if that were to happen, then the Democrats, obviously would demand a ransom in the form of tens of billions of dollars in new spending that they didn’t get in this bill.
So there’s no question that many Senate Republicans think that, right now, the best deal possible—not just for December, but also in the new year— would be a bill that holds the Democrats to the defense budget they just voted for last week. while also preventing the domestic spending budget from going up beyond what Joe Biden requested.
The Omnibus. Sure, the omnibus spending bill includes many odious things (such as limitations on border enforcement) that delight far-left, “progressive” Democrats. But that was the inevitable result of the GOP’s weakened position stemming from the party’s awful performance in the 2022 mid-terms. And for that, you can thank Donald Trump, who remains one of the most despised and unpopular political figures in America today.
Maybe Republicans will think twice next time before they decide to make Trump and his idiotic desire to re-litigate his 2020 election defeat the centerpiece of their Congressional campaigns. That was a bad political move for which the GOP paid a steep political and legislative price.
Policy Wins. The good news is that thanks to the political and legislative savvy of Sen. McConnell, Senate Republicans were able to extract some significant policy wins in the omnibus spending bill.
As Sen. Cotton alluded to, for instance, the defense budget has been significantly increased after being savaged by the Biden inflation and a decades-long modernization holiday.
Aid to Ukraine also has been secured. This is especially important because House Republicans have intimated that they might stop or curtail aid to Ukraine in the name of fiscal restraint. Now, though, thanks to the omnibus spending bill, House Republicans will have limited room for destructive legislative maneuver.
The bottom line: House Republicans, and dissident Senate Republicans like Sen. Rick Scott (R-Florida), are getting what they deserve. They’re getting their just desserts. They’re getting their comeuppance.
These Republicans made Trump and his selfish political obsessions the focal point of the 2022 election. The American people said, “no thanks”; the GOP lost; and the party now is at a decided political and legislative disadvantage.
The omnibus spending bill is far from perfect, but it reflects the hard cold reality of what the Republican Party can achieve now, legislatively, given its foolish and costly embrace of Donald Trump.
Feature photo credit: Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) (L) secured the best deal possible in the wake of GOP election losses caused by the Republicans’ enthusiastic embrace of Donald Trump (R). Courtesy of People magazine (Oliver Contreras/Bloomberg via Getty Images).
Republicans will win in 2024 if they eschew Trumpian populism and embrace Bush-Cheney conservatism.
Although former President Trump is obviously responsible for the Republican Party’s disastrous and historically unprecedented subpar performance in the 2022 mid-term elections, his diehard defenders and apologists are warning the GOP not to abandon the “populist agenda” that supposedly made Trump, in their view, a successful politician.
Fox News host Laura Ingraham, for instance, credits Trump with energizing and “reinventing the GOP,” while setting it upon the path toward becoming a “multiracial working class party.”
In Ingraham’s view, Trump rejected the “pro-war” and “pro-CCP” (Communist Chinese Party) establishment GOP epitomized by former President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and 2008 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
Ingraham warns Republicans against reverting back to the establishment’s supposed love for amnesty, open borders, endless wars, and unfair trade with China.
She essentially acknowledges that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is the presumptive 2024 GOP presidential nominee and warns him against being cooped by the dreaded GOP “establishment.”
Of course, this is a badly distorted and self-serving analysis that ignores many inconvenient truths.
For starters, Trump’s supposed political success is far less impressive than Ingraham suggests. The man won one fluke election (in 2016) against a very weak Democratic opponent (Hillary Clinton), and he did it by narrowly winning three states—Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania—with a large contingent of white working class voters.
Since then, thanks to Trump, the Republicans have been decimated in two of these states (Michigan and Pennsylvania), while barely hanging on in the third (Wisconsin).
Biden won all three states, of course, in 2020; and all three states have Democratic governors who just won election or reelection.
