Who is more ultra, Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis? No one would have said it, but now it turns out that the most extremist former US president of recent times chooses to play the trick of an alleged moderation –very relative, if anything– to attack what is emerging as his main rival in the primaries for the presidential elections of 2024: the undoubtedly radical ultra-conservative governor of Florida.
“Ron DeSantis loves to stick his fingers where he shouldn't, and we're not just talking about pudding,” says a voice from a Trump campaign ad as a man in a suit sticks his big hand into a tub of chocolate. "DeSantis - the narrator specifies - has put his dirty fingers in the rights of the elderly to cut Social Security and Medicare, and even to increase the retirement age."
The Republican leader's propaganda ad refers to DeSantis's old anti-social proposals from which Trump himself was never too far away..., until a few months ago he decided that neither he nor his party were in good interest, obviously because they would make them lose votes.
But there are many other aspects in which DeSantis's ultra-conservative maximalism can alienate him from independent voters, but in principle inclined to vote Republican, as many donors and party strategists already fear.
In recent weeks, the governor of the Sunshine State has signed a law that prohibits abortion after 6 weeks of pregnancy –compared to the term of 15 weeks that was in force until now– and has extended the veto to all school grades. teaching about sexual orientation and gender identity, so that the prohibition that he established last year for students between the ages of 5 and 9, in the so-called Don't Say Gay law, now extends to 18-year-olds.
Faced with the apparent success among Republicans of this latest measure against what the right calls the woke ideology (a term that associates “awakening” and progressivism), the majority rejection of US society to the prohibitions and restrictions on abortion can make resent DeSantis' aspirations to unseat Trump as a candidate in the 2024 election.
Republican superdonor Ken Langone, who has expressed his preference for the Florida politician and his rejection of Trump's re-election, confessed to The Washington Post on Wednesday his concern about DeSantis's more and more extremist drift. “It wouldn't hurt to be a little more conciliatory,” he said. And he added that he is "very scared" by the dominance of the former president in the polls with a view to the year 2024.
But there is another war that at this moment may be wearing DeSantis down as much or more than the ones he is waging on the strict battlefield of politics, and that is the one he is having with the Disney company. The genesis is precisely in the law Do not say gay. The executives of the entertainment giant criticized her, and he replied: "If Disney wants to fight, he chose the wrong guy." And he set out to end the special statute that since 1967 allowed the "dream factory" to act as a local government in the vast area where Walt Disney World was installed more than half a century ago.
The governor replaced the company's corporate board with one appointed by the state institutions under his control. But Disney, far from sitting idle, earlier approved certain "development" measures that would limit the power of the new board for decades to come. So, last Monday DeSantis announced a fierce counterattack based on possible tax increases, without ruling out the creation of another park to compete with Mickey Mouse and even the construction of a prison near the Magic Kingdom.
Not only Donald Trump, but also a few other potential contenders in next year's election, quickly took on DeSantis for his attack on the cartoon and movie giant. The former president once again despised his partner with a nickname. But from the name of "sanctimonious" or meapilas that he had been dedicating months ago, he went to a simple saint, also in Latin, to say, on Tuesday on his network, Truth Social: "DeSanctus is being absolutely destroyed by Disney."
Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, another Republican considering a 2024 run, said: “Given his actions towards Disney, I don't think Ron DeSantis is a conservative. Where do we go if when you express your disagreement in this country the government punishes? I thought that's what the left did, and now we see a Republican do it,” he added.
And also the governor of New Hampshire and equally possible candidate, Chris Sununu, criticized his partner's obsession with Disney: "This has become a problem for our party," he opined.
The fratricidal war is served in the Republican campaign for the next presidential elections. The Democrats enjoy themselves as they warm up for the band.
