Ron Desantis might be peaking too early

[Saint Milei]

I can definitely see this as a possibility. With the moderate suburban wing, the media, and the neocons painting Desantis as the alternative to Desantis, so much attention will be on him. High possibility of fading away early. 

[Saint Milei]

I think the difference between Scott Walker and Ron DeSantis is that DeSantis actually did all this trolly stuff that the base loves.

DeSantis can get up on stage and talk about "banning the woke agenda from our schools" and "sending illegal immigrants to blue states" or "stopping Dr. Fauci from telling us how to live our lives" and people will cheer and applaud.

Meanwhile Walker was known for making life miserable for unions and rejecting Obamacare funds, neither of which are issues that resonate with the base.  They resonate with the billionaire donor class and writers for The Federalist which is how he got so much hype.  And then nobody cared once he actually got on stage.

This is why I think that a lot of the hype around DeSantis as some god-tier general election candidate is very odd. Most of his major 'accomplishments' are just culture war nonsense that only appeals to the GOP base. Normal people and swing voters don't care about that stuff. I'm not convinced why DeSantis whining about Disney being too woke is any less embarrassing than most of the stuff Trump does.

DeSantis/Kemp/Abbott all did very well despite being pretty conservative. It was clear that wasn’t the issue in this election but rather the Trump factor and the terrible candidates we nominated were

This argument doesn't hold since trumpy candidates also performed well and establishment candidates performed poorly and lost. Blaming trump because you want to move on from trump doesn't make your argument correct

[Saint Milei]

Obviously Desantis isn't someone like Walker, but since 08, a large number of front-runners have imploded. Whether it was Paul, Bush, Cruz, Rubio, Giulani, etc. The only exception is Romney and that had more to do with Perry's poor performance.

[Saint Milei]

I think the difference between Scott Walker and Ron DeSantis is that DeSantis actually did all this trolly stuff that the base loves.

DeSantis can get up on stage and talk about "banning the woke agenda from our schools" and "sending illegal immigrants to blue states" or "stopping Dr. Fauci from telling us how to live our lives" and people will cheer and applaud.

Meanwhile Walker was known for making life miserable for unions and rejecting Obamacare funds, neither of which are issues that resonate with the base.  They resonate with the billionaire donor class and writers for The Federalist which is how he got so much hype.  And then nobody cared once he actually got on stage.

This is why I think that a lot of the hype around DeSantis as some god-tier general election candidate is very odd. Most of his major 'accomplishments' are just culture war nonsense that only appeals to the GOP base. Normal people and swing voters don't care about that stuff. I'm not convinced why DeSantis whining about Disney being too woke is any less embarrassing than most of the stuff Trump does.

DeSantis/Kemp/Abbott all did very well despite being pretty conservative. It was clear that wasn’t the issue in this election but rather the Trump factor and the terrible candidates we nominated were

This argument doesn't hold since trumpy candidates also performed well and establishment candidates performed poorly and lost. Blaming trump because you want to move on from trump doesn't make your argument correct

Uh the most prominent Republican candidates who were Trumpy this cycle were : Doug Mastriano , Kari Lake , Blake Masters , Dr Oz , Joe Kent , Hershel Walker and guess what the 5 of them lost and the 6th will likely lose as well . While you could cite JD Vance the fact is he underperformed 2020 GOP numbers in a year when the republicans won the popular vote nationally so he was basically saved by the state’s partisan lean .


It’s clear DeSantis is the way the party should go , just like in 1979 it was clear the party needed to choose Reagan and while you may not like Reagan he was undeniably was the most successful conservative president in the modern era and DeSantis has that potential as well . We already tried it with Trump and guess what he failed .

In what world were Oz and Walker "Trumpy"? You keep grouping trump-endorsed candidates like the GOP establishment didn't back a majority of the candidates that lost this cycle. Trump endorsements =/= Trumpy candidates. Furthermore, what's also ignored is the fact that incumbents overwhelmingly won in 2022 across the aisle, regardless of what wing of any party they represented. That is conveniently ignored by the moderate wing of the GOP that wants to discard Trump. "Underperformed 2020". It's midterms. Candidates will underperform every year that isn't a presidential year. I never once expected a red wave. You guys did because the media told you. Maybe instead of blaming every "trumpy" candidate we should reassess everything so we don't make a foolish error. This same line of criticism of trump is the same reasoning people used in 2012 to conclude immigration was the reason Romney lost. It clearly wasn't.