Pennsylvania and Michigan have two Democratic senators; Wisconsin has one. The sole Republican Senator, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, barely won reelection against an extraordinarily weak Democratic opponent.
Dems, meanwhile, flipped both houses of the Michigan state legislature for the first time in nearly four decades, while apparently winning control of the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives.
The bottom line: the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin is in far worse shape, thanks to Trump, than it was seven years ago before he came on the political scene.
Michigan’s reelected Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, would be a very formidable Democratic presidential candidate in 2024. Ditto Pennsylvania’s newly elected governor, Josh Shapiro.
As a result, it is difficult to see how any Republican can win these states in 2024. And without winning at least one of these three states, it is difficult to see how any Republican can win the White House in 2024. The Electoral College math simply does not compute.
George W. Bush. In fact, to win in 2024, the Republicans’ best bet might be to essentially update or tweak what George W. Bush did in the Electoral College when he was elected and reelected president in 2000 and 2004, respectively.
That is, sweep the South and the West, while winning Iowa and New Hampshire, but losing Colorado, New Mexico, and Virginia. That would give the Republican presidential candidate 271 Electoral College votes: one more than necessary to win the presidency (see the Electoral College map below).
That, of course, is precisely how Bush won the 2000 presidential election (see the Electoral College map above).
The Likely 2024 Electoral College map, courtesy of 270ToWin.com.
Yet, ironically, Ingraham derides Bush as the exemplar of all that is wrong with the Republican Party: because he was committed, supposedly, to “endless wars,” open borders, and trade with China.
Bush’s Policies. But while the Iraq War may have been a mistake, it was essentially over and won by the time Bush left office in 2008, thanks to “the surge” of U.S. troops and adoption of a winning military strategy.
The war in Afghanistan was still in a low boil, but if he had a third term, Bush almost certainly would have replicated “the surge” in Afghanistan to successfully end the war, or at least make it manageable without an abject American defeat and withdrawal.
It is true that Bush tried to solve the immigration crisis, but it is not true that he was committed to amnesty and open borders.
Unlike Trump, Bush did not support building a wall along the southern border, but remember: Trump himself never really built the wall either. He talked a good game, but failed to deliver. Just ask Ann Coulter.
Bush did try to engage China; but so, too, had every American president, Republican and Democrat, since Richard Nixon. This was a good-faith, decades-long effort that had to change as China’s adversarial posture vis-à-vis the United States became increasingly clear and transparent.
Thus a President Romney or a President McCain would have confronted China, but in a far more effective way than Trump: by better leveraging the strength of our allies in the Pacific—and without the collateraleconomicdamage that resulted from ill-advised tariffs or taxes on American manufacturers and consumers.
Trump’s Policies. Moreover, Trump’s political success, such as it was, resulted from traditional conservative Republican policies, not newfound populist ideas.
Corporate tax reform, for instance, ushered in the lowest unemployment rate in nearly 50 years and the lowest black unemployment rate in recorded history. And energy deregulation resulted in American energy independence for the first time in our nation’s history.
Trump also stopped the flow of illegal immigrants pouring across the U.S.-Mexican border, albeit without the wall or in spite of the wall.
Trump accomplished this belatedly in his administration by finally adopting regulatory reforms, such as a “remain in Mexico” policy for would-be asylum seekers and DACA restrictions, that effectively secured the border.
On the international stage, Trump definitely was not an isolationist or a non-interventionist. He ordered ISIS destroyed and Iranian General Qasem Soleimani killed, and he achieved both of these objectives quickly through the use of American military power.
Bush v. Trump. Yet, despite these policy successes, Trump failed to win a majority of the popular vote in both 2020 and 2016. As David Frum points out:
He lost the popular vote in 2016. He lost the House in 2018. He lost the popular vote and the Electoral College in 2020. He lost the Senate in 2021.
Since 2000, there have been six presidential elections, and thus 12 presidential nominations by the two major parties. In his share of votes cast, Trump finished tenth and 11th out of the 12: behind Mitt Romney, behind John Kerry, behind Al Gore.
