Is It Too Much To Expect The Voting Public To Pull The Plug On The GOP Next Year?

Republican Politicians And Their Policies Are Widely Unpopular

After Republicans did so badly on Tuesday— Jacksonville, Colorado Springs and scattered state legislative races— a truism was generated by the media that the party is on a downward spiral because of abortion and, in some circles, because of that party's new authoritarian bent. Aaron Blake noted that the Republicans “haven’t really had a good election day since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade 11 months ago.” Democrats are overperfomlng, and Republicans… at best, are in a slump, at worst in decline. The ultra-conservative and very partisan Republican Supreme Court is more disliked and distrusted by the American public than any Supreme Court in at least 50 years.

Blake reported that “In Pennsylvania, Democrats held the 163rd state House district, which crucially restored their majority in the chamber. In both that and another state legislative race, they slightly underperformed President Biden’s numbers in those districts but overperformed Hillary Clinton’s 2016 results… Elsewhere, Democrats continued to overperform the 2020 results. In a special election for a Kentucky state Senate district, Democrats slightly improved upon both their 2016 and 2020 presidential performances. And in a New Hampshire state House district, a 27-point Biden district delivered a 43-point win… Democrats have overperformed the 2020 presidential results by an average of six points across 18 state legislative races this year. (And again, that was a good election for them.) They’ve also beaten their 2016 margins by an average of 10 points. And that doesn’t include the highest offices on the ballot thus far in 2023. In a crucial Wisconsin state Supreme Court race, the Democratic-aligned candidate won by 11 points, ending 15 years of conservative control of the court. And in the only special congressional election of 2023 so far, in Virginia, Democrats beat their 2020 margin by double digits.”

What’s the magic sauce and will it hold? Blake reminds his readers that “special elections have historically provided significant clues about where things stand, especially when you look at them holistically rather than analyzing one or two high-profile contests. More than anything, though, the 2023 results thus far look a lot like the special election results occurring after Roe was overturned in June 2022. Republicans had been overperforming in special elections before that date, but afterward the trend flipped on a dime. Democrats overperformed their 2020 margins in all five special congressional elections held between that date and midterm Election Day, by an average of more than five points— similar to their six-point improvement in state legislative races so far in 2023.”

Meanwhile, Zach Basu made much the same point, noting that “In the 11 months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, Republicans have underperformed in federal, judicial, statewide and local elections across the country. Abortion isn’t the only factor driving their election woes, especially in local races. But a toxic party brand can easily trickle down-ballot, and the GOP so far hasn't been able to navigate the voter backlash… Across 18 state legislative races held this year, including yesterday, Democrats have outperformed the 2020 presidential results by an average of six points.”

Worse yet for the GOP, “In Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election last month, a liberal judge defeated the conservative candidate by 11 points in a race defined by abortion rights… [A]bortion is a proven electoral vulnerability for Republicans— and there's a strong chance it gets worse.”

• North Carolina Republicans voted last night to override Gov. Roy Cooper's veto of a 12-week abortion ban, using their razor-thin supermajority to turn it into law.

• Former President Trump, who is in a battle with DeSantis over whether Florida's six-week abortion ban is too harsh, boasted today: "I was able to kill Roe v. Wade."

• President Biden seized on Trump's remarks, tweeting: "That's about as clear as it gets. Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans are responsible for killing Roe v. Wade. And if you vote for them, they’ll go even further."

If the DCCC doesn’t force GOP-lite candidates and corrupt slime (like Rudy Salas and Adam Gray) onto the ballots, the Democrats are certainly going to flip the House next year. The Republicans have done badly enough with Trump as its frontman. And as hard as it is to imagine, DeSantis won’t be any better— and could even be worse!

Go ahead, click on it

Yesterday, Time published a Meatball-friendly essay by Molly Ball, The DeSantis Project in which she notes that in Tallahassee, Meatball Ron’s “dominance is hard to overstate. From school-board meetings to the Walt Disney Corp., the shelves of elementary-school libraries to local mask ordinances, everything bears his stamp… DeSantis has manipulated levers of power to enact a sweeping agenda. The week I landed in Tallahassee, he signed an expansive school-voucher law and a measure investing more than $700 million in affordable housing. The legislature was hearing his proposed ban on gender-affirming health care for minors, a bill to expand gun rights that would allow concealed carrying of firearms without a permit, another that would dramatically curtail union rights, and a bid to prohibit socially conscious investing. All would eventually pass. At DeSantis’ behest, legislators this year also eliminated diversity programs at public universities, made it easier to sentence criminals to death, and barred schools from using trans students’ preferred pronouns.” A different perspective. This is Trump's just-launched corny new ad about DeSantis, running on Fox and Newsmax nationally and on broadcast TV in Iowa and NewHampshire:

DeSantis may call what he’s creating “the Free State of Florida,” but what he’s doing is taking away people’s rights and freedom. It took a while, but more and more people are looking at DeSantis and seeing a fascist. He’s an American Mussolini. “Out of a combination of fear and mutual interest,” she wrote, “legislators have put aside their own pet projects to do DeSantis’ bidding, passing bills to shield his travel records from the public and allow him to run for President without resigning the governorship. They’ve also been enlisted to clean up his messes, retroactively legalizing his migrant flights to Martha’s Vineyard last year and attempting to restore state control of the special tax district around Disney World amid the company’s feud with DeSantis over LGBT rights. ‘This governor has used all of his powers to make sure everyone around him is in lockstep,’ says Jeff Brandes, a libertarian-leaning former GOP state senator who lost a seat on a prized committee after clashing with DeSantis over fiscal issues.”

