For better or worse, Donald Trump appears to be the prohibitive front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. He has successfully Obi-Wan Kenobi’d his legal troubles; every case filed seems only to increase his power. The only remaining contender, Nikki Haley, is stuck watching the taillights on the Trump campaign bus fade away in the distance.
See Related: She Still Believes: Nikki Haley Insists ‘Momentum’ Is All She Needs to Turn Primary Around
So the question now is becoming this: Who should former President Trump pick as his running mate? It would have to be someone who brings something to the table, but primary among those considerations, since Trump is trying to Grover Cleveland his way into a non-consecutive second term, is someone who can pick up the torch and run with it in 2028.
Issues & Insights scribe Bob Maistros has a name to propose: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Why is Guv Ron the obvious and only choice? To start: despite his stumbling, bumbling, tumbling primary belly flop, DeSantis is a proven vote-getter on one of the biggest stages in politics. In his 20-point re-elect landslide, he flipped even fluorescent blue Miami-Dade and Palm Beach Counties and enabled his party’s U.S. senator and four new Republican House members to hitch rides on his powerful coattails.
Floridians especially appreciated his COVID-era doggedness, opening schools and businesses in the face of withering criticism. And even controversial initiatives – such as shipping illegals to Martha’s Vineyard and outlawing sexual and racial indoctrination of pre-schoolers – resonated with voters of all political stripes.
It’s an interesting choice, dogged only by the constitutional stipulation about electoral votes with both candidates being residents of the same state; that could be forestalled in a moment by President Trump simply relocating back to Manhattan or by buying a home in Tennessee, or Wyoming, or Texas. And while the vice presidency has been famously described as worth “a bucket of warm piss,” there have been VPs who wielded a fair amount of influence; in the Reagan years, George H.W. Bush had a fair amount of policy influence, having been chosen by Reagan in part because of his foreign affairs chops, which wasn’t Reagan’s strong point. Dick Cheney also wielded more power than most VPs during the Presidency of Bush 43, in no small part because he had no intention of running for the top spot, which insulated him from retaliation.
Ron DeSantis could certainly be such a vice president.
Which brings us to campaign job one: preventing a repeat of the 2020 vote-rigging by an admitted elite “cabal.”
Put the lawyer who kept Navy Seals in Iraq, jailers in Guantanamo Bay, and elections in Florida on the straight-and-narrow in charge of creating and implementing rapid response capability to:
- nip in the bud unconstitutional executive/administrative alterations of election laws and procedures
- sniff and snuff out “Zuckerbucks” initiatives to commandeer elections offices
- ensure mail-in voting is above board
- fast-track challenges to, and push for immediate, serious investigations of suspicious ballots and vote-counting activities.
- exhaustively document and compile proof of wrongdoing to counter the outrageous and vacuous “no-evidence” protestations that enabled the “Big Lie” narrative.
And, as suggested here previously, run through and prepare for the scenarios to implement the necessary and fully justified Free State Opt-Out if another election heist is affirmed.
Again, an interesting point; election reform is something a president should be able to confidently assign to a VP. Whether anyone alive has the power to drive it through Congress, well, that’s another matter.
The question, now, is this: Would Donald Trump want Ron DeSantis as his running mate? And would DeSantis take the job?
See Related: DeSantis Hits Out at Sununu Over Troubling Comments on Dems Being Able to Vote for Haley in SC Primary
No, DeSantis Did Not Take a ‘Swipe’ at Trump
It’s hard to say. Governor DeSantis may well choose to finish out his term as governor, which ends in 2026. He may not have forgotten the slings and arrows of Trumpian misfortunate that the former President tossed his way during the Republican primary, and Trump may not have forgotten the Florida governor’s rather tepid endorsement of Trump after withdrawing from the race.
And Governor DeSantis may just not choose to get involved in a campaign beset by legal problems, Trump’s Jedi-like powers of surviving attacks notwithstanding.
Ron DeSantis wouldn’t be the worst pick Donald Trump could make. Throughout the primary, he ran a pretty consistent, if distant, second place. A fusion ticket of the two may appeal to some never-Trumpers as well as many always-DeSantis voters, and, yes, there are plenty of both out there.
I think it’s a long shot, though. Donald Trump, as his history has shown us, values one thing above all else: Loyalty to Trump. He’s more likely to pick someone more firmly in the Trump camp. But then, as the saying goes, predictions are very hard to make, especially about the future.
