5 takeaways from Ron DeSantis’ first campaign trip

Following his unusually busy and ill-fated presidential debut on Twitter last week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis this week went on a much more traditional campaign tour, storming Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina to sell himself as the strongest Republican alternative to former president Donald J Trump.

He drew along the way large, enthusiastic crowd from DeSantis-curious voters. He held babies. He was bothered by a reporter. He threw some punches at Mr. Trump. He warned of an “evil ideology” being pushed by liberals and promised to “impose our will” to stop it.

Here are five takeaways.

He won’t cower against Trump, but how hard he’ll counterattack is unclear.

For months, Mr. DeSantis held his fire against Mr. Trump. Those days are clearly over.

“Little,” he labeled Mr. Trump’s taunts. “Youthful.” The former president’s criticism of him? “Bizarre” and “ridiculous”.

But Mr. DeSantis did not make those comments from the podium, in front of Republican voters, but behind the scenes in comments to reporters, suggesting he is not quite ready to attack Mr. Trump head-on. Instead, his most direct shots were saved for President Biden (“We’re going to take all that Biden nonsense and rip it out by the roots”).

When it comes to Mr. Trump, the governor has said he is simply defending himself against a man he avoided public disagreements with for years.

“Well, now he’s attacking me,” said an apparently mortified Mr. DeSantis outside Des Moines.

There are risks involved in bashing Mr. Trump. For some voters, part of Mr. DeSantis’ appeal was his willingness to avoid war with a fellow Republican.

“DeSantis has Trump policy, without all the name-calling,” said Monica Schieb, an Iowa voter who supported Mr. Trump in 2016 but now plans to support Mr. DeSantis.

A key message: he is young and energetic and can serve two terms.

DeSantis packed his schedule with three or four rallies a day, covering hundreds of miles in every state and addressing more than 7,000 people in total, his campaign said.

The events didn’t quite have the MAGA-Woodstock energy of Mr. Trump’s arena rallies, but they were lively and well attended. Tightly orchestrated too: there was none chewing hoagies or cuddle with motorcyclists at dinner parties. Uptempo country music and the occasional cheesy rock (“Chicken Fried” by the Zac Brown Band and “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor) preceded him on stage.

The message behind the tight schedule?

To make the country a mega-Florida, he said, a “disciplined, energetic president” is needed.

It’s a phrase we’re likely to hear more of as it targets both of the biggest obstacles in Mr. DeSantis’ road to the White House: Mr. Trump and President Biden.

At nearly every event, Mr. DeSantis, 44, used comments about his energy level as an indirect swipe at his much older opponents. Mr. Trump is 76; Mr. Biden is 80. And Mr. DeSantis frequently noted that, unlike his main Republican rival, Mr. Trump, he could serve two terms.

The messages allowed Mr. DeSantis to provide a clear contrast to the former president without necessarily angering Mr. Trump’s loyal supporters.

Two terms, the governor says, would give him more time to appoint conservative Supreme Court justices and dissolve the deep state. (Mr Trump responded angry at the new offensive line, saying Thursday in Iowa that “you don’t need eight years, you need six months,” adding, “Who the hell wants to wait eight years?”)

However, the case Mr. DeSantis makes sometimes seems to be undermined by his own delivery. Even supporters admit that he is not a natural orator, and on the stub sometimes calls himself an “energetic manager” in a neutral monotone.

He humbly compares himself to Churchill, fighting ‘the awake crowd’ on the beaches.

If Mr. DeSantis had to sum up what he thinks is wrong with America in one word, his three-state tour suggests the answer could be “awake,” a term many Republican politicians find easy to use but hard to define . The governor often opposes “waking up,” which he describes as a “war on truth,” in distinctly martial terms.

At several events, Mr. DeSantis, a military veteran, appeared to be borrowing from Winston Churchill’s famous “We shall fight on the beaches” speech, which he delivered to exhort the citizens of Britain in their existential struggle against Nazi Germany.

“We will fight the vigil in education,” said New Hampshire’s Mr. DeSantis. “We will fight the vigil in companies. And we will fight the vigil in the halls of Congress. We will never surrender to the waking crowd.”

