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Is the G.O.P. the Party of DeSantis?

DeSantis is exhibiting all the unteachable culture war-stoking, MAGA flame-throwing gifts that Trump seeded in 2015-6. And the party seems to be tilting, in now perceptible ways, toward his approach.

Ron DeSantis
Photo: Paul Hennessy/Getty Images
Tina Nguyen
May 25, 2022

Every time someone asks me whether Ron DeSantis or Ted Cruz or Mike Pence or whoever has a chance of taking on Donald Trump in 2024, I’ve always offered the same answer: It depends on who best embodies MAGA, in all its chest-thumping, millenarian splendor. Admittedly, that classification can be a bit fuzzy. For the past seven (!) years, ever since Trump had a hat-branding brainwave, channeling the America First ethos has meant emulating Trump’s stage persona: who can write the angriest tweets, who can come up with the meanest nicknames, who has the wildest conspiracy theories, who can best suck up to Trump within the next five minutes and get a nice tweet in exchange.