Posts Tagged ‘ron desantis’

Donald Trump is either Getting Bad Advice or Ignoring Good Advice in DeSantis Attacks

Posted: February 19, 2023 by datechguy in election 2024, elections, elections, politics, primaries
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The first primaries and caucus’ for the 2024 presidential election are just under a year away but Donald Trump is wasting no time going after who would be his strongest potential rival for the GOP nomination, the very popular and successful governor of Florida Ron DeSantis.

For the last couple of week’s both Donald Trump himself and Team Trump have thrown mud everything from claiming DeSantis was a big fan of lockdowns (he wasn’t) to claiming George Soros endorsed him (he didn’t). None of this is a surprise, Donald Trump has always fought like a Democrat against potential rivals/ You might recall he used similar tactics against Ted Cruz in the primaries and frankly went so far that I had to think long and hard before endorsing him before the GOP primary. You might also recall that there was a big fuss concerning Ted Cruz’s speech at the convention because of these tactics.

In the end Cruz ended up supporting him and when Trump, to a lot of people’s surprise and delight, turned into not only the most conservative but the most successful president of the 21st century we all cheered. It was however his failure to address the issue of voter fraud (something I warned him about five days after the 2016 election) that cost him him re-election in 2020.

Now comes another GOP primary and the Democrats who were happy to promote him in 2016 are again convinced that Trump is their best shot in 2024 to keep power after putting the country through two of the hardest years it’s faced when not fighting a world war (I don’t count Ukraine as US troops are not actively fighting on the ground). Furthermore as Demonstrated by their love affair with Mitt Romney they will never fail to promote the message of any member of the GOP who targets his own party.

So Trump has turned to attacking DeSantis and the Trump hating press/left have been happy to repeat these attacks (What? You thought Meta/Facebook/Instagram let Trump back in because they were scared of the GOP congress? Please!) and will continue to give him such a free reign as long as DeSantis who they fear, is in the crosshairs. Th consistant with DaTechGuy’s 1st Law of Media Outrag with states:

The level of Outrage or interest of the media and their allies on the left concerning any insult or prevarication concerning a person or thing will routinely be equal to the inverse of the degree of the political distance between said media / leftists and and the target of said insult or prevarication at the time it is made.

The question is however: “Does this help or hinder Donald Trump to get the GOP nomination?” In My Opinion it does not for several reasons:

  • DeSantis has been visibly fighting the media/left since the day he was elected
  • He has been public enemy #1 for the left, the woke and the groomers in the press
  • He has managed very public victories such as the one over Disney advancing conservative cause.
  • People keep pouring into his state fleeing from the blue states
  • DeSantis who had won his first election by a squeaker won re-election by a landslide in a year when the rest of the GOP fizzled

and last but not least:

  • Not only are these charges demonstrably false GOP partisans, even those who prefer Trump KNOW they are false

Even worse for Trump DeSantis has taken the exact right tactic to counter said attacks.

  • Pointing to his work
  • Hitting Joe Biden
  • Declining to attack other republicans

Or to put it simply he’s not giving Trump’s attacks the time of day.

Now Donald Trump, despite his vigor is an old man and one thing that’s almost axiomatic is you aren’t going to get a man over 70 to change his nature. If in his gut he thinks this is the way to go it will take a lot of convincing to get him to change course.

All this adds up to a tactic that is not going anywhere nor is likely to go anywhere and even worse makes Trump vulnerable to a simple counter-attack that DeSantas hasn’t used yet, but that’s another post.

Williams vs Musial in Left as Trump vs DeSantis as the Nominee

Posted: February 7, 2023 by datechguy in baseball, elections, politics, Uncategorized
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In the 1985 edition of the Bill James Historical Baseball abstract James ranks the best players at each position based on both “Peak Value” (How they played at their peak) and “Career Value” (How they played over their career). At the position of left field James Ranked Stan Musial as the #1 of all time with Ted Williams 2nd. By the 2001 edition of the book which didn’t have the Peak vs Career editions he had flipped the pair based on his revised win shares formula but back in 1985 he made this argument concerning his choice:

Look I am not saying anything at all negative about Ted Williams. The further we go into the analysis of batting statistics the closer we come to being forced to accept the conclusion that Williams, not Babe Ruth, was the greatest hitter who ever lived. I think he was the second greatest left fielder who ever lived. That’s not critizism.

But if I had to choose between the two of them I’d take Musial in left field, Musial on the basepaths, Musial in the clubhouse and Williams only with the wood in his hands. And Stan Musial could hit a little too.