In fact, the only Republican presidential candidate to win a majority of the popular vote in the past 32 years (eight presidential elections) was George W. Bush, in 2004.
So let’s not pretend that Trump achieved unparalleled political success when he clearly did not. And let’s not pretend that he outperformed his Republican predecessors at the ballot box when the facts show otherwise.
In truth, Trump achieved some political and policy success by forthrightly addressing, or trying to address, new problems that had arisen in the new millennium.
For the most part, he adopted traditional conservative policies that proved successful. When, on occasion, Trump deviated from these conservative policies to embrace Ingraham’s preferred populist positions, he was far less successful.
Trade is a good example. As Douglas A. Irwin explains, Trump’s ill-advised tariffs increased the trade deficit; eliminated tens of thousands of U.S. manufacturing jobs; reduced household incomes; and were a drag on economic growth.
“Numerous studies, add Jeb Hensarling, the former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (2013-19), “have shown that almost all the costs of tariffs initiated under the Trump administration were paid by American consumers and businesses.”
Conservatism, Not Populism. The truth is Trump’s political success has little to do with populism and everything to do with conservatism.
Populism, in fact, got Trump in trouble. Jan. 6 populism, for instance, was an unmitigated disaster. It haunted Republican candidates nationwide in the 2022 mid-terms, while destroying whatever chance Trump had to win a second term in 2024.
Ingraham, then, has it precisely backwards. The danger for Gov. DeSantis and the Republican Party is that they try to ape Trump’s populism while giving short shrift to the conservative policies that actually proved successful, substantively and politically, for Trump.
Conclusion. In other words, contra Ingraham, we need a more conservative and less populist Republican Party.
We need a Republican Party that applies tried-and-true conservative principles to modern-day problems. We need a Republican Party that believes in markets, American military power, and parental sovereignty and choice.
Therein lies public policy success. Therein lies political victory—in 2024 and beyond. Populism is a mirage that will only lead Republicans astray down the primrose path to defeat and permanent minority status.
Feature photo credit: the 2000 presidential election Electoral College map, courtesy of 270ToWin.com.
DeSantis’ smashing victory, coupled with Trump’s disastrous defeats, means that, 18 months from now, the Republicans inevitably will coalesce behind DeSantis, not Trump, as they fight to win back the White House.
As I observed in my election day post, the 2022 mid-terms were all about Trump 2024 and whether the Republican Party would nominate him again, for a third-straight time, in 2024.
Well, the results are basically in (or at least sufficiently tallied); so we can draw a definitive conclusion:
Yesterday’s dismal GOP performance, albeit deeply disappointing, will have a chastening effect that will strengthen the party for the 2024 presidential election cycle.
Consequently, two years from now, Trump will not be the Republican Party presidential nominee; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will be.
How do we know this? Because Trump’s handpicked candidates and toadies overwhelmingly went down to defeat, while DeSantis enjoyed a smashing victory.
Indeed, there was a red wave alright, but it began and ended in Florida. The rest of America, by contrast, saw only a weak and unimpressive Trumpian drizzle.
The Republicans barely captured the House of Representatives and they lost every competitive Senate race save for Wisconsin (a real squeaker), Nevada (still too close to call), and Georgia (headed to a runoff election in December).
DeSantis, by contrast, won nearly 60 percent of the vote, while winning the Hispanic vote and the Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade County.
For Republicans, the implications are crystal clear. If they want to win the presidency in 2024, they have only one viable option: They must eschew Donald Trump, who is a political loser, and embrace Ron DeSantis, who is a political winner.
It really is that simple and that obvious, and the Republicans nationwide know it.
Donald Trump. Even Trump knows it, which is why it is doubtful now he even runs. But if he does run, DeSantis will clean his clock in the primaries: because the Republicans want to win, not lose, the presidency.
