{"id":3050,"date":"2023-05-25T17:14:31","date_gmt":"2023-05-25T17:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=3050"},"modified":"2023-05-25T18:01:08","modified_gmt":"2023-05-25T18:01:08","slug":"desantis-reshapes-republican-primary-sparks-wave-of-opposition-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/?p=3050","title":{"rendered":"DeSantis Reshapes Republican Primary, Sparks Wave of Opposition & Support"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/desantis-reshapes-republican-primary-sparks-wave-of-opposition-support\/<\/a><\/p>\n

\"DeSantis<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis kicked off his 2024 presidential campaign Wednesday night, reshaping the Republican primary field and forcing Republicans to take sides.<\/p>\n

Former President Donald Trump welcomed DeSantis to the primary race with a barrage of attacks on his platform of choice, TruthSocial.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Rob,\u2019 My Red Button is bigger, better, stronger, and is working (TRUTH!), yours does not! (per my conversation with Kim Jung Un, of North Korea, soon to become my friend!),\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

Trump posted several videos of DeSantis as well. One video points out how a Trump endorsement likely propelled DeSantis to victory in his Florida governor\u2019s race in 2018. The video features old campaign videos where DeSantis held a Trump sign, praised Trump, and thanked him for standing by him, even \u201cwhen it wasn\u2019t necessarily the smart thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeSantis secured billionaire Elon Musk\u2019s endorsement as well as praise from U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., during the Twitter Spaces event<\/a><\/strong>. U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., wore a \u201cMake America Great Again\u201d hat to Capitol Hill Thursday morning, hours after DeSantis\u2019 announcement.<\/p>\n

On Twitter, pundits and popular conservative voices chose sides, posting in favor or against DeSantis through the night and into the morning depending on their allegiances. The announcement has divided the party more than any other.<\/p>\n

Many Republicans hope DeSantis can provide the party with a more effective, drama-free, post-Trump future while others think Trump is the only way to take on the deep state and liberal establishment.<\/p>\n

DeSantis was widely mocked for the technical glitches of his announcement, which was delayed more than 20 minutes as Musk and entrepreneur and author David Sacks, who moderated the Twitter Spaces event, tried to get the production working.<\/p>\n

Sacks waved off the technical glitches, saying they were likely \u201cmelting the servers\u201d and likely breaking records with their Twitter announcement. There is dispute over the actual number of online attendees with different outlets reporting different figures, but DeSantis had several hundred thousand users listening in for his event to begin before many gave up because of the technical difficulties. DeSantis\u2019 team claimed that within 15 hours of the announcement, it had more than 30 million views.<\/p>\n

DeSantis\u2019 camp tried to reframe the technical issues as \u201cbreaking the internet,\u201d a sign of overwhelming interest. Musk said on the broadcast that breaking new ground online, especially while live, naturally comes with these kinds of issues.<\/p>\n

Liberal media outlets poured in criticism of DeSantis for the launch with a string of blistering headlines. Politico called the tech failures \u201chorrendous\u201d while the Washington Post said it \u201cdidn\u2019t work.\u201d CNN called the launch \u201cembarrassing,\u201d and NBC said the launch \u201cmelts down.\u201d<\/p>\n

It is worth noting, though, that both Trump and DeSantis have built their brands by mocking and disregarding those very same media outlets.<\/p>\n

Trump jumped on this opportunity as well, sharing a video on Truth Social of one of Musk\u2019s rockets failing to launch and then exploding with DeSantis\u2019 logo overlaid on the crashing missile.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know Ron,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThe way he handled his announcement, he will handle the Country!\u201d<\/p>\n

During the Twitter event, DeSantis took subtle shots at Trump without naming him, saying he had frustration with the former president\u2019s inability to enact his agenda and blasted the \u201cculture of losing\u201d in the GOP.<\/p>\n

DeSantis hit on several key issues for Republican voters during his announcement, namely the border crisis, rising crime, critical race theory, media bias and censorship as well as the government response to COVID-19, saying his response in Florida kept states around the country from \u201crolling lockdowns.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst, we need an honest reckoning about what happened during COVID,\u201d DeSantis said, calling the federal pandemic response \u201cauthoritarian\u201d and not in line with the data. \u201cI saw an interest in the narrative and politics over evidence\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

The first GOP caucus is in Iowa on Jan. 22, 2024, while the first GOP primary is Jan. 30 of the same year in New Hampshire. The first group of states holding their presidential primary votes is in March of next year.<\/p>\n

Polling from Morning Consult surveyed Republican primary voters and put DeSantis in second place among the contenders with 18% support, though far behind Trump, who came in at 61% support.<\/p>\n

Radio host and commentator Larry Elder, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy have announced their 2024 ambitions as well. The Morning Consult poll put Haley and Ramaswamy both at 4% support. U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., announced he is running on Monday.<\/p>\n

Former Vice President Mike Pence is still considering a bid.<\/p>\n

Casey Harper
\nGo to Source<\/a>
\nReposted with permission<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared at https:\/\/www.wisconsinrightnow.com\/desantis-reshapes-republican-primary-sparks-wave-of-opposition-support\/ \u00a0 Florida Governor Ron DeSantis kicked off his 2024…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":1751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wi-right-now"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3050"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3052,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3050\/revisions\/3052"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wifamily.news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}