Meeting with bundlers, high-level DeSantis campaign aides repeatedly assuaged potential donors’ concerns over abortion access by alluding to what is popularly termed a general election “pivot,” meaning the candidate takes a position popular with the base in the primary and later softens it in the general to attract independent voters.
Via The National Pulse:
During the session, the hosts – including DeSantis pollster Ryan Tyson amongst others – can be heard lauding this a “major step forward for the Republican Party in moving to the middle [on abortion].”
There are a number of times throughout the leaked audio that DeSantis’s strategists can be heard telling wealthy donors: “You have to win a primary before you win a general,” – which is political campaign speak for “we’ll move to the middle after we win the nomination.
The audio from the meeting is embedded in the article.
Read Related Also: The Foo Fighters Finally Address Fans’ Biggest Question After Taylor Hawkins Death
The issue here is not about abortion policy; it’s that unseen, mega-wealthy donors influence politicians’ platforms behind closed doors. Aside from billionaires bankrolling their own runs, the candidates all — not just DeSantis — know that if they don’t get the cash, their viability takes a massive hit, no matter how innately talented they might be as politicians. The only glaring exception to this rule was Trump in 2016, who steamrolled the donor class.
For the twelve people who miss Mitt Romney and Karl Rove steering the party (or, more accurately, their donors steering the party using them as proxies), this assurance of moderation from the DeSantis camp is probably very welcome news. “The adults are back in charge,” as MSNBC would say.
Which is fine: the party will have this debate out in the primary, unless it intervenes to rig the primary against Trump or the Democrats succeed in one of their many prosecutions in an attempt to force Trump to run his campaign from a jail cell.
The 20% extreme minority of the base that feels nostalgia for the George W. Bush days are free to show up and vote for transgender activist Asa Hutchinson or whatever candidate the donor class ultimately coalesces around. Maybe that’ll be DeSantis in the end, as he’s largely viewed as the only real alternative to Trump, but even he is probably too populist for their tastes in his current posturing — which brings us full circle to this reassuring speech from the DeSantis camp reassuring them that he’s not too radical after all.
It’s eerily reminiscent of Biden’s pledge to the donor class in 2020 that “nothing will fundamentally change” once he got elected, which bore fruit. Nothing indeed has fundamentally changed — at least not for the better. The Deep State remains safely intact. Anthony Fauci was permitted to squirm away unscathed, free and rich and happy, and the NIH quietly replaced him with another Pfizer stooge. The Wall Street bankers who wrecked the economy in 2008 and will again are still doing business as usual. The bottom line for defense contractors has never been healthier thanks to the never-ending Ukraine war.