This is actually one of my pet peeves. I get sick of hearing people say on talk radio, “Aaron Rogers sucks, when talking about Brady or or Lebron sucks when talking about Jordan. One can acknowledge that Brady is better than Rogers or Jordan is better than James without deciding the other stinks.

And that takes us to Trump vs DeSantis.

In one sense this conversation is premature as Ron DeSantis hasn’t announced that he’s running but I’m getting really sick of the “DeSantis sucks” stuff coming out of the Trump camp and the “Trump sucks” stuff coming out of some republicans.

If you look at the data, from the economic numbers to the accomplishments one had to conclude that not only was Donald Trump the best and most effective president of the 21st century so far, but you can make a credible argument that he was superior to Ronald Reagan and the best GOP president since Teddy Roosevelt who I think is the most compatible president to Donald Trump.

One can see this, acknowledge this and even assert, as I do, that the 2020 election was literally stolen from him, and still decide that DeSantis is the better choice in 2024. That’ doesn’t mean that Trump is a bad choice it just means that you think DeSantis is a better one.at this time.

On the other hand if you look at the data, again from the economic numbers to the accomplishments and conclude that Ron DeSantis is not only the most effective and successful GOP governor currently in office but that he is likely the best GOP governor that we’ve seen in the 21st century and I don’t think it’s close.

One can see this, acknowledge this and even assert that he would make an excellent president and still decide that Donald Trump is the better choice for 2024. That doesn’t mean DeSantis is a bad choice, it just means you think Trump is a better one at this time.

I supported Rick Santorum in 2012, in 2016 I supported Ted Cruz over Santorum, not because I thought Santorum was bad but because I thought Ted Cruz was a better choice at the time.

I will happily support either Trump or DeSantis as the GOP nominee but let’s not pretend that either one of them is a bad choice, and let’s stop hitting either as if they are.

Oh and if you claim to be a conservative and say you won’t vote for Trump or DeSantis over a Biden, Harris, Newsom or an Obama then please don’t waste my time with your opinion because you’re no conservative.

The NY Times reports Fighting Back Works!

Posted: February 1, 2023 by datechguy in education
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You know for an awful long time we’ve been told that

  1. Critical Race Theory is not being taught and those who say it is are lying
  2. Governor DeSantis is banning books

Now suddenly we see this from the NYT:

Look at that headline and opening lede. Instead of screaming “Book Banning” you see an acknowledgement of CRT in the course and that topics dear to the left were in fact an option.

Here is the most important takeaway from the piece:

In January, Governor DeSantis of Florida, who is expected to run for president, announced he would ban the curriculum, citing the draft version. State education officials said it was not historically accurate and violated state law that regulates how race-related issues are taught in public schools.

The attack on the A.P. course turned out to be the prelude to a much larger agenda. On Tuesday, Governor DeSantis unveiled a proposal to overhaul higher education that would eliminate what he called “ideological conformity” by among other things, mandating courses in Western civilization.

In another red flag, the College Board faced the possibility of other opposition: more than two dozen states have adopted some sort of measure against critical race theory, according to a tracking project by the University of California, Los Angeles, law school.

Fighting Back against the left’s agenda works!. Who knew? The left did, that’s why they do all they can to demoralize us.

At least overconfidence won’t be a problem for the GOP in 2024 as it was after the two Red Wave elections–and other thoughts

Posted: November 13, 2022 by John Ruberry in congress, culture, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

I was around for the 1994 and the 2010 Red Wave elections. And for the most part, they were pretty awesome, particularly the first one, when the Republican Party bulldozed the Democrats and captured the Senate after eight years of Democrat control, as well as the House of Representatives, after a record 52-year reign by the Dems. And while the GOP didn’t win the Senate in 2010, the Republicans gained an astounding 63 House seats in what is now known as the Tea Party election. 

After both midterms, conservatives salivated at the prospect of the next presidential election. In 1992, Bill Clinton was victorious, it was believed, because George H.W. Bush ran a lackluster campaign–that was true–and votes for third-party candidate Ross Perot siphoned enough support from the GOP conservative base to elect the Democrat. In 2008, the feeling was that John McCain never had a chance against Barack Obama after the Great Recession market crash two months before Election Day. But McCain ran a lackluster campaign too. 

Overconfidence, bordering on hubris, kicked in for the GOP after those Red Waves.

As of this writing there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate in the next Congress, and maybe, a razor-thin Republican majority in the House. 

