OPINION:
Ron DeSanctimonious is now playing the DeSympathy Card. He claims the reason Donald Trump is leading him by 30 points in early polls is that people feel bad for the former president over all the political indictments against him.
Just when you were wondering if Mr. DeSantis has trouble understanding regular Republican voters, he clears it up for you. He DEFINITELY has trouble relating to regular Republican voters if he thinks they support Mr. Trump because they feel sorry for him.
“I think there was a lot of sympathy,” Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, said of Mr. Trump’s commanding lead.
Now, that’s not to say that Mr. Trump’s Christmas tree of indictments hasn’t helped him among Republican voters. But it’s not because people feel sorry for him. The reason the indictments have helped Mr. Trump is that all the crazy persecutions remind voters just how much the political establishment despises Mr. Trump.
If these people hate Mr. Trump so much that they invent fake news, fake investigations, fake impeachments and fake indictments to keep him out of office, voters figure, then he must be doing something right.
Mr. Trump has always been a master of drawing the best enemies.
Among Mr. Trump’s most useful enemies has always been National Review magazine, the self-proclaimed standard-bearer of conservatism for decades — decades in which the American political scene has lurched uncontrollably leftward. Famously, the magazine rounded up all the leading Washington political experts who claimed to be conservative in 2016 and devoted an entire issue to excoriating Donald Trump.
From that day forward, Mr. Trump has been on the ascent among actual conservative voters and, in just four years, produced more conservative accomplishments than any president since at least Ronald Reagan.
Today, National Review is at it again — against Mr. Trump. Mr. DeSantis is their new great hope.
“While I remain unconcerned about DeSantis’ prospects, the early success of DeSantis’ campaign in national and state-level polling has slipped ever since Trump regained the news cycle, in the wake of investigations and splashy bombast,” laments a National Review writer named Luther Ray Abel. All that “slipping” also began the moment Mr. DeSantis announced his campaign.
Mr. Abel’s great hope for salvaging his great hope for defeating Mr. Trump? CNN. I am not making this up.
“If DeSantis has any chance of unseating Trump, he needs the free press that a CNN appearance offers,” Mr. Abel writes. Is it any wonder that the National Review symphony has been playing the soundtrack of America’s demise these past 30 years?
To Mr. DeSantis’ credit, he is finally starting to go after Mr. Trump — directly attacking the former president over perceived failures that Mr. DeSantis promises to miraculously correct. But then again, Mr. DeSantis misses the mark.
“He promised to drain the swamp,” Mr. DeSantis yelled. “It got worse. He did not drain the swamp.”
To be sure, the swamp still exists. And Mr. Trump could have done a better job firing people who have commanded the swamp for a long time.
But the swamp is a massive and powerful thing. How can any one man succeed at dismantling such a powerful and entrenched Leviathan? Who is to say Mr. DeSantis would succeed?
At the very least, you have to give Mr. Trump credit for being the first president in half a century to at least identify the swamp. And you cannot say Mr. Trump did not entangle, injure and enrage the swamp.
And it is a flat-out lie for Mr. DeSantis to say Mr. Trump made it worse. After all, Mr. Trump closed the border, started no new wars and put three new justices on the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade — three concrete pieces of Kryptonite inside the swamp.
The truth is, Mr. Trump remains an effective fighter, and he is loathed by the media and the swampy political establishment and can point to real, concrete accomplishments against the swamp.
Mr. DeSantis — the “Gator Governor” — meanwhile, sounds more and more like he is lashing out in desperation — a shallow tactic that fits nicely inside the swamp.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.