Branco, Politics

Can MAGA Light beat the real thing?

Posted on by Kelly McCarthy
AF Branco: What’s On Tap? 

Since way back in June 2015, no one in the Republican Party has known how to beat Donald Trump. 

At first, it was because they didn’t think that they needed to. Then it was because everything that they tried failed. He didn’t do things how they’d always been done. He brought the skills he’d honed from the world of business, the ability to do the next thing, not the old thing. Republican voters just kept on preferring him, and he talked to them constantly to make sure that’s the way things stayed.

DeSantis thought he was a contender. It’s widely known the Florida governor wants to put together a broad GOP coalition. With his deep donor base, a state success story, a high profile, the shutting down “wokeness” story, and a tough stance on immigration he thought he had it in the bag and the MAGA throne was his. And yet his poll numbers are sagging and Trump is surging in popularity.

Interestingly, after US voters registered their first choice, they were asked a follow-up about whom they would choose as a second option; the results below show where the supporters for a selection of leading candidates or potential candidates could go next. Here Ron begins to shine. Suggesting that if Trump were to lose support, or if DeSantis were to skip this cycle, he has enough of a following to make a go of it and eventually win a nomination.

DeSantis is not taking things lying down. He is campaigning hard and is gaining momentum in his uphill battle to face former President Donald Trump in the key red states of Texas and Iowa, recent polls indicate. 

The Florida governor has gained 14 points among Republican primary voters in Texas but still falls behind Trump as a nominee for the highest office. Trump is up 47% to 23%, according to a new poll of over 1,000 voters in the Lone Star State by the Defend Texas Liberty PAC. An April poll by the PAC showed Trump toppling DeSantis 54% to 16%. 

The MSM is anxious to show that Trump is an albatross around the GOP’s neck. Unlikely pro-DeSantis polls keep appearing where he is cleaning Trump’s clock. Never forget – that terrific as Ron is as a Governor – his presidential run has the full backing of the uniparty cabal of Bush/Cheney/Rove and their legacy of war and recession.