Bubba had a come-to-Jesus moment–having Dick Morris in his camp helped–and Clinton after the ’94 midterms pivoted to the center by declaring, “The era of big government is over.” The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, widely-known as the Welfare Reform Bill, offered tangible proof.

After what Obama deemed “a shellacking” in 2010, Obama, as he does best, talked a good game–but he didn’t pivot. With no hope of getting unpopular legislation, such as cap-and-trade passed by the new GOP House, he channeled his charisma to win in 2012–as conservatives seethed. And ObamaCare didn’t go into effect until 2013.

Besides over-confidence hindering their White House chances, Republicans nominated country club-flavor Republicans, Bob Dole and Mitt Romney, for president in 1996 and 2012, respectively. In essence, their campaign was, “I’m not the other guy.” Yawn.

As of this writing there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate in the next Congress, and maybe, a razor-thin Republican majority in the House. 

Election denial.

It’s time for the GOP to look at what went wrong this year, starting with election-denial. As I wrote in March, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump was not a free and fair election. Big Tech and media meddling in regard to suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, in my opinion, was the foremost reason. Richard M. Nixon was the victim of a suspicious presidential election tally in 1960. I was a child in 1968 and 1972, but I don’t recall reading about Nixon mentioning the 1960 race at all during his ’68 or ’72 successful presidential runs.

Deal with it. The Dems won in 2020 and we lost. Move on. If Trump runs in 2024, that needs to be his message. Most of the candidates in close races who said that Biden stole the election from Trump in 2020 were defeated. Election denial is toxic for Republicans.

The big winner in the midterms was Florida governor Ron DeSantis. He’s not an election denier and he has a solid list of accomplishments to point to after four years in office.

The new election playing field.

I loathe mail-in voting, “election season” instead of Election Day, and ballot drop-boxes. But these things aren’t going away. To prevail, Republicans have to adapt and find ways to perform better on the new playing field. Mail-in voting is a good place to start. Increasingly, the GOP is the party of private sector jobholders. Let’s say you’re a construction worker raising a family who is told by his boss, “Hey, I need you at this worksite tomorrow in Nebraska–it pays well.” But that worker hasn’t voted yet and Election Day is two days away. Meanwhile, in Blue Illinois, Election Day is a holiday for government workers.

What if it snows on Election Day? That happened in a Republican area in Nevada last Tuesday.

Shortly before Election Day in 2016, my mother was hospitalized. She had voted in every presidential election since 1956, but mom wasn’t able to vote for Trump, much to her disappointment. We need to reach out to seniors and, gently of course, convince them to utilize mail-in or early voting. 

Republicans need to build on its increasing support among Hispanics and reach out to Asians. The GOP is the party of law and order. However, the media wing of the Democratic Party labels the phrase “law and order” as racist. So Republicans need to rebrand and become, let’s say, the “safety and security” party. Safety and security is an appeal that will resonate among all racial groups.

Tribalism.

If the increasingly frail and mentally feeble Joe Biden runs for reelection and wins renomination–the Democrats won’t have a strong campaigner like Clinton or Obama on the top of the ticket in ’24. And Biden has already said that he won’t pivot, as Bill Clinton did, to the center now that the midterms have passed.

Woo-hoo! We’re gonna win!

Slow down there, cowboy.

Republicans face disaster if they underestimate the support Biden will enjoy from the tribalist base of the Democrats. That tribe will vote every candidate who has a “D” next to their name. In the Chicago area, I live among millions of these people. They might wise up one day. Maybe they won’t. But as Dan Bongino said numerous times in the last week, “Things are just not bad enough yet for a lot of people to wake up from the Kool-Aid slumber.”

And it’s not just Illinois that is afflicted by Dem tribalism. Pennsylvanians chose a cognitively challenged far-left US Senate candidate, John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke this spring, over a mentally nimble Republican candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz. True, Oz could have run a better campaign. 

Ronald Reagan, in his 1984 landslide win over Walter Mondale, won 49 states. But in the popular vote–yeah, I know, the Electoral College declares the victor–Mondale still collected more than 40 percent. In 2024, even if Biden is in worse physical and mental shape than Fetterman is, he’ll do much better, courtesy of tribalism, than Mondale did, in both the Electoral College and the popular vote.

Fetterman, if by some other-worldly convergence ends up as the Democrat nominee for president in 2024, could match Mondale’s popular vote percentage. I am dead serious about that. Tribalism is a tough nut to crack.

There is much to think about and much to do for the Republican Party. But at least the GOP won’t be overconfident in 2024. That might be the best news out of this Red Ripple election.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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