DeSantis' 'deathmatch with Mickey Mouse' likely to crash and burn with voters: analyst

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was sued by Disney on Wednesday after a board staffed with his appointees tried to throw out an agreement the company made with the previous board preserving their power over a special taxing district. The company alleges that it is part of a long-running campaign of political revenge for speaking out against DeSantis' bill that effectively purges any mention of LGBTQ people from public schools.

All of this shows he is not ready to sell himself as a presidential candidate to voters, argued political analyst Ron Brownstein on CNN's "The Situation Room."

"It is not every day that you see a Republican governor locked in a protracted fight with his state's largest employer, right?" said anchor Wolf Blitzer.

"Look, I mean, this is really emblematic of the way Ron DeSantis appears to have decided to run for president," said Brownstein. "You know, the video, God made me a fighter, he'll fight every fight that Donald Trump does but he will not bring all of the baggage that he has. I am Trumpism without Trump. And that is his pitch to Republican voters. There is an audience for it in the Republican Party. But you have to ask yourself, is he kind of losing sight of the bigger picture here?"

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"I understand you can't worry about a general election until you win the primary," said Brownstein. "But six-week abortion ban, permitless carry, widespread book bans and classroom censorship, and now a deathmatch with Mickey Mouse does not seem like the ideal recipe to recapture the suburban white-collar voters who have produced three disappointing results for the GOP in the last three elections."

All of this comes at a moment when former President Donald Trump and his allies are launching a wave of attacks on DeSantis — including ads asserting he would not have become governor of Florida without Trump's endorsement. And Trump himself presents serious challenge for the party, Brownstein continued.

"I think Trump recognizes that he has a base in the Republican Party that is basically satisfied with how he performed as president, and that the risk is that DeSantis could make an argument that he could do it better or that he could win and Trump can't," said Brownstein. "The core challenge facing Republicans is in the PBS poll that Marist did for them this week. 63 percent of Republican voters, Wolf, said they wanted a second Trump term even if he is found guilty of a crime. Three-quarters of independents, and three-quarters of Americans younger than 45, three-quarters of voters of color, and over 80 percent of whites with a college degree said they did not want a Trump presidency if he is convicted of a crime. That is the dilemma. And in a single data point, the party wants to go one way, despite all of the clear warning signs about what the country thinks about Trump returning to the office."

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