Trailing Trump by 30 Points, Ron DeSantis Plans Attack on Tim Scott – By Ben Mathis-Lilley (Slate) / July 15, 2023
It’s OVER. (For Tim Scott. Allegedly.)
Ron DeSantis might win the Republican nomination for president in 2024. It could still happen! Lots of things could happen. For example, the guy who’s well in front of him in the polls could go to federal prison. But in the meantime, the Florida governor’s campaign is mostly employing the kinds of tactics, like spreading word of a “reboot” eight months before voting starts, that troubled campaigns employ while they’re on their way to becoming a cautionary tale about early hype.
This week’s milestone in the process was the circulation of an internal DeSantis team memo, first published by NBC News. This is a time-honored practice—making a supposedly frank and confidential case, which somehow leaks out to the press, that your candidate still has a clear path to victory, even though he or she is currently mega-behind one or more competitors.
The DeSantis team begins by noting that its candidate has banked a lot of money (true) and says it’s still early enough in the 2024 cycle for voters to change their minds.
Early state voters are only softly committed to the candidates they select on a ballot question this far out —including many [Donald] Trump supporters. Our focus group participants in the early states even say they don’t plan on making up their mind until they meet the candidates or watch them debate.
