Time To Get Off “The Pot”?

Ron DeSantis has a decision to make, and he doesn’t have all the time in the world to make it. There are a bunch of people that are waiting in the wings to jump into what The Hill calls, the GOP Conga Line of potential nominees for president. But a lot of those folks are waiting to see what Ron DeSantis is going to do.

His time is running out.

The longer he waits, the more people will feel that he isn’t going to run, and they’ll announce their candidacy. And the more people that are running, most pundits say the better it is for Donald Trump, who likes to take on each candidate individually, and blow them out of the water until he’s the only one left. At least that’s the way he did it in 2016.

What’s DeSantis got to lose by joining the fray? Well, for one thing, if he isn’t successful at beating Trump, he goes back to being just the Governor of the nation’s newest “red state”. But he also loses a lot of that “superstar” power he got in kicking Charlie Crist into a retirement home this past November. He is most certainly the golden boy in Republican politics nowadays, and I’m sure that’s a status that he doesn’t want to give up all that easily.

So, why wouldn’t DeSantis want to jump into the race? There aren’t that many reasons. I guess the first would be he doesn’t think in his own mind, or through whatever research he’s done, that he could outlast Trump in a primary. It would indeed be costly, and Trump could most certainly outspend him without batting an eye. But I think there are more reasons that go beyond that. First is the fact that DeSantis may very well be content to be the Governor of Florida. I don’t think every politician that gets elected to an executive leadership position has their eyes set on the Oval Office. DeSantis may be one of them. Maybe he doesn’t like the weather in DC in winter? Maybe he fell in love with Tallahassee? Who knows?

But another reason is just that DeSantis may not be done reshaping Florida into the Republican juggernaut that he thinks it can be. After all, Florida is a growing state. It’s getting a ton of people moving into it from places like New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. And it is going to face the growing pains in the coming years that all states like the Sunshine State have faced. Look at Texas, California, Arizona, Nevada. They’ve all seen incredible growth over the past decade. Granted, Cali is losing about 300,000 of their people a year to states like Texas, Arizona, and Utah. But it may be that DeSantis thinks Florida can actually be a bigger state than any of them except maybe California.

Whatever reason is going on in Ron DeSantis’ mind, I think personally, he’s already made up his mind one way or another. It’s a timing thing now. He needs to wait for the proper moment to decide when to announce if he’s already decided to get in the race, and I think he has. The problem with waiting too long is that you become one of the guys at the back of the Conga Line, and you are then having to fight your way to the front of it. If DeSantis announces before the end of February, he can be assured that he will be next to Trump when the music starts.

I do think it’s going to be a crowded field this year and next for the Republicans. I’m not going to say there will be 17 or 18 people trying to get the nomination, like there was back in 2016, but there will be quite a few folks vying for it. If Ron DeSantis is one of them, he does have a half decent chance at dethroning Trump. If he decides not to run this time around, then basically he’s giving the nomination to Trump. It will be the former president’s nomination to lose. No one of the other Conga Line dancers is even close.

Carry on world…you’re dismissed!

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