As for Desantis, look man, I get it: You like Reagan. He's your guy. Desantis is NOT Reagan. Reagan in 76 and 80 wasn't even your kind of Republican. The dude backed returning to the gold standard which you always criticize me and Ron Paul for (I don't even support returning to the gold standard). The current conditions don't reflect that. Desantis is apart of the America First movement. Comparing him to Reagan or saying we need to go in that direction makes zero sense because you never liked Trump. It makes no sense. Replacing Trump with Trump jr does nothing for the party and it's more likely you and the others who want to replace him want to revert back to the pre-16 Trump GOP. You can say we tried with Trump, but we have tried your model for the GOP and we lost in 08 and 16. We also got Bush in 88, Bush in 00, and Bush in 04, and as a result, created the conditions for Trump and did nothing to improve our standing with an increasingly more diverse country both ethnically and philosophically. Desantis has no answer to this on a national level. Romney had no answer to this on a national level and if we keep painting this as the "Trump bad...Desantis/Youngkin good", you'll just end up being disliked by the rest of the GOP.

I'd also like to point out that Desantis is closer to Lake and Masters ideologically than he is the people you traditionally like. Who else were we supposed to nominate? A John Mccain clone in Arizona that pisses every conservative off? Yeah, totally the Reagan/Desantis model.


Lastly, I don't even know why this has to be stated but Reagan might have won in 80 and 84 and those were successful years for the GOP, but Trump had a larger impact on the GOP than Reagan and it's glaringly obvious at this point.

[Saint Milei]

Obviously Desantis isn't someone like Walker, but since 08, a large number of front-runners have imploded. Whether it was Paul, Bush, Cruz, Rubio, Giulani, etc. The only exception is Romney and that had more to do with Perry's poor performance.

You really need to examine these contests in terms of lanes or paths. A lot of these candidates we are discussing that collapsed were either jostling for their lane with someone else who had other advantages or their lane was too narrow to be nominated at all to begin with.

I would argue that Mike Huckabee, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz were all rather unlikely to be the GOP nominees in their cycles because of baked in demographic limits to their paths, and the mood/desired direction of the party after Bush. The GOP wanted to move on from Bush, but they wanted someone more fiscally (and a touch less socially) conservative, more hawkish on the border and more outside of Washington. By 2016, with war weariness reaching into the depths of the GOP as well, a more restrained foreign policy was craved.

Romney's appeal in 2008 was far too narrow to win the nomination and he managed to piss off everyone and their supporters over the course of the contest, ensuring everyone would rather someone else be the nominee and not him.

In some ways it would have been nice if Perry had not collapsed in 2011, because Romney's strategy was to go after him for his comments on social security, Texas secession and of course, Immigration. I can see Romney just obliterating Perry in Florida the same way he nuked Newt there. Romney dominated the establishment by virtue of being "his turn", he had the money behind him and he had the immigration issue as his ace against any base candidate, with the exception of Rick Santorum who surged way too late and once again had far too narrow of a base though he did force Romney to make his tax cut plan more aggressive to win the Michigan primary.

Scott Walker and Chris Christie were never going to be the Tea Party activist candidate because Ted Cruz had a natural advantage over that space and in terms of the opposition to that lane they all preferred to compete with each other and with Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Marco Rubio as well for the remaining sliver of the party that was up for a return to the Bush/McCain years in terms of foreign policy and immigration. That left a massive space for Trump to claw to a plurality lead and no one really competed with him for that space, only attacked him for the positions he took, essentially hardening his base around him.

I don't think context matters because these candidates for the most part were all different. That just tells me peaking early gives you a lot of issues and it's better to gradually improve.

[Saint Milei]

I think the difference between Scott Walker and Ron DeSantis is that DeSantis actually did all this trolly stuff that the base loves.

