Guess The Upside Of Dumpster Fire DeSantis Campaign Is All The Throat-Slitting Opportunities
Campaign manager Generra Peck next to fall.
Ron DeSantis’s failing presidential campaign keeps sputtering along to a richly deserved, ignominious end. Politico reports that DeSantis has replaced his campaign manager Generra Peck with James Uthmeier, who’s served as chief of staff in that pocket dictatorship DeSantis calls a governor’s office. Uthmeir confirmed in a text message that the personnel change was happening “ASAP.” He offered no other acronyms.
Peck is now the campaign’s “chief strategist,” which means she’s probably responsible for coming up with at least one strategy for the campaign. God help her, as it’s not even clear DeSantis himself knows the rationale for his candidacy.
A couple weeks ago, the DeSantis campaign fired a third of its staff, a perfectly normal move for an operation whose goal is humiliating failure. DeSantis doesn’t just talk about “slitting throats,” he pulls out his own switch blade. The campaign and DeSantis’s own advisers had insisted that Peck’s job was secure, but I don’t advise trusting people who consider throat-slitting an actual policy platform. You should almost expect a quick stab in the back. This is a knife-forward campaign.
Andrew Romeo, DeSantis’s campaign spokesperson (for now) said, “Uthmeier has been one of Governor DeSantis’ top advisors for years and he is needed where it matters most: working hand in hand with Generra Peck and the rest of the team to put the governor in the best possible position to win this primary and defeat Joe Biden.”
But you don’t get in the ring with Smokin’ Joe until you can beat Donald Trump, so you might as well say his name. He’s not Voldemort. DeSantis has started striking back at Trump, but with all the force of a punch-drunk opponent one hit away from kissing the mat.
During a campaign event last Friday, DeSantis denounced Trump’s personal attacks against him: “These insults are so phony,” he said. “These insults are juvenile. That is not the way a great nation should be conducting itself, that is not the way the president of the United States should be conducting himself.”
DeSantis’s sudden Jeb Bush turn is very 2015, back when Trump insulting his opponents was novel enough that Hillary Clinton spoofed it on “Saturday Night Live.” It would also carry more weight if DeSantis hadn’t fawned all over Trump when he first ran for governor. He’s spent the past four years cosplaying as Trump, which includes lobbing personal insults at anyone who disagrees with him. Complaining now just makes him look like a big wimp.
After their recent throat-slitting spree, DeSantis and his team pledged to “scale back,” while not crimping on the private jet travel, and “build an insurgent operation.” (This is like a big-budget movie with poor word of mouth trying to rebrand itself as an indie film.) None of this has worked, which is not surprising since the major problem is the candidate himself, who’s a big dull dud.
Politico writes that DeSantis is “(struggling) to catch up with Trump,” but in reality, the thrice-indicted Trump has put several Road Runners worth of distance between himself and DeSantis. Recent polling shows DeSantis losing ground since May. He’s under 20 percent in most national polls and is no longer a competitive second place candidate. Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Chris Christie are all more or less tied with him in New Hampshire. This will embolden those candidates (and their donors) to stay in the race and hammer a weakening DeSantis, who probably hoped to see candidates dropping out and endorsing him by this point. However, if the Republican candidates are standing around waiting for Trump to finally fall, they can now assume that he’ll just crush DeSantis on his way down.
[Politico]
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Bonfire of the Inanities...
I don't give a fuck about his campaign. He fired an elected Florida prosecutor today for the vague reason of not putting enough people in prison or something. He is overriding Democracy. After Ohio I had hopes that Democracy still lived and breathed in America, but I wake up to find DeSantis on the cover of the NYT's for the one millionth time in a row. Fascism's smiling face.