Is He More Than a Political Tim Tebow?

Tim Tebow was the storied quarterback for the University of Florida. He was the first unclassman at that school to win the Heisman and won two college football championships. But his style of play did not translate into the National Football League. Great on the field in Florida, he just couldn’t cut it on the national stage. This coming week, we’ll start to get a sense of whether Ron DeSantis really has what it takes to go the distance, or is he Florida’s political equivalent of Tim Tebow — great in Florida, but can’t translate on the national stage.

DeSantis is going to unveil his economic program. I am told it will focus on both decoupling from China and arguing on behalf of family affordability. I suspect we might see some credible arguments against the present administration’s zeal in overregulation and energy restrictions, both of which drive up the costs on middle class families.

Over the past few weeks, the DeSantis team has started a slow turn of a massive ship. Along the way, they’ve tried to become more nimble through a reduction in staff and repurposing staff. But they’ve still fallen into a culture warrior playbook that is starting to be both repetitive and iterative. There really was no good reason to embrace pro-abortion, pro-gun control zealot Robert Kennedy, Jr. as a possible pick for the CDC, which covets abortion and gun data control to advance progressive narratives. That would be putting the fox in the hen house. It was an unforced error that suggested DeSantis himself is too online. An interview with Russell Brand, a left wing pro-Russia advocate who just happens to be a COVID skeptic, luckily did not generate a lot of buzz. But really? DeSantis went from a highly regarded Jake Tapper interview back to scratching the itches of the online masses. He needs to be more on people’s televisions and less on their social media.

DeSantis has time and money to enable a complete pivot from culture warrior to middle class warrior. The prevailing consensus of his opponents right now is that DeSantis is personally incapable of pivoting from culture war to other issues. They believe it is both him personally and also a complete lack of message based on a presuppositions that DeSantis would just come in and crush the competition.

Are his opponents right? The last two weeks of pivot make multiple campaigns think DeSantis is going to Scott Walker this thing. They think he’s going to go back online and into COVID culture warrior of the anti-woke mode, a strategy that is getting him zero votes from anyone else, including Trump.

DeSantis now needs to offer up his vision of an America that works for the middle class, beyond the anti-woke. He needs to stay on that message. He needs to not be forced off that message. And he needs to be present in the real world, not just the digital world. We get it. You will fight the wokes. But will you fight the regulators and will you fight for the middle class? Roger Ailes famously reminded Ronald Reagan in 1984 that the man is the message. But who is this man now running?

The next week or two are going to tell us if DeSantis is just the political equivalent of Tim Tebow or the transformational candidate a lot of people presumed based on how he grew the GOP in Florida.