I don’t expect DeSantis to announce that he is running for president until next fall, a year from now. He owes that to the people of Florida, who overwhelmingly reelected him as their governor.
Executive Experience. Waiting also will help DeSantis to secure the 2024 presidential nomination. His greatest calling card, after all, is his executive record and his executive experience. As a governor, he gets things done. He solves real problems for real people.
Other politicians, like Trump, talk a good game, but they don’t run anything other than their mouths.
DeSantis, by contrast, runs the state of Florida and he runs it extraordinarily well. That’s why, throughout the pandemic, hundreds of thousands of Americans moved to Florida: to enjoy the bountiful opportunities accorded by that state under his leadership.
The more the American people see DeSantis doing his job, the better off he will be, politically, for 2024. He has time to declare his candidacy, and he should bide his time and take his time before announcing that he’s running.
The reality is: no other potential candidate can match DeSantis’ record of accomplishment. The nomination is his for the asking and his to lose, and he will take it, by near-universal acclamation. It is only a matter of time.
Trump is yesterday; DeSantis is tomorrow; and a 2024 GOP presidential victory lies within reach. That’s what we learned last night, and that’s what the Republicans’ dismal 2022 performance means for 2024.
The GOP lost yesterday because of Donald Trump, but it will win tomorrow because of Ron DeSantis. Stay tuned. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Feature photo credit: Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, courtesy of Fox News.
Trump’s not on the ballot, but his handpicked Senate candidates are, and whether they win or lose today may determine whether the GOP nominates Trump again in 2024.
Regardless of how, exactly, they turn out, the 2022 election results won’t effect any substantive change in public policy. However, they will have a dramatic impact on the 2024 Republican presidential nomination fight and, for the reason, are worth watching.
Legislatively, nothing will change because Democrat Joe Biden will still be president and the Republicans will win control of at least the House of Representatives. This will result in legislative gridlock.
Consequently, there will be no major legislation enacted into law for at least the next two to three years. But whether the Republicans win control of the Senate matters big-time for judicial nominations.
More importantly (because there likely will be no Supreme Court vacancies in the next two years), the fate of Trump’s handpicked Senate candidates will affect Trump’s standing within the GOP, and whether the Republican Party adopts a more non-interventionist or isolationist foreign policy. Ditto Trump-backed gubernatorial candidates.
Trump, of course, intervened in the 2022 GOP primary races by endorsing specific candidates, who often won the party’s nomination because they had Trump’s backing.
If these candidates win on election day, it will strengthen Trump’s claim that the Republican Party should nominate him again for president in 2024. (Trump has basically said he will announce next Tuesday that he is running again for president.)
If, however, at least a couple of Trump’s handpicked candidates lose on election day, it rightly will be seen as a repudiation of Trump and a blow to his image as a political winner. The GOP then will be less likely to nominate him for president in 2024.
The Preferred Scenario. For this reason, I am hoping that the Republicans win control of the Senate, even as their most Trumpian Senate and gubernatorial candidates go down to defeat. Because if that happens, it is much less likely that the Republican Party will nominate Trump again for president.
Granted, this is unlikely to happen. If the Republicans win control of the Senate, then Trump’s toady candidates almost certainly will win their respective races. However, my preferred scenario is possible.
If, for instance, non-Trumpy conservative GOP Senate candidates in Colorado and Washington State win, then the GOP could suffer losses in Georgia, Arizona, and Ohio, and still win control of the Senate.
Here, then, specifically, are the races I am watching:
Georgia. The Republican Party Senate nominee, Herschel Walker, is frighteningly unfit for political office and should not have been nominated.
Walker won the nomination only because Trump endorsed him and because he is the greatest college football running back (a Heisman Trophy winner) ever produced by the state of Georgia. If Walker loses (unlikely), then it rightly will be seen as a repudiation of Trump.
Unfortunately, Walker is running in the red-purple state of Georgia against a likable but extreme leftist, Raphael Warnock—which means Walker probably will win.
