Governor Ron DeSantis is also in search of a personality, one that might appeal to the MAGA expats he seems to be courting in his run-up to the 2024 presidential election. But his efforts to mold himself into the kind of guy bigoted transphobes might want to have a beer with have failed so spectacularly as of late that now, even top GOP strategists are urging him to press pause on future meet and greets.
DeSantis has been struggling in the polls recently, trailing behind twice-impeached, heavily indicted Donald Trump by huge margins. Some of that lost ground is being attributed to the Florida Republican’s, um, lukewarm people skills. He’s tried to stand on street corners in San Francisco gagging at the homeless, sweat it out with the normies in Oklahoma, and have pizza with Fox News interviewers, but even the most benign PR ops end up painting DeSantis in a bad light. Why? According to political analyst Tara Newsom, it’s because he transforms into a short-circuiting robot anytime he’s in public.
“It looks like voters are starting to really get to know him, and the more they get to know him, his narrative is a lot different than the man,” Newsom told WFLA’s Mahsa Saeidi. “Gov. DeSantis cannot get within striking reach of Donald Trump, and every time he makes a campaign stop, voters seem to step back.”
She suggested DeSantis step back from his campaign trail and send his more genial wife to public events in his place.
“She said that the governor should be pulled off the campaign trail,” Saeidi said. “That’s really not his strong suit. Instead, she says that the campaign should send surrogates, perhaps the first lady, to those early primary states.”
No offense to Casey DeSantis, but we can’t imagine any amount of schmoozing would erase the memory of watching her husband cackle like a hyena while denying he eats pudding with his fingers.
(Via RawStory)