“smarter than Trump” doesn’t narrow the field much, but DeSantis, with his Harvard Law degree, certainly qualifies. It’s easy to imagine anyone with authoritarian/fascist tendencies, which includes most of the MAGA crowd, plotting a coup right now, today, with the appointees they intend to make to inner-circle White House positions, which will make the need for actual discussions, emails, phone calls, etc with the operatives unnecessary in 2028 or 2029. All Trump needed to have pulled off his coup attempt was a little better advance planning and some more competent assistance.
Many of you follow DeSantis more closely than I do, but I never got the impression he’d be willing to throw out democracy to stay in power. Most people, even right wing assholes, would be content with being President for 4 or 8 years.
I don’t see anyone who is likely to be a Republican presidential nominee (leaving out Boebert and her ilk) who would be willing to attempt an over throw of any kind. Maybe in the future someone else will emerge at that level but not even someone like Pence on the hard right has the same lack of morals. DeSantis falls in the wrong to an acceptable level category. If elected you might not like the things he does but he’s not going to toss out the constitution to stay in power. IMHO of course and I don’t claim to be psychic or an expert.
Are you sure?
…
DeSantis seems to have no fondness for the basic rights our Constitution confers on Americans. Instead, he delights in using state power to demonstrate his contempt for the expression of views he dislikes. This forms the core of his political brand, underscored by his “don’t say gay” law, his statute banning “critical race theory” in schools and his firing of a county prosecutor who criticized his abortion policies. DeSantis has also regularly flexed his power as governor: excluding media from events, taking public proceedings behind closed doors (including the selection of the University of Florida’s president) and exacting revenge on supposedly woke corporations such as Disney.DeSantis’s contempt for dissent and his crackdown on critics should not be discounted. This is the profile of a constitutional ignoramus, a bully and a strongman.
But here’s the real issue; suppose that Trump has a 25% chance of beating Biden in the general election while DeSantis has a 75% chance of beating Biden in the general election. Given those odds, would you rather have Trump or DeSantis as the Republican nominee?
Well, I for one would still take my chances with DeSantis. Betting that Trump cannot possibly get elected already bit us in the ass once. And if we are that terrified of “like Trump, but with normal intelligence and comportment”, then we’ve already given up.
I feel the opposite way. We should be as terrified of the “normal” Republicans as we are of Trump. Giving up is when we say we can live with somebody like DeSantis because at least he’s not Trump. People need to feel the same urgency to win the 2024 election that they were feeling in 2020.
Yes I’m sure. He has shown he may do things (if allowed by Congress) that you or I don’t like. There has been 246 years of that. All of which will then change one way or the other with each president. What Trump did was much worse. If there is no republic then there is no hope for “your” president to make things right. It’s game over. There is a significant percentage of the population who want that to happen because they are too stupid to see consequences. It’s my belief that win or lose DeSantis and any other possible candidate other than Trump would act in a way that would mean there would be no repeat of January 6th.
But Trump tried it and got away with it. That changes the landscape.
Yeah, he’s done. (How many times have we heard that?)
I hear what you’re saying, but it’s all too hypothetical for me. I don’t vote in Republican primaries, so whatever the Republicans are gonna do is what they’re gonna do. I’ll vote for the Democrat against the Republican presidential candidate, and sleep well that night.
I’m glad you will sleep well that night. I’ve not slept well the nights of the last two presidential elections.
And I’ve voted Democrat both times.
Well, I just don’t put too much pressure on myself about it. What I can do is vote, and if I do that I’m all good.
I think the only time it’s been said in any serious way was during the 2016 Primaries. That’s why I asked. 
The chances of my state going republican isn’t exactly zero but pretty close. And our primary is so late that it has no bearing on who the nominee is. Kinda stinks not having a real say in who is president.
Yes, I’m trying to focus on the personal level as well. It’s not like I’ll be participating in the GOP nomination process so while I may end up having to live with the result, at least I won’t have to accept any of the blame. Who the Republicans choose is out of my hands. I’ll be voting for the Democrat.
To paraphrase a much more intelligent man, Trump will be done when he’s dead.
Which IMO is an entirely different thing from saying “we need Trump himself to run again because we know we can beat him”. In truth we need for neither Trump not DeSanctimonious to be a front runner, but alas currently we seem to be watching the makings of a coronation by default in the absence of anybody really normal being even within sight of the race.
My mention of having already given up is in reference to what I perceive as some people’s despair that a “like Trump, but a serious person” candidate would be somehow an inevitable winner and then all will be over.
Maybe I’m expressing myself poorly.
I feel a big problem is how people are focused too much on Donald Trump (who I’ll admit is the worst president we’ve ever had). This may cause some people to see the goal as keeping Trump from re-entering the White House. And if so, these people can decide the job’s over and the country is safe on the day Ron DeSantis gets the nomination. Having won the war, the army will disband and go home.
I feel this is wrong. The war is not about defeating Donald Trump. The war is about defeating the entire Republican party and what it has become.
There is a normal candidate in this race: Joe Biden. He’s not prefect but he’s doing a competent job. He’s certainly doing a far better job than any Republican who’s anywhere on the horizon. So regardless of who the Republican nominee is - Trump, DeSantis, Abbott, Pence, Cruz, Youngkin, Haley, Scott, Satan - we need to mobilize all our resources to defeating them and protecting the country.
This won’t be a quick war. Because we’re going to need to fight again in 2026 and 2028 and 2030. We need to keep fighting and defeating Republicans until the party gives up and commits the fundamental reforms it needs to turn itself into a sane political party again.
We’re largely in the same place: the point should be to defeat the Republican no matter who it is or what style they bring, and we should neither be hoping they make it easy by doing something stupid (because we’ve seen that backfire), nor dreading that a competent authoritarian will be able to just steamroll everything.
Hell, we should have all along been preparing to face a competent authoritarian, it always “could happen here”.
Even now, on these very boards, there are people posting things like, “American democracy has always been fine; I refuse to accede to another round of panic about democracy being in danger. I’ll believe it when I see it.”