If critics see DeSantis as a would-be authoritarian, allies see a conservative who gets things done. Many predicted that his hard-charging first term in office would provoke a backlash. Instead the opposite occurred. While Republicans across the country struggled last November, DeSantis romped to a 19-point re-election victory, the biggest win for a Florida governor in decades. What was once America’s paradigmatic swing state now pulsates bright red. For the first time in modern history, registered Republicans outnumber Democrats. The people of Florida seem to like the steady hand—even if it’s an iron fist.

…DeSantis’ methods of keeping the legislature in line are not subtle. At one point, a Republican lawmaker was planning to oppose a DeSantis-backed bill until he got a phone call from the governor, who had helped the lawmaker get elected. Without preliminaries, DeSantis barked into the phone, “Do you know why you’re here?”

“Yes,” the startled lawmaker answered. Without saying another word, the governor hung up, two people familiar with the incident told me. Message delivered.

…Favor-trading was not DeSantis’ style; loyalty was not necessarily returned. At the end of one legislative session, he proceeded to theatrically veto budget priorities of the legislative leaders standing alongside him on the stage.

When it came time to redraw the state’s congressional districts in 2022, legislators proposed a new map that largely preserved the delegation’s balance. A voter-approved constitutional amendment prohibited partisan gerrymandering and sought to protect minority districts, and lawmakers were wary of being slapped down by the courts if they went too far. But DeSantis had read the relevant laws and precedents, and in January 2022 he proposed his own map, which eliminated a majority-Black district in north Florida and gave the GOP a shot at up to four additional seats in Congress.

None too keen on this attempt to usurp their traditional responsibility, legislators ignored DeSantis and passed their own map instead. DeSantis vetoed it. At the same time, he let it be known that Senate president Wilton Simpson, who was running for agriculture commissioner, might not get his endorsement if he didn’t go along. Finally, the legislature relented and passed DeSantis’ map. A few days later, DeSantis endorsed Simpson, and another Republican candidate who had been running for the post dropped out. (The map, which governed the 2022 elections, still faces court challenges.)

The redistricting fight was pure DeSantis. “He did that single-handedly—nobody pushed him—and he was relentless,” one current GOP lawmaker told me. Brian Ballard, a powerhouse lobbyist in Tallahassee and D.C. and an ally of both Trump and DeSantis, says the gambit cemented his dominance. “The [state] senate didn’t lay down for him at first. But he showed he was able to use his political popularity in a way that previous governors had not, and it’s brought him incredible power.”

…DeSantis passed down a list of more than 40 legislative priorities and pushed the lawmakers to get started early. Twice before the official March kickoff, he called special sessions to knock out priorities that could have waited, like insurance reform.

Tallahassee observers believe the flurry was choreographed to tee up the launch of a presidential bid that will place his policy record at its center. But unlike the legislative session, the pre-campaign has not gone according to plan. DeSantis stumbled on foreign affairs out of the gate, drawing harsh criticism for a statement that described Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute.” Trump has savaged him in personal terms. Some Republicans worry that DeSantis’ rush to the right on issues like abortion may come back to bite him.

Even allies wonder if DeSantis is cut out for the intense human interaction required in a national campaign. An April trip to D.C. to meet with his former colleagues in Congress ended disastrously, producing a flood of anecdotes about his antisocial ways on Capitol Hill and a slew of new congressional endorsements for Trump. The same bunker mentality that has made DeSantis more feared than loved, enabling him to shut out distractions and dismiss the naysayers, has created an insular operation struggling to do the outreach a presidential campaign requires. His stiff-arming of mainstream media has made it difficult to regain control of the narrative. And Trump’s political rise would seem to show that policy, substance, and governing experience may not count for much in today’s GOP.

But those who have had a front-row seat to DeSantis’ transformation of his state know better than to underestimate him. In his presidential run, allies say, will draw on his Florida record to argue he is both more effective and more electable than Trump. To GOP partisans hungry for confrontation but weary of losing, he offers Trumpian aggressiveness without all the baggage. “What got him here isn’t personality, it isn’t gladhanding,” says Iarossi. “It’s the relentless pursuit of conservative policies that have made Floridians’ lives better and led to a majority of registered Republicans. It’s the result of policies and governing.”