DeSantis can get up on stage and talk about "banning the woke agenda from our schools" and "sending illegal immigrants to blue states" or "stopping Dr. Fauci from telling us how to live our lives" and people will cheer and applaud.

Meanwhile Walker was known for making life miserable for unions and rejecting Obamacare funds, neither of which are issues that resonate with the base.  They resonate with the billionaire donor class and writers for The Federalist which is how he got so much hype.  And then nobody cared once he actually got on stage.

This is why I think that a lot of the hype around DeSantis as some god-tier general election candidate is very odd. Most of his major 'accomplishments' are just culture war nonsense that only appeals to the GOP base. Normal people and swing voters don't care about that stuff. I'm not convinced why DeSantis whining about Disney being too woke is any less embarrassing than most of the stuff Trump does.

DeSantis/Kemp/Abbott all did very well despite being pretty conservative. It was clear that wasn’t the issue in this election but rather the Trump factor and the terrible candidates we nominated were

This argument doesn't hold since trumpy candidates also performed well and establishment candidates performed poorly and lost. Blaming trump because you want to move on from trump doesn't make your argument correct

Uh the most prominent Republican candidates who were Trumpy this cycle were : Doug Mastriano , Kari Lake , Blake Masters , Dr Oz , Joe Kent , Hershel Walker and guess what the 5 of them lost and the 6th will likely lose as well . While you could cite JD Vance the fact is he underperformed 2020 GOP numbers in a year when the republicans won the popular vote nationally so he was basically saved by the state’s partisan lean .


It’s clear DeSantis is the way the party should go , just like in 1979 it was clear the party needed to choose Reagan and while you may not like Reagan he was undeniably was the most successful conservative president in the modern era and DeSantis has that potential as well . We already tried it with Trump and guess what he failed .

In what world were Oz and Walker "Trumpy"? You keep grouping trump-endorsed candidates like the GOP establishment didn't back a majority of the candidates that lost this cycle. Trump endorsements =/= Trumpy candidates. Furthermore, what's also ignored is the fact that incumbents overwhelmingly won in 2022 across the aisle, regardless of what wing of any party they represented. That is conveniently ignored by the moderate wing of the GOP that wants to discard Trump. "Underperformed 2020". It's midterms. Candidates will underperform every year that isn't a presidential year. I never once expected a red wave. You guys did because the media told you. Maybe instead of blaming every "trumpy" candidate we should reassess everything so we don't make a foolish error. This same line of criticism of trump is the same reasoning people used in 2012 to conclude immigration was the reason Romney lost. It clearly wasn't.

As for Desantis, look man, I get it: You like Reagan. He's your guy. Desantis is NOT Reagan. Reagan in 76 and 80 wasn't even your kind of Republican. The dude backed returning to the gold standard which you always criticize me and Ron Paul for (I don't even support returning to the gold standard). The current conditions don't reflect that. Desantis is apart of the America First movement. Comparing him to Reagan or saying we need to go in that direction makes zero sense because you never liked Trump. It makes no sense. Replacing Trump with Trump jr does nothing for the party and it's more likely you and the others who want to replace him want to revert back to the pre-16 Trump GOP. You can say we tried with Trump, but we have tried your model for the GOP and we lost in 08 and 16. We also got Bush in 88, Bush in 00, and Bush in 04, and as a result, created the conditions for Trump and did nothing to improve our standing with an increasingly more diverse country both ethnically and philosophically. Desantis has no answer to this on a national level. Romney had no answer to this on a national level and if we keep painting this as the "Trump bad...Desantis/Youngkin good", you'll just end up being disliked by the rest of the GOP.

I'd also like to point out that Desantis is closer to Lake and Masters ideologically than he is the people you traditionally like. Who else were we supposed to nominate? A John Mccain clone in Arizona that pisses every conservative off? Yeah, totally the Reagan/Desantis model.


Lastly, I don't even know why this has to be stated but Reagan might have won in 80 and 84 and those were successful years for the GOP, but Trump had a larger impact on the GOP than Reagan and it's glaringly obvious at this point.

You must have a very pessimistic view of the GOP’s chances in 2024 if you seem to dislike all of the possible successors to Trump.

Oh, I do.

