Becoming the Republican Nominee Will Not Be Easy for Ron DeSantis

Since the midterm elections, something just short of a consensus has formed that Ron DeSantis will be the Republican nominee for president in 2024. It is also assumed that along the way he will defeat Donald Trump and prevent the former president from winning a third straight Republican presidential nomination. This consensus is in part due to both smart Republican strategists, and there are still some, as well as center and center-left pundits, observers and journalists, wanting to believe it, albeit for totally different reasons.

Ron DeSantis’s Devastating Covid Policies

As the 2024 election approaches, we will hear much more from Ron DeSantis. His sterling educational resume and reputation for having a sharp intellect will be part of that narrative. There is ample reason to believe that DeSantis is a smart man, but that only makes him more responsible for the terrible and deadly decisions he made in the face of a global pandemic.

Restricting and Enforcing Interstate Travel

These two developments may seem to have little to do with each other, but taken together they present a very bleak picture of where the Republican Party, and the MAGA cult from which it is largely indistinguishable, are taking the US. If the Republicans continue to get their way, this will be a country where migrants are wantonly sent from state to state so ambitious politicians can boost their poll numbers and fundraising, but women who cross state lines will become targets of suspicion. That is a right-wing dystopic vision that would impress even the most cynical reader of Orwell or Atwood.

The Republican Covid Fetish

In recent weeks, the Republican Party has taken an even stranger, darker and more murderous approach to Covid. While their previous policies led directly to the deaths of Americans because they simply ignored the danger of Covid and resisted medical interventions from masks to social distancing to vaccines, current GOP policy essentially mandates that people directly or indirectly expose themselves to the virus and seeks to punish those who would like to prevent that.