Ohio. JD Vance emerged as the winner from a crowded field of GOP Senate hopefuls only after Trump endorsed him. He is a weak and uninspiring candidate, but an intellectual leader of the Trump wing of the Republican Party.
Vance also is infamous for loudly and proudly declaring that he doesn’t care if Russia conquers Ukraine. His defeat, therefore, would go a long way toward saving the GOP from its growing non-interventionist or isolationist wing.
Unfortunately, Vance is running in solidly red Ohio, which means he almost certainly will win Tuesday.
Arizona. Blake Masters is a weak and unattractive candidate who also bends the knee to Trump. Masters is in a very tight race with incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Kelly.
Most analysts agree: if the Republicans had nominated two-term Governor Doug Ducey, then this race long ago would have been called safely for the GOP. But Ducey declined to run, because he knew Trump would vociferously oppose him after he refused to participate in Trump’s fraudulent 2020 “stop the steal” election scheme.
Consequently, the Republicans turned to Masters, whose off-putting persona and servility to Trump has made him politically unappealing to many Arizona voters. This race is a tossup.
Pennsylvania. Trump endorsed the weaker of the two GOP Senate candidates, Dr. Mehmet Oz, a heart surgeon. Trump emphatically rejected the stronger, Reaganesque candidate, David McCormick, because, Trump said, McCormick wasn’t really MAGA.
For most of the race, Oz has been trailing ultra-leftist John Fetterman, the incumbent Lieutenant Governor. But Fetterman’s disastrous debate performance showcased his obvious cognitive impairment suffered as a result of a stroke May 13, 2022.
Oz has since taken a slight lead in the race and is now expected to win. And although Trump endorsed him, Oz is hardly a Trump toady.
Instead, Oz enjoys a well-deserved reputation as an independent-minded thinker who will put Pennsylvanians, not Trump, first.
Colorado. Trump angrily denounced Colorado Senate nominee Joe O’Dea after O’Dea mildly said he would prefer that the GOP nominate someone else other than Trump for president in 2024.
O’Dea is a superb candidate, but a long shot in this purple-blue state. However, if he pulls off an upset, it will be an indication that Trump’s hold on the GOP may be less firm than many think.
Washington State. Tiffany Smiley is another superb candidate and even more of a long shot than O’Dea, because Washington State is even more Democratic than Colorado.
Her story, though, is moving, inspiring, and compelling. Smiley is a 41-year-old nurse with three young boys. Her husband, Scotty, is an Army veteran who was blinded and temporarily paralyzed in 2005 by a suicide bomber in Iraq.
Smiley fought and advocated for her husband to ensure that he got the medical care he needed and had earned.
As a result, notes the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, Scotty “became the first blind active-duty officer in military history. After many years, he officially medically retired from the military in 2015.”
Trump has been a non-factor in this race, and Smiley is clearly not a Trump Republican. Instead, she is the type of Republican—positive, forward-looking, and solutions-oriented—that the party needs more of on the national scene and in elected office.
Her opponent, incumbent Democratic Senator Patty Murray, is an aging political fossil and arguably the dumbest and least influential member of Congress.
Arizona Governor’s Race. Republican nominee Kari Lake is a superb politician, but also a total Trump toady. That, however, is not what most concerns us.
More worrisome is Lake’s newfound political alliance with former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), her denunciation of “warmongers,” and apparent embrace of a non-interventionist or isolationist foreign policy that retreats from the world even as America’s enemies advance and move forward in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.
The danger is that if Lake wins the Arizona governor’s race, she’ll be well-positioned to run for vice president or president in 2028 or 2032. Her political skills are unique and compelling and Lake would be a formidable candidate. Better to stop her now before it’s too late.
The polls say Lake will win Tuesday, but the race is considered close. So an upset is not beyond question.
