Ron DeSantis is learning that Tallahassee isn't the United States, the Yale baseball team isn't the major league, and Disney isn't the Republican establishment, what's left of it, anyway. Still, none of this may make any difference.
With one statement, read on Fox News Monday night, the Mickey Mouse governor managed to alienate every Republican above the rank of "voter." His statement, of course, was the imbecility that the Russia-Ukraine war lies outside of the U.S.'s "national interests."
When DeSantis conceived or approved that thought, what he seemed to dismiss was that it also lay outside his higher-level political interests. The Florida governor was riding high inside the party, accumulating support from leaders both unwoken and old school. Then he went and took a position on the war, which displeased everyone.
Especially, for instance, fellow Floridian Marco Rubio, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. "I don’t know what he’s trying to do or what the goal is," said Rubio disingenuously. On Ukraine, the governor is merely catching up with Trump's Dancing with the Tzars. simple as that, and of which Rubio is quite aware.
Said Sen. Lindsey Graham: "The Neville Chamberlain approach to aggression never ends well. This is an attempt by Putin to rewrite the map of Europe by force of arms." (Words cannot describe how it pains me to agree with Lindsey on anything.)
Sen. John Cornyn was "disturbed" by DeSantis's remarks. Former governor Chris Christie said they were "a naïve and complete misunderstanding of the historical context of what’s going on." And Rep. Liz Cheney, although she's a GOP outcast, correctly noted that "This is not ‘a territorial dispute.' The Ukrainian people are fighting for their freedom [and] abandoning Ukraine would make broader conflict, including with China and other American adversaries, more likely."
DeSantis even managed to piss off the Tucker Carlson Caucus. By omitting that he absolutely positively would send no aid to Ukraine, that congressional crowd is now berating him "for leaving open the possibility that he would keep up the flow of American assistance," as the Times reports.
The Times also writes that "Republicans in the foreign policy establishment [say he has] talked himself into a corner. Even if he were to change his mind about Ukraine, how would a President DeSantis rally the public and Congress to send billions of dollars and high-tech weapons for a mere 'territorial dispute' of no vital interest to America?"
That question is among the easiest to answer. Like American communists who toed the Stalinist anti-fascist line throughout most of the 1930s, then flipped to a pro-Germany stance in '39, then back to staunch anti-fascism in '41, President DeSantis would simply shepherd his flock into the Ideology of the Moment.
Republican presidents needn't be the most artful of political acrobats, for the base will emulate any backflip at the drop of a hat. Just tell them what to think and they'll think it.
And that's where Gov. DeSantis has the Republican establishment by the short ones. Sure, he may lose some enthusiastic support from this vestigial group. But he has the rubes — millions of them.