[Saint Milei]

I think the difference between Scott Walker and Ron DeSantis is that DeSantis actually did all this trolly stuff that the base loves.

DeSantis can get up on stage and talk about "banning the woke agenda from our schools" and "sending illegal immigrants to blue states" or "stopping Dr. Fauci from telling us how to live our lives" and people will cheer and applaud.

Meanwhile Walker was known for making life miserable for unions and rejecting Obamacare funds, neither of which are issues that resonate with the base.  They resonate with the billionaire donor class and writers for The Federalist which is how he got so much hype.  And then nobody cared once he actually got on stage.

This is why I think that a lot of the hype around DeSantis as some god-tier general election candidate is very odd. Most of his major 'accomplishments' are just culture war nonsense that only appeals to the GOP base. Normal people and swing voters don't care about that stuff. I'm not convinced why DeSantis whining about Disney being too woke is any less embarrassing than most of the stuff Trump does.

DeSantis/Kemp/Abbott all did very well despite being pretty conservative. It was clear that wasn’t the issue in this election but rather the Trump factor and the terrible candidates we nominated were

This argument doesn't hold since trumpy candidates also performed well and establishment candidates performed poorly and lost. Blaming trump because you want to move on from trump doesn't make your argument correct

Uh the most prominent Republican candidates who were Trumpy this cycle were : Doug Mastriano , Kari Lake , Blake Masters , Dr Oz , Joe Kent , Hershel Walker and guess what the 5 of them lost and the 6th will likely lose as well . While you could cite JD Vance the fact is he underperformed 2020 GOP numbers in a year when the republicans won the popular vote nationally so he was basically saved by the state’s partisan lean .


It’s clear DeSantis is the way the party should go , just like in 1979 it was clear the party needed to choose Reagan and while you may not like Reagan he was undeniably was the most successful conservative president in the modern era and DeSantis has that potential as well . We already tried it with Trump and guess what he failed .

In what world were Oz and Walker "Trumpy"? You keep grouping trump-endorsed candidates like the GOP establishment didn't back a majority of the candidates that lost this cycle. Trump endorsements =/= Trumpy candidates. Furthermore, what's also ignored is the fact that incumbents overwhelmingly won in 2022 across the aisle, regardless of what wing of any party they represented. That is conveniently ignored by the moderate wing of the GOP that wants to discard Trump. "Underperformed 2020". It's midterms. Candidates will underperform every year that isn't a presidential year. I never once expected a red wave. You guys did because the media told you. Maybe instead of blaming every "trumpy" candidate we should reassess everything so we don't make a foolish error. This same line of criticism of trump is the same reasoning people used in 2012 to conclude immigration was the reason Romney lost. It clearly wasn't.

As for Desantis, look man, I get it: You like Reagan. He's your guy. Desantis is NOT Reagan. Reagan in 76 and 80 wasn't even your kind of Republican. The dude backed returning to the gold standard which you always criticize me and Ron Paul for (I don't even support returning to the gold standard). The current conditions don't reflect that. Desantis is apart of the America First movement. Comparing him to Reagan or saying we need to go in that direction makes zero sense because you never liked Trump. It makes no sense. Replacing Trump with Trump jr does nothing for the party and it's more likely you and the others who want to replace him want to revert back to the pre-16 Trump GOP. You can say we tried with Trump, but we have tried your model for the GOP and we lost in 08 and 16. We also got Bush in 88, Bush in 00, and Bush in 04, and as a result, created the conditions for Trump and did nothing to improve our standing with an increasingly more diverse country both ethnically and philosophically. Desantis has no answer to this on a national level. Romney had no answer to this on a national level and if we keep painting this as the "Trump bad...Desantis/Youngkin good", you'll just end up being disliked by the rest of the GOP.

I'd also like to point out that Desantis is closer to Lake and Masters ideologically than he is the people you traditionally like. Who else were we supposed to nominate? A John Mccain clone in Arizona that pisses every conservative off? Yeah, totally the Reagan/Desantis model.


Lastly, I don't even know why this has to be stated but Reagan might have won in 80 and 84 and those were successful years for the GOP, but Trump had a larger impact on the GOP than Reagan and it's glaringly obvious at this point.

