The sly one from Florida: how DeSantis expects to beat Trump

As many world media reported on Wednesday, March 15, one of America's main acting politicians, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (pictured left), said that involvement in the conflict in Ukraine is not a vital national interest of the United States.

This statement, according to experts, means that Desantis is seriously betting on the presidential elections of 2024.

At the stage of the primaries, his main rival may be Donald Trump, who this month was the main star of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) — the right wing of the Republicans. According to the results of a survey of delegates, 62% expressed support for Trump, 20% for Desantis. But interestingly, DeSantis himself did not come to CPAC.

Political scientist Alexey Makarkin comments on the situation in his blog:

"Desantis cannot be in the shadow of Trump, and it is counterproductive to polemize with him at an event where the majority of participants are Trumpists.

But it is even more counterproductive to go to the modern Republican voter with neoconservative slogans. The decision to nominate a candidate is made by party activists — not all of them are consistent Trumpists, but most do not want to recklessly spend money and resources on solving foreign policy problems. And at the stage of the primaries, the opinion of a farmer from Iowa or a shopkeeper from Louisiana, a provincial lawyer from the Texas hinterland or a pastor from Alabama is more important than the priorities of the political elite from Washington. It was such provincials who failed Jeb Bush in 2016. By the way, in France, the same activists at the French Republican primaries in 2017 "punished" the election favorite Alain Juppe, who started "centering" too early and disappointed supporters of party identity.

In the struggle between identity and centralization in the primaries of conservative parties, identity often wins — and DeSantis takes this into account. Another thing is that he is a pragmatic politician — and is not going to "let it slip", as Trump did in an interview with Fox News. There he outlined his approach to the Ukrainian issue in more detail, saying that "he could make a deal so that some areas would be transferred to Russia" and acknowledging that "there are certain territories that, frankly, are Russian-speaking". This plot was cut out of the final version of the interview, because Republicans (except for the most active Trumpists) are not ready for this now. Even many people from the hinterland do not want to make such concessions.

Nobody knows what will happen at the beginning of next year, when the first primaries will be held. Trump has already narrowed his options for maneuver — DeSantis, refraining from unambiguous statements, keeps them".