José María Peredo Pombo, Professor of Communication and International Relations, took to the microphones of De Cara al Mundo to analyse the candidacy of the Florida governor

