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GOP
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Ron DeSantis isn't getting a lot of traction so far. He's been thrashing around looking for some angle to attack front-runner Donald Trump. His latest attempt is to out-bigot Trump, which won't be easy, but DeSantis figures it is worth a try.
In a new video, DeSantis attacks Trump for being too gay friendly and definitely too trans friendly. The video shows Trump expressing support for LGBTQ people. Among other things, he said that Caitlyn Jenner, a trans woman, is free to use any bathroom she wants to at Trump Tower. He also said that he was fine with trans women competing in the Miss Universe beauty pageant when he owned it. The video contrasts Trump's tacit approval of LGBTQ people with DeSantis' hard line against them. As governor, he signed a number of anti-LGBTQ bills and he is using them now to prove his bona fides as a bigger bigot than Trump. DeSantis undoubtedly has polling showing that bigotry sells in the Republican Party, so he is going all in on it.
Trump's campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, attacked DeSantis and said it showed "a desperate campaign in the last throes of relevancy." Note carefully what he did not say. He didn't say: "Donald Trump supports equal rights for all Americans, including LGBTQ Americans." Trump and Cheung have probably also seen polling that shows bigotry sells within the Republican Party, so the response to DeSantis' video is to attack the campaign and not address the contents of the video.
There was plenty of reaction to the video. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who is gay, went on CNN's State of the Union and said: "I'm going to leave aside the strangeness of trying to prove your manhood by putting up a video that splices images of you in between oiled-up shirtless bodybuilders. And just get to the bigger issue that is on my mind whenever I see this stuff in the policy space—which is, again, who are you trying to help? Who are you trying to make better off? And what public policy problems do you get up in the morning thinking about how to solve?"
Chris Christie also went on CNN and called it a food fight between teenagers. He told CNN: "I'm not comfortable with it, and I'm not comfortable with the way both Governor DeSantis and Donald Trump are moving our debate in this country. They're trying to divide us further when there are big, big issues to be talking about here."
The Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative gay group, wasn't pleased with DeSantis. It called DeSantis' video "divisive and desperate." It also issued a statement saying: "Conservatives understand that we need to protect our kids, preserve women's sports, safeguard women's spaces and strengthen parental rights, but Ron DeSantis' extreme rhetoric has just ventured into homophobic territory."
Yup. And it was a carefully calculated move. DeSantis seems to think his only chance is to outflank Trump on the right. So things like issuing a bigoted video, shipping migrants from Texas to Massachusetts under false pretenses, and restricting what Florida teachers may say in class are his tools. We presume DeSantis knew that there would be plenty of reaction to the video, but when you are running for president and are the underdog, you need to shake things up. Besides, it is well known that Trump's super power is saying out loud what his supporters are thinking. Now DeSantis was no doubt thinking: "Two can play this game!" But the real problem for DeSantis is that Trump's supporters like The Donald's bombastic personality more than they care about policy issues. DeSantis doesn't seem to get this and is focusing on supporting even more right-wing policy issues than Trump. That's probably not going to do the job since policy isn't central with the base these days. (V)