The Memo: Culture-war battles fail to deliver for DeSantis

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) keeps pressing his case on culture war issues — even though his efforts so far haven’t helped him rise above a modest ceiling of support in the presidential race.

That, in turn, poses the question as to whether former President Trump already has a lock on most of the conservative voters animated by those issues.

DeSantis is plowing on regardless.

Late last week, the Florida governor suggested he could take legal action against Bud Light’s parent company over the controversy centered around transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney.

DeSantis’s argument is that the corporation may have breached its fiduciary duty to shareholders — including Florida pension funds — in its marketing efforts with Mulvaney, which hurt sales.

DeSantis has also been hitting back hard at Vice President Harris in a furor over new standards for teaching Black history in Florida schools. 

The standards include a sentence asserting that students should be taught “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

Harris, the daughter of Jamaican-born and Indian-born parents, contended that it is offensive to suggest that there could be any “benefit” to “being subject to this level of dehumanization” under slavery.

Without naming DeSantis, she slammed those who she said would “push propaganda to our children.”

DeSantis excoriated Harris’s statements as “absolutely ridiculous” and “outrageous.”

The two separate fights are just the latest manifestations of DeSantis’s culture-warrior stance, a worldview encapsulated in his boast that his state is “where woke goes to die.”

DeSantis has conducted a long-running fight with Disney, which began when the corporation publicity criticized legislation endorsed by the governor that banned the teaching of sexual orientation and gender identity to young children.

He has blasted critical race theory, objected to the draft curriculum of an Advanced Placement course on African American Studies and defended the six-week abortion ban passed in his state.

Early last year, DeSantis signed the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” contending that, “We will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida.”

---

More from The Hill

• UPS, Teamsters announce tentative deal days before contract was set to expire
• Gaetz introduces legislation to end ‘unqualified’ birthright citizenship  
• Florida Supreme Court reprimands judge in Parkland school shooting trial

---

These kinds of stances should be red meat to the Republican base.

But the number of Republican voters rallying to DeSantis’s side is underwhelming so far.

DeSantis lags Trump by more than 30 points in the weighted national polling average maintained by data site FiveThirtyEight. His level of support — around 19 percent of Republican voters — is essentially unchanged since he launched his candidacy two months ago.

Some Republicans argue that DeSantis has made a strategic miscalculation in allowing his stance on culture-war issues to overshadow everything else.

GOP strategist Dan Judy argued that the Republican primary electorate is comprised of three camps, which he termed “Always Trump,” “Never Trump” and “Maybe Trump” voters.

The red-meat rhetoric, Judy added, “most appeals to the people who won’t vote for anyone but Trump. And leaning so hard into the culture wars has actually turned off some of those ‘Maybe Trump’ voters who are less comfortable with the anti-trans stuff, the hard abortion stuff. That has been [DeSantis’s] biggest strategic mistake so far.” 

There is some data to support this argument. 

A recent report from newspaper chain McClatchy noted polling that suggests DeSantis “has suffered steep declines in support among GOP voters with at least a bachelor’s degree.”

McClatchy cited a Quinnipiac University poll, among other pieces of evidence, that showed DeSantis’s support among college-educated white Republicans declining from 51 percent in February to 29 percent this month.

Todd Belt, the director of the political management program at George Washington University, argued that DeSantis is trying to make “the woke issue” his point of differentiation from other GOP candidates.

But, Belt added, “It is hard to pry people away from Trump with just that. It looks like he has pried away about 20 percent, and that is not an insignificant amount. But elections are about the future, and we haven’t heard much about that.”

DeSantis allies would dispute that contention. 

In broad strokes, his supporters say he has begun the process of laying out his agenda for the American people and that criticisms of the campaign to date are both premature and unfair.

DeSantis gave the first major policy speech of his campaign late last month, when he outlined a hawkish agenda on immigration. 

A memo prepared by his campaign earlier this month, intended to reassure donors and other supporters, highlighted what it branded a “No Excuses policy agenda” that will focus on the economy, foreign policy and how to address the threat from China.

If DeSantis wants to engage more on policy, he also has a tailor-made opportunity just around the corner; the first Republican debate is also less than a month away.

Still, it’s not as if DeSantis is going to drop his claim as the most aggressive culture warrior in the race.

The early July memo to supporters — reportedly written by campaign manager Generra Peck — highlighted DeSantis’s biography, his economic message and his willingness to push back on China.

But, it added, “Governor DeSantis is THE leader of the culture fight in America. We will continue to burnish his record fighting the Left who want to come after our kids and take over society via the ‘Control Economy.’”

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.