At the Republican National Convention, Ron DeSantis Gets a Warm Welcome Back to MAGA
Not long ago, Ron DeSantis is an outcast in the MAGA movement. But on the second night of the Republican National Convention, the former candidate Donald Trump beautified—showing loyalty to him from the campaign stage, as Trump sat there looking pleased with himself next to his running mate JD VanceRepresentative Marjorie Taylor Greeneand Governor of Arkansas Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
DeSantis received warm applause as he called for an end to what he criticized as Joe Bidenbelong to “Weekend at Bernie’s “President Biden is nothing more than a puppet leader,” he said. “He is a tool to impose a leftist agenda on the American people.”
“The left is in retreat,” DeSantis added, as the crowd rose to its feet. “Let’s make the 45th president of the United States the 47th president of the United States!”
DeSantis positioned himself as the heir to Trump’s throne when he launched his presidential campaign last May. But if he was a rising star as governor of the former president’s home state—and a vocal advocate for the MAGA agenda in Florida—his crusade to carry Trump’s torch has made him an enemy. call him “Meatball Ron,” “Ron DeSanctimonious,” and repeatedly attacked him and his character. The governor seemed too scared to fight back—and when he did finally doneBut that was not enough to revive his campaign. dropped out of the race in January, right after the Iowa caucuses.
DeSantis’s speech on Tuesday night was preceded by a speech from another MAGA exile, Nikki Haleywho received a more mixed reaction when she took the stage, with some boos mixed in with the applause. But she seemed to quickly win over the audience when she endorsed Trump: “Donald Trump has my strong support,” she said. “Period.”
Haley, a former Trump administration official, outlasted DeSantis in the primary, though she came in behind him in the first contest of the season. She pitched herself to relatively moderate members of the GOP as a more palatable alternative to her former boss. Did she really that thing Moderate? Not exactly. But at least she’s willing to go after a flagbearer who largely bypasses the pomp of the primary process, the way other challengers prefer. Vivek Ramaswamy And Tim Scott—now a prominent name at this year’s RNC—wasn’t. “He’s out of his mind,” Haley said of Trump at one point. She won just the primary in Washington, D.C., and Vermont, but she won enough votes to show some weaknesses in Trump’s candidacy. Like DeSantis, Haley has repeatedly found herself in the crosshairs of Trump, who has attacked her birth name with a racist criticism And mock her husband, who was deployed overseas at the time. “The most damaging thing he’s ever been in is if a golf ball hit him on a golf cart,” she said of Trump, in response. “I don’t care what party you’re in, that’s not OK.”
Like DeSantis, however, Haley eventually kissed the ring: She suspended her longtime candidate in March, declaring in May that she would vote for the man she had previously said would create “four years of chaos” if elected, and last week urged his delegates to vote for Trump at RNC.
“I’m here tonight because we have a country to save, and a unified Republican Party is essential to saving her,” Haley said, praising Trump and appearing to win back favor with his party.
For his part, DeSantis didn’t seem to need much effort to bounce back. That was clear from the warm welcome he received across town earlier in the day, at a town hall event organized by Moms for Liberty, the far-right organization that has been disrupting libraries, classrooms, and school boards. At the Bradley Symphony Center, he was a warrior for good, a model for other conservative governors—like Sanders, who appeared with him at the Moms for Liberty conference—to emulate. “They stand up for the values of common sense,” he said. Kerry FranceAn attendee from Washington state and member of the RNC rules committee told me about DeSantis and Sanders. “I love these people,” she added, before making it clear to me that she didn’t feel the same way about the media.
For two hours, the co-founders of Moms for Liberty Tina Descovich And Tiffany Justice rallying supporters they describe as “joyful warriors” in a “war between good and evil,” while also setting up plenty of villains for panelists like Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Florida Representative Byron Donalds to take down—from “transgender ideology” to the Department of Education, which Wyoming Rep. Harriet Hageman said she was working to “abolish it.” (Ramaswamy, who seemed to be everywhere at the conference, also called for the abolition of the DOE in her brief closing remarks.)
“We have to take away the power from Washington, DC,” Hageman said, drawing thunderous applause from the crowd.
But DeSantis and Sanders, who served as Trump’s press secretary, were the big draws, drawing applause as they took the stage. Sanders wore a pink suit. DeSantis wore the worst jeans you’ve ever seen, a blue suit jacket, and the awkward smile that made him so much of a parody of his unsuccessful presidential run. “We’re doing the right thing,” he told the Heritage Foundation president. Kevin Roberts about his crusade against all things “woke”. “We are happy”, he said, “to do it”.
