Key strategists from the Donald Trump campaign are shooting down the theory that Ron DeSantis can reboot his campaign as successfully as John McCain did 16 years prior.
In a memo, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita reject the theory that DeSantis, whose campaign is “marred by idiocy,” is capable of a modern version of the former Arizona Senator’s “2008 comeback” in which he revitalized a stalled campaign and won the GOP nomination (only to lose the General Election to Barack Obama, of course).
“The ‘08 McCain and ‘24 DeSantis ‘political reboots’ share one, and only one, similarity: Overspending and not enough fundraising. Every other metric one could look at just doesn’t compare.
“John McCain did not spend the opening week of his reboot explaining why his staff produced a video with Nazi imagery, and defending his comments that slavery provided ‘some benefit’ to enslaved Americans — while attacking black Republicans publicly in the process,” Wiles and LaCivita write, summarizing two self-inflicted wounds from the DeSantis operation.
The consultants also likened DeSantis to a flat soft drink launch from the 1980s.
“There is also no ‘value proposition’ to a DeSantis candidacy. New Coke fell flat after much fanfare, and studies showed that the more people consumed it, the more they disliked it. Does that sound familiar?”
There also is some wordplay with the ongoing “reboot” of the DeSantis campaign, juxtaposing that with a sortie at his stiff presence on the stump. Wiles and LaCivita say it’s “fitting that in the last week the word reboot followed by Ron DeSantis (or is it DEE-SAN TAS?) have appeared no fewer than a dozen times together, all across the country. It seems that this particular robot, however, isn’t turning back on.”
Much of the memo deals with polling, which has shown Trump outperforming DeSantis for months, noting that in metrics ranging from “electability” to strength inside the party itself, the Governor is in a weak position compared to the former President.
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