1. They were Trumpy in the fact that they were handpicked by Trump to run in their primaries and while the GOP establishment deserves blame for not picking someone to run against Walker in the primary , the fact is McCormick was the Establishment Republican pick in PA and the Trump endorsed candidate beat him so yes he is completely Trump’s fault .

2. Yes I know DeSantis is not Reagan , as we are over 40 years out from 1980 so of course he’d be different. Also yes I know that Reagan had some ideas I wouldn’t agree with but he also clearly didn’t emphasize that idea nearly as much as he did on stuff like : Passing Kemp-Roth, Reducing the amount of regulations in the economy, reducing the power of the federal government(which he did fail on ) and implementing a more aggressive foreign policy .

3. I don’t want to go back to Pre Trump days either , I don’t know why you think that . The reason why I like DeSantis is because he is a competent executive who fights for conservative ideas and has a record of doing so in a major state just like Reagan did by 76/80. I btw not have supported Reagan in the 68 primaries cause he didn’t have that record then and I care about record which is why my top 2 candidates in 16 were Kasich and Walker despite one of them running a far more conservative campaign then the other .

I do not think Bush Jr was good either because he was massively incompetent.

4. This is not true  given that Reagan was the icon for republicanism and his policies were a model for the party for nearly 30 years after he left office .

That makes zero sense. Trump picking politicians doesn't make them trumpy. Neither took extreme positions like that ayt all. They were moderate Republicans running with a trump endorsement. That's an indictment on that wing of the party.

Desantis has no serious success besides the culture war issues.



Most states didn't even adopt the Reagan approach. There wasn't a successor after him. The gop was already failing by 1982. The right had changed by 96

[Saint Milei]

I think the difference between Scott Walker and Ron DeSantis is that DeSantis actually did all this trolly stuff that the base loves.

DeSantis can get up on stage and talk about "banning the woke agenda from our schools" and "sending illegal immigrants to blue states" or "stopping Dr. Fauci from telling us how to live our lives" and people will cheer and applaud.

Meanwhile Walker was known for making life miserable for unions and rejecting Obamacare funds, neither of which are issues that resonate with the base.  They resonate with the billionaire donor class and writers for The Federalist which is how he got so much hype.  And then nobody cared once he actually got on stage.

This is why I think that a lot of the hype around DeSantis as some god-tier general election candidate is very odd. Most of his major 'accomplishments' are just culture war nonsense that only appeals to the GOP base. Normal people and swing voters don't care about that stuff. I'm not convinced why DeSantis whining about Disney being too woke is any less embarrassing than most of the stuff Trump does.

DeSantis/Kemp/Abbott all did very well despite being pretty conservative. It was clear that wasn’t the issue in this election but rather the Trump factor and the terrible candidates we nominated were

This argument doesn't hold since trumpy candidates also performed well and establishment candidates performed poorly and lost. Blaming trump because you want to move on from trump doesn't make your argument correct

Uh the most prominent Republican candidates who were Trumpy this cycle were : Doug Mastriano , Kari Lake , Blake Masters , Dr Oz , Joe Kent , Hershel Walker and guess what the 5 of them lost and the 6th will likely lose as well . While you could cite JD Vance the fact is he underperformed 2020 GOP numbers in a year when the republicans won the popular vote nationally so he was basically saved by the state’s partisan lean .


It’s clear DeSantis is the way the party should go , just like in 1979 it was clear the party needed to choose Reagan and while you may not like Reagan he was undeniably was the most successful conservative president in the modern era and DeSantis has that potential as well . We already tried it with Trump and guess what he failed .

In what world were Oz and Walker "Trumpy"? You keep grouping trump-endorsed candidates like the GOP establishment didn't back a majority of the candidates that lost this cycle. Trump endorsements =/= Trumpy candidates. Furthermore, what's also ignored is the fact that incumbents overwhelmingly won in 2022 across the aisle, regardless of what wing of any party they represented. That is conveniently ignored by the moderate wing of the GOP that wants to discard Trump. "Underperformed 2020". It's midterms. Candidates will underperform every year that isn't a presidential year. I never once expected a red wave. You guys did because the media told you. Maybe instead of blaming every "trumpy" candidate we should reassess everything so we don't make a foolish error. This same line of criticism of trump is the same reasoning people used in 2012 to conclude immigration was the reason Romney lost. It clearly wasn't.