The bottom line: The 2022 election results matter because of what they portend for the 2024 presidential race, not because of what they will mean legislatively.
Truth be told, we are in for two to three years of legislative gridlock, as a Democratic president and a Republican House of Representatives check each other legislatively.
But if Trump’s handpicked Republican Senate candidates in Georgia, Ohio, and Arizona all lose, then the former defeated president will be a diminished political figure with a much-reduced political standing.
It then will be easier for a strong Republican presidential candidate—Florida Governor Ron DeSantis most likely—to knock off Trump and return the GOP to its winning ways.
A GOP Senate. Defeating Trump’s handpicked Senate candidates also would deal a crippling blow to the non-interventionist or isolationist wing of the Republican Party. And the GOP can still win the Senate if its non-Trumpy conservative Senate candidates in Colorado and Washington State pull off upset wins.
GOP control of the Senate matters because it will help to stop or at least slow down Biden’s disastrous judicial nominees.
For these reasons, let’s hope and pray that my preferred scenario—a Republican-controlled Senate without Herschel Walker, JD Vance, and Blake Masters—materializes on election day.
Feature photo credit: Trump’s handpicked candidates Herschel Walker (Georgia), JD Vance (Ohio), and Blake Masters (Arizona), courtesy of CBS News, Scripps Media, Inc., and AZ Central, respectively.
Just ask Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Antonin Scalia.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is widely seen as the Republican Party’s strongest presidential candidate in 2024.
As a highly successful governor who is cruising to reelection in America’s third-most populous state, DeSantis has executive experience and a proven record of accomplishment that none of his likely GOP rivals (speechifying senators, mostly) can match.
There is, however, one thing that might hold DeSantis back and keep him from ever reaching the Oval Office: his lack of wit and a sense of humor.
“It’s not apparent to me that DeSantis has a sense of humor,” Dexter Filkins told Andrew Sullivan on The Dishcast. “He’s not a very jokey guy, at least not in public.”
Filkins knows of what he speaks. In June, he published the most insightful reportorial piece to date on Florida’s governor.
Filkins told Sullivan that, based on his reporting, DeSantis would wipe the floor with most of the Democrats who would likely run against him in any general election matchup. However, he warns, DeSantis’ “entire persona is strident and angry,” and the governor does not excel at small talk.
This is a glaring red flag and a real problem for DeSantis. Wit and a sense of humor, after all, are integral to political success, especially for conservative Republicans. Why?
Because conservative Republicans are seen as more hard-edged and tough-minded. A sense of humor thus helps to soften their image and humanize them in the public mind.
Social conservatives in particular run the risk of being caricatured as harsh and judgmental, rigid and dogmatic. Wit and humor can compellingly show otherwise and put the lie to this caricature.
Ronald Reagan. It is no accident, after all, that the most successful conservative politician in American history, the man who won reelection as president in an historic 49-state landslide, was Ronald Reagan.
Reagan had a wonderful sense of humor that endeared him to the American people, even those who strongly disagreed with his conservative political philosophy and public policies.
Consider, for instance, how the 73-year-old Reagan handled concerns about his advanced age during a 1984 presidential debate with Walter Mondale:
I want you to know that, also, I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.
As Politico reports: “Many members of the audience, gathered in the cavernous Municipal Auditorium in Kansas City, Mo., applauded and laughed. So did Mondale.”
And, as a result, Reagan won more than the debate. He won, by an overwhelming margin, a second term in the White House.
Buckley and Scalia. After Reagan, the next two greatest conservative public figures in recent decades are author and columnist William F. Buckley, Jr. and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. And what distinguishes these two men aside from their towering intellects?
Their wit and sense of humor, which showcased a humanity and a warmth of personality that made them impossible to demonize.
As for Scalia, “he had a great sense of humor,” admits left-wing comedian StephenColbert:
People have actually broken down the transcripts for [Supreme Court] oral arguments and he told more jokes and got more laughs than any of the other justices.”
