A conservative columnist thinks Ron DeSantis is trying to pandering to Donald Trump's "nutball right" base – but the Florida governor's allies won't admit it.
DeSantis and the former president are locked in a battle as the two top contenders for the 2024 Republican nomination, and The Bulwark columnist Tim Miller claims DeSantis is trying to appeal to the extreme right while presenting himself as a more moderate alternative to Trump.
"How catastrophic would the staffing of a second Trump administration be?" Miller wrote. "Would Kari Lake be VP? Might lunatic cult leader Mike Flynn control the military? Would Trump try to terminate the Constitution? Side with Putin in Ukraine? Similarly, the known unknowns for DeSantis tend to point in a less catastrophic direction. Would RD move to the center in a general election? (I don’t think so). Hire a more competent staff? (Certainly.) Is his personality less likely to inspire a rabid, violent death cult? (Clearly.)"
But Miller said the case for DeSantis as a less extreme version of Trump is getting harder to make, based on the governor's campaign pledges.
"If someone is aspiring to the presidency and their critical takeaways regarding the Trump administration are that Trump was too deferential to experts on COVID, too anxious to distribute a life-saving vaccine, not harsh enough on immigrants who were brought here as children, too adversarial to the prison-industrial complex, and not passionate enough about the need for a rhetorical attack on the 'woke left,' well, then you are going to have to forgive me if I come to the conclusion that you are a deranged lunatic."
"And yet there is a category of DeSantis supporters who become incandescent with rage at any suggestion that their guy might be worse than Trump in certain ways," he added.