As for Desantis, look man, I get it: You like Reagan. He's your guy. Desantis is NOT Reagan. Reagan in 76 and 80 wasn't even your kind of Republican. The dude backed returning to the gold standard which you always criticize me and Ron Paul for (I don't even support returning to the gold standard). The current conditions don't reflect that. Desantis is apart of the America First movement. Comparing him to Reagan or saying we need to go in that direction makes zero sense because you never liked Trump. It makes no sense. Replacing Trump with Trump jr does nothing for the party and it's more likely you and the others who want to replace him want to revert back to the pre-16 Trump GOP. You can say we tried with Trump, but we have tried your model for the GOP and we lost in 08 and 16. We also got Bush in 88, Bush in 00, and Bush in 04, and as a result, created the conditions for Trump and did nothing to improve our standing with an increasingly more diverse country both ethnically and philosophically. Desantis has no answer to this on a national level. Romney had no answer to this on a national level and if we keep painting this as the "Trump bad...Desantis/Youngkin good", you'll just end up being disliked by the rest of the GOP.

I'd also like to point out that Desantis is closer to Lake and Masters ideologically than he is the people you traditionally like. Who else were we supposed to nominate? A John Mccain clone in Arizona that pisses every conservative off? Yeah, totally the Reagan/Desantis model.


Lastly, I don't even know why this has to be stated but Reagan might have won in 80 and 84 and those were successful years for the GOP, but Trump had a larger impact on the GOP than Reagan and it's glaringly obvious at this point.

1. They were Trumpy in the fact that they were handpicked by Trump to run in their primaries and while the GOP establishment deserves blame for not picking someone to run against Walker in the primary , the fact is McCormick was the Establishment Republican pick in PA and the Trump endorsed candidate beat him so yes he is completely Trump’s fault .

2. Yes I know DeSantis is not Reagan , as we are over 40 years out from 1980 so of course he’d be different. Also yes I know that Reagan had some ideas I wouldn’t agree with but he also clearly didn’t emphasize that idea nearly as much as he did on stuff like : Passing Kemp-Roth, Reducing the amount of regulations in the economy, reducing the power of the federal government(which he did fail on ) and implementing a more aggressive foreign policy .

3. I don’t want to go back to Pre Trump days either , I don’t know why you think that . The reason why I like DeSantis is because he is a competent executive who fights for conservative ideas and has a record of doing so in a major state just like Reagan did by 76/80. I btw not have supported Reagan in the 68 primaries cause he didn’t have that record then and I care about record which is why my top 2 candidates in 16 were Kasich and Walker despite one of them running a far more conservative campaign then the other .

I do not think Bush Jr was good either because he was massively incompetent.

4. This is not true  given that Reagan was the icon for republicanism and his policies were a model for the party for nearly 30 years after he left office .

That makes zero sense. Trump picking politicians doesn't make them trumpy. Neither took extreme positions like that ayt all. They were moderate Republicans running with a trump endorsement. That's an indictment on that wing of the party.

Desantis has no serious success besides the culture war issues.



Most states didn't even adopt the Reagan approach. There wasn't a successor after him. The gop was already failing by 1982. The right had changed by 96

1. Well I have a bigger problem with Trump than Trumpism and that has always been the case. I stated multiple times in 2020 if Trump didnt behave as badly as he did , I would have voted for him.

2. DeSantis has done a good deal of stuff on economic issues, education etc.

3. This is false, the core of what Reagan actually did was replace the prior New Deal economic consensus with a new neoliberal one by slashing taxes, reducing regulations , expanding free trade and on foreign policy to put the US on a far more aggressive footing and pretty much every Republican until Trump pretty much agreed with the Reagan neoliberal consensus.

1. If that was the case, you wouldn't be addressing his candidates and instead be addressing him mostly. It wasn't his fault those candidates flopped.
2. He hasn't done much at all economically. Desantis' success is culture war issues. This isn't a knock on him, but to pretend he's some great fiscal con governor that can move the country is just speculation at this point.