“In a big family,” quipped Scalia, the father of nine children, “the first child is kind of like the first pancake. If it’s not perfect, that’s okay. There are a lot more coming along.”
“We should start calling this law SCOTUScare,” he amusingly wrote in a dissent from a Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare.
That quip even drew a chuckle from Chief Justice John Roberts, who had written the Court’s decision that aroused Scalia’s ire.
Ron DeSantis. If DeSantis wants to succeed at the highest level of American politics, if he wants to win the presidency and move America in a socially conservative and economically dynamic, free-market direction, then he has no more urgent task than to emulate Reagan, Buckley, and Scalia.
He needs to understand that for a conservative Republican especially, having and demonstrating wit and a sense of humor are of paramount importance.
Wit and Humor. To be sure, wit and humor are not things that can be instantly conjured up and created. They take time, effort, and practice. They are a reflection of life and personality, playfulness and camaraderie, joy, triumph, anguish, and even pain.
“Humor: a difficult concept to learn,” Spock tells Admiral Kirk in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. “It is not logical.”
True, but wit and humor can be developed. Jokes can be incorporated into political stump speeches. Witty remarks can be crafted and used out on the campaign trail. A politician can consciously cultivate a more joyful public persona that wins converts even as it disarms critics.
And make no mistake: this matters, politically. Why? Because, as one website helpfully explains:
Humor is a great leveler. It is almost impossible to remain angry with someone who is making you laugh.
Donald Trump. Exactly, and yet, this is precisely what Donald Trump did not do. Trump did not disarm his critics. He did not make people laugh in recognition of his humanity.
To the contrary: Trump angered and repelled too many voters by his insistence on being “tough” (read: nasty and unpresidential) and refusing to show “weakness” (read: humanity). Consequently, a record number of voters turned out to vote in 2020 precisely so they could vote against Trump.
Ditto the 2018 election cycle, which flipped the House of Representatives from Republican to Democratic control. A critical mass of voters turned out to vote Democrat for Congress because Trump so angered and repelled them.
DeSantis needs to avoid Trump’s mistake or politically fatal character flaw. He needs to show voters that he cares; that he has a heart; that he’s human; and that he is worthy of leading this great nation. And the best way, the most effective way, to achieve this is through wit and humor.
Is there a political market for this? Absolutely.
Consider, for instance, the astounding success of the The Babylon Bee, a conservative Christian satirical website, as well as the sky-high ratings of Fox News’ Greg Gutfield, whose late-night show is tops in the nation.
Gutfield! is “beating CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live—with FNC outpacing the broadcast networks even through their fall premieres,” Forbes reports.
As for The Babylon Bee, it is the most popular satirical site on the Internet, with more than 20 million page views per month, reports Ben Shapiro. “Fake news you can trust,” is the site’s witty tagline.
Conclusion. Politics and culture increasingly intersect. The political marketplace is waiting for a conservative Republican politician who can do politically what The Babylon Bee is doing journalistically and Greg Gutfield is doing for late-night television or streaming.
DeSantis has crucial executive experience and a highly successful track record as governor. These make him a compelling Republican presidential candidate.
But he is wants to be a winner and not just a contender, DeSantis will have to demonstrate that he can make people smile and laugh, even as he himself smiles and laughs. He will have to showcase a sense of humor that, thus far, has been conspicuously absent in his public appearances.
Can he do it? Yes, but only if he works at it. Only if he consciously makes liberal use of humor to achieve conservative political ends.
Only if recognizes that a politician elevates himself through self-deprecation, not self-promotion; and that while successful public figures take ideas seriously, they do not take themselves too seriously. Just ask Ronald Reagan, William F. Buckley, Jr., and Antonin Scalia.
Feature photo credit: (L-R): Author and columnist William F. Buckley, Jr., President Ronald Reagan, and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, courtesy of National Review, FramedArt.com, and YouTube, respectively.
