The GOPe trial balloon to pump DeSantis v. Trump for ‘24 failed so they are pulling back.
But at least one GOP operative — John Thomas, founder and president of the political advertising and strategy group Thomas Partners Strategies — thinks it’s better for DeSantis to wait than to try to challenge Trump in 2024.
“I wouldn’t advise him to go head to head with Trump,” Thomas told Insider. “It’s not gonna go well for DeSantis.”
Until recently, Thomas was independently readying a political action committee to support DeSantis running for president.
But now he predicts DeSantis would be unsuccessful if he tried to challenge Trump. If DeSantis were to run, he said, he wouldn’t have to just compete with Trump’s name recognition and donor network. DeSantis would also risk seeing what would happen if Trump’s followers suddenly viewed him as anti-Trump.
Right now, DeSantis is seen as not just pro-Trump but as being Trump 2.0, Thomas said. To run against Trump, he said, DeSantis would have to convince Trump’s core electorate to break away from him.
“Right now he can have his cake and eat it too,” he said. “He can be Trumpy and supportive. But he would have to argue that he’s better, or Trump is bad. And that is a fault line that is probably a bridge too far for the Republican electorate in 2024.”
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