Anti-Trump conservatives -- and some conservatives who aren’t against Trump -- have the impression that if the Republican Party nominates Ron DeSantis for president that Democrats, the establishment, the Left, and corporate media (the “Alliance”) won’t go after the Florida governor with the same hate and dishonesty they aimed at Donald J. Trump.

Conventional wisdom, this be, in many conservative circles -- and entirely off the mark.  Anyone on this side of giggly Alvin Bragg should know better.

The CW is often heard as a reason why DeSantis would be the superior GOP nominee: “He’s not Trump.”  The Alliance isn’t as hep to destroy DeSantis as it is to destroy Trump.  The Florida governor, we hear, avoids personal dustups.  Twitter wars were Trump’s bag, though Trump is long gone from Twitter and has dramatically dialed back the public spats. 

The Florida governor aims squarely at the issues, politically and culturally, but steers clear of the nasty one-on-one catfights.  Disney isn’t about personalities.  Disney is a corporate heavyweight that DeSantis is knocking in line.  As long as DeSantis focuses on issues, why, we can expect a cleaner 2024 national election.  Keep it clean, because whatever cheating indulged by the Alliance -- expect it -- DeSantis has a fighting chance to win.        

This assumption isn’t just naïve, it’s foolhardy, because it means too many people on our side fail to grasp who the other side is and what they want.  It’s really simple.     

The Alliance wants power.  It doesn’t want to share.  It doesn’t want another Trump term, for certain, because it knows Trump will take no prisoners.  Forty-eight months of Trump might upend everything Democrats, the Left, and establishment have gained and thwart their efforts to grab more power.  Their impulses are totalitarian.   

Biden’s cockeyed, corrupt administration is just the opening act in crushing our rights and ending liberty.  Examples of our constitutional rights being trampled in just the 27 months since figurehead Joe Biden “won” the presidency abound.  The FBI’s transformation into a knockoff Gestapo doesn’t convince us of the Alliance’s intentions?  The methodical choking off of U.S. domestic conventional energy production?  Our southern border, stripped of protections by administration watercarrier, Alejandro Mayorkas, in accord with low political aims and a globalist worldview?   

The Russia-Ukraine War, which recent revelations prove is a web of lies.  A war to what end?  In part, so Ukrainian elites can skim U.S. taxpayer-funded aid meant for the Ukraine’s losing war effort?  The military/industrial complex gets rich, anyway.  Are there kickbacks to other powerful American interests?  Russia is resource-rich.  You don’t think there aren’t powerful interests in the U.S. that want to get its hands on Russia’s natural wealth?    

The Alliance has its fair share of Jack Sparrow cutthroats.  Mercenaries who love power and the feel of money in their cold hands. 

Then there are the true believers.  Many would have been perfect Jim Jones’ acolytes.  God -- the real God, creator of the universe, humanity, and the bugs that Bill Gates and Klaus Schwab want to force us to eat -- has been kicked to the curb.  Their idol is power, and these true believers long to possess godlike power -- or believe they will once we submit.  They’re an assortment of affluent oddballs, neurotics, and worse.  They desire power to bend our lives to their will.

For the recalcitrant -- for those who don’t yield -- cancellation via some version of communist China’s evolving social credit system awaits.  Can gulags be far behind?

Bend -- or be broken.  Submit -- or be trampled.  Totalitarians don’t just want your quiet compliance.  They demand your enthusiastic conformity… your full participation in whatever is the madness-of-the-day.        

Transgenderism, child mutilation, abortion, including up to the time of birth, and sexual indoctrination of children in schools are portals to even greater madness… through the abuse of the most innocent and vulnerable among us, no less. 

They lust for power to drag us into their madness.      

Marx may not be God, but to the power-hungry, he’s a prophet -- a herald who called for the complete destruction of traditional societies.  Rule over the ruins, if necessary.  Marx was first among modern Germans whose power-infatuation has spread destruction and death.  Marx, whose powerlust has infected millions.  

We once thought Americans were largely immune from this gross powerlust… this desire to conquer and rule fellow Americans… to drag countless souls into madness.  We’re learning the bitter lesson that there is no American exceptionalism, not in this critical regard.  We’re seeing this powerlust wed to the darkest, most destructive isms playing out in our country and directed toward us. 

So, why do we think that DeSantis won’t be every inch the target as GOP presidential nominee that Trump would be?      

Trump, say his conservative detractors, picks nasty personal fights, holds very public grudges, and, once the bone is in his teeth, doesn’t let up.  So needlessly distracting.  If 45 had just keep his mouth shut and stayed on issues.  If he had just focused, laser-like, on governance and policy during his term, the enemy (what else are they, really?) wouldn’t have been so passionate about lying and inventing ways to criminalize him and remove him from office.

But getting Trump has never been about optics and his approach.  It’s never been about his being off-putting.  It’s been about his opposition to the Alliance arrayed against not just him, but against traditional America.  It’s the threat he and millions of Americans present to an elite who intend to acquire power over our lives whatever the means and costs.     

Even if President Trump came across like Tim Scott -- a decent man but about as tough as a marshmallow -- while pursuing the same agenda and governance, the Alliance would have worked overtime to eviscerate him.  They’d do the same thing to GOP nominee and President DeSantis, because either man is an obstacle to their realizing total domination.

DeSantis, you still believe, won’t be treated as badly as Trump? 

Despite Trump’s narrative about DeSantis, DeSantis has been an effective Florida governor -- too effective.  He’s gone after the Left -- and not just in government and governance -- but culturally.  DeSantis has bagged the smut-peddlers in public primary and secondary education, signed into law a heartbeat measure, and is going after a Hollywood purveyor of degenerate culture, Disney.  And there’s much, much more.  Normal, God-fearing, freedom-loving Floridians back DeSantis and gave him a resounding, historic election victory last November.  Blue Staters, in particular, are fleeing to Florida. 

That’s why DeSantis will be “Trumped” if he’s the Republican nominee for president. 

As the Guardian headline makes clear (April 10):  “Fewer pronouns, more guns: Ron DeSantis’s plan to turn the US into Florida.”

The Guardian quotes DeSantis from his book:    

“What Florida has done is establish a blueprint for governance that has produced tangible results while serving as a rebuke to the entrenched elites who have driven our nation into the ground,” DeSantis writes in The Courage to Be Free.

The Alliance doesn’t intend to give DeSantis the opportunity to bring Florida values and culture to the nation through governance from Washington, any more than they’ll cede an election to Trump, permitting him to upend the Washington establishment.  They’ll simply invent ways to tar and feather DeSantis, the man.    

A DeSantis presidency -- like a Trump presidency -- is unacceptable to the Alliance.  The Alliance may fear Trump a little more, in that as a one-term president (Trump would be barred from succeeding himself), he has every reason to make his four years in office about defeating the Alliance and radically reforming Washington. 

But, don’t kid yourself, both Trump and DeSantis are poison pills.  Trump shouldn’t be disqualified for the acrimony he generates from the unholy Alliance we’re up against.  DeSantis will fare no better.  Back the nominee you believe will best defeat the growing totalitarianism in our midst.    

J. Robert Smith can be found regularly at Gab @JRobertSmith.  He also blogs at Flyover.  He’s recently returned to Twitter.  His Twitter handle is @JRobertSmith1

Image: Aaron Scheibner