Photo Illustration by Kelly Caminero/The Daily Beast/Reuters
Begun, the clone war has. Ron DeSantis’ declaration to Tucker Carlson this week that the war in Ukraine is a “territorial dispute” not in America’s “vital national interests” signals that his Republican primary strategy is to run as Donald Trump’s doppelgänger (minus the gross tweets, attempted coups, and election losses).
Many of us have been saying for a long time that DeSantis offers Republicans everything Trump does, only in a younger and more competent package. In that regard, DeSantis’ decision to ape Trump is not surprising at all. On the other hand, DeSantis hadn’t FULLY committed to the bit until now—which makes this development both significant and (for some of us) demoralizing.
That’s because some of us Reagan conservatives were, perhaps naively, holding out hope that DeSantis might also be more…normal than Trump. That he might try to be something of a hybrid who marries Reagan Republicanism (which encompasses ideas like family values, fiscal conservatism, a strong national defense, and the sense that America is a “beacon of hope” in the world) with today’s more populist zeitgeist.