(Mr. Trump seemed to be taking a shot at his rival’s use of the word, say on Thursday, “I don’t like the term ‘wake up’ because I hear ‘wake up, wake up, wake up’.” He added: “It’s just a term they use. Half the people can’t even define it. They don’t know what it is.”)

Earlier, at his kick-off meeting outside Des Moines on Tuesday night, Mr. DeSantis appeared to piece together the various building blocks of his stupid speech into a coherent vision, one that portrayed the United States as a nation under attack from within by unprecedented liberal forces bent on out to reshape every aspect of American life.

“They’re imposing their agenda on us, through the federal government, through corporate America, through our own education system,” he said. “Everything in their favor and everything against us.”

In turn, Mr. DeSantis pledged to aggressively wield the power of the presidency to reshape the nation on conservative principles, just as he says he has done in Florida, where he has often pushed the boundaries of executive office.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” he continued in his opening speech in Iowa. “We must choose a path that will lead to a resurgence of American greatness.” The line drew cheers.

His Interactions: Pretty normal, overall.

Opponents and supporters alike kept a close eye on how Mr. DeSantis, who sometimes seems uncomfortable with the basic tenets of retail politics, interacted with voters. Trump’s Democrats and allies have turned him into a legion of memes awkward facial expressions or awkward responses to voters in casual conversations. (An emphatic “OK!” is often his response to learning a person’s name or a child’s age.)

But other than a few belligerent exchanges with the news media—episodes which, of course, are applauded by the Republican grassroots—Mr. DeSantis obviously avoided awkward moments. He tried to make himself recognizable by playing up his father’s credentials. He told stories of taking his family for fast food and fighting with a 3-year-old who had to use the “little pot”.

After his speeches, he worked the rope, talked to voters, took photos and signed autographs. He always responded enthusiastically when voters told him they lived part-time in Florida. “Which part?” was his standard follow-up, before discussing how hard those areas had been hit by Hurricane Ian.

While all of this may be a low bar, it was set in part by Mr. DeSantis’ relentless mockery of Mr. Trump’s personality.

Frank Ehrenberger, 73, a retired engineer who attended a DeSantis event in Iowa on Wednesday, said the governor had considered him “real.”

Still, Mr. DeSantis may need to do more. At events in Iowa and New Hampshire on Wednesday and Thursday, he failed to answer audience questions from the stage, sparking some criticism. Instead, Mr. DeSantis threw baseball caps at the crowd at one stop in New Hampshire.

The early nominee states require different political skills than those in Florida, where politicians rely heavily on television advertising to get their message across.

On Friday, during his visit to South Carolina, he seemed to have shifted his strategy and opted for it answer voter questions from the stage next to his wife, Casey DeSantis.

You’ll be seeing a lot more of Casey DeSantis.

At his events, Mr. DeSantis has interrupted his mute speech to invite Ms. DeSantis onstage to make her own comments. As she speaks, he usually stands behind her smiling before returning to the lectern to finish his speech. On a layover in New Hampshire, he kissed her temple after she finished.

These pauses — not unprecedented, but unusual as a routine at presidential campaign events — underscore the high-profile role Ms. DeSantis is expected to play in her husband’s bid, having acted as a key adviser in his political rise.

Going off this first tour, she is probably one of the most prominent and politically active spouses of a major presidential candidate in several election cycles, perhaps since Bill Clinton in 2008.

On stage, Ms. DeSantis tells the usual marital stories designed to humanize candidates and illustrate their family lives — including an oft-repeated bit about the time one of their three children wielded permanent markers to mark the dinner table in the governor’s mansion. decorate.

But she is far from light entertainment. Much of her five-minute or so speech is intended to portray her husband, whom she often refers to as “the Governor,” as an authoritative, decisive leader, one capable of cleaning up “the swamp” in Washington. to make.

“Throughout all of history, all the attacks from the corporate media and the left, he never changes,” Ms. DeSantis said in New Hampshire on Thursday. “He never flinched, he never flinched. He never takes the path of least resistance.”

Anne Klein contributed reporting from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Bret Hayworth of Salix, Iowa.