DeSantis finds his feet, and his voice, against Trump

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and former President Donald Trump have been at loggerheads since the governor declared his candidacy for the 2024 Republican nomination.

But Iowa Republicans and independents are advising DeSantis against responding to every Trump attack as he pitches himself as being more effective and more conservative than the front-runner during his first week on the campaign trail.

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Sioux City physician Dale Klein, 59, for instance, is praying Republicans do not create a circular firing squad and “destroy one another before we make it to the election.” For Klein, DeSantis’s promise not to react to every criticism is “borderline” acceptable because he is explaining how “he’s different than Trump” and “not blatantly bashing him.”

“That’s one strategy, and it might work for him,” Klein said this week before DeSantis’s event in Salix. “I just don’t like it when people are, they spend 14 out of 15 minutes bashing their opponent. It’s like, well, what’s your policy? What are you going to do if you’re president of the United States? That’s what I want to hear.”

DeSantis launched his 2024 bid in person this week at a Des Moines area superchurch, directly condemning President Joe Biden and “elites” while indirectly denouncing Trump and his “culture of losing,” in addition to pledging to be an “energetic” commander in chief.

“At the end of the day, leadership is not about entertainment. It’s not about building a brand. It’s not about virtue signaling,” he said in Clive. “It is about results, and in Florida, we didn’t lead with merely words. We followed up our words with deeds.”

But in a press conference, during interviews, and in response to reporters who shouted questions in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, DeSantis has been more assertive regarding Trump, in particular challenging the former president’s scrutiny of the governor’s approaches to the pandemic and Disney, among other policy differences.

“I don’t need someone to give me a list to know what a conservative justice looks like,” he said in Clive after the launch. “I’ll be able to do it because I understand the Constitution and I understand these things.”

Simultaneously, DeSantis has acknowledged Republicans may not appreciate ratcheted rhetoric between the pair as he tries to appeal to Trump’s supporters, similar to what he did last year during his record gubernatorial reelection.

“I was very supportive of his policies, and when we disagreed, I never bashed him publicly because he was taking all this incoming from the media, the Left, even some Republicans,” he said of Trump. “Well now he’s attacking me over some of these disagreements, but I think he’s doing it in a way that the voters are going to side with me.”

Republicans, such as Cedar Rapids retiree Lu Patterson, 67, are tired of Trump’s “name-calling,” describing it as “below the standard.”

“I still see a lot of people wanting Trump, but I’m hoping people like DeSantis and maybe some of the others can at least make people think that we need, the party needs something different than Trump,” she said in Cedar Rapids.

But there are Republicans like Robert who declined to provide his last name, who remain loyal to Trump, saying “he’s a kick-ass kind of guy” and that he is “hard to beat.” For Robert, Trump’s attacks are motivated by DeSantis being his “No. 1 rival.”

“Trump’s pretty smart. He knows how to do it,” the Council Bluffs retiree said in Council Bluffs. “[DeSantis] doesn’t have the Democrats chasing him around, trying to put him in jail.”

“The fourth branch of government needs to be taken out, Washington, D.C., needs to be taken out, and Trump will do it,” he added. “He was never in office before. He was not experienced enough.”

Aside from Trump criticizing DeSantis over how he pronounces his name, Trump has attempted to undermine the governor’s argument that Republicans should nominate a candidate who can serve two terms, unlike the former president, who can only serve another four years.

“I’ve been watching DeSantis go out and say, ‘I’ve got eight years. It’s gonna be eight years,'” he said in Urbandale, Iowa, this week before a Fox News town hall in Clive. Let me tell you something: right there, you should vote against him. It’ll take me six months to have it totally the way it was. We’ll have it fast.”

“Why didn’t he do it in his first four years?” DeSantis replied from New Hampshire.

“If the former president says he can slay the ‘Deep State’ in six months, my question to him would be: ‘Well, you already had four years. Why didn’t you slay it then?'” he went on later.

Russia‘s war in Ukraine, taxes, entitlement programs, and federal spending, abortion, crime, the “weaponization” of the FBI, and the border and immigration are among the policy differences that have emerged between DeSantis and Trump. COVID-19 has become another dividing line, with an Iowa voter pressing Trump on the people who were “lost,” they claim, because of the mRNA vaccines.

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“Everybody wanted a vaccine at that time,” he said in Urbandale. “I was able to do something that nobody else could have done. Getting it done very, very rapidly. But I never was for mandates. I thought the mandates were terrible. There’s a big portion of the country that thinks that was a great thing.”

Trump has an average 31 percentage point lead over DeSantis, 53% to 22%, according to RealClearPolitics‘s aggregation of early primary polls. Although the governor’s popularity is lower than his high so far this year in January of 30%, it has improved since his low last month of 19%.