It is with decidedly mixed feelings that I offer a commentary on the pursuit of Republican presidential candidates — some of whom are announced, others are presumed to be running — to win back the White House in 2024.
Their strategies are backfiring. Rather than reaching out to the middle class, to independents, to women appalled at the GOP’s assault on their reproductive rights, the party is shoring up its support with his shrinking — but still fanatic — political base.
Why the mixed feeling? Because as a good-government progressive, I want Democratic President Joe Biden to be re-elected next year. GOP candidates are playing right into Democrats’ wheelhouse with their rigid ideology.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, one of the presumed Republican candidates for POTUS, is going after the Disney Corporation, which makes me go … huh?
DeSantis is faithful to the “don’t say ‘gay'” doctrine that seeks to denigrate gay Americans. He wants to ban books from public schools that teach students about racism. DeSantis and other hard-core Republicans also resist any effort to seek solutions to the gun violence that continues to kill innocent Americans seemingly every day. And, of course, he wants to invoke a nationwide ban on abortion.
DeSantis and the 45th president of the United States are the presumed frontrunners for the GOP presidential nomination. The ex-POTUS still cannot stop harping about The Big Lie and the long-since-debunked notion that the 2020 election was pilfered from him. No! The dude lost the election!
He also has been indicted and faces the probability of more indictments to come.
There likely will be others who will seek the GOP nomination. Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson are in. Ex-VP Mike Pence might run, too.
Who among them will break away from the MAGA base’s infatuation with the ex-POTUS? Whoever does will proceed at his or her risk, as the MAGA wing controls the flow of events within the party.
How does that make this voter feel? Let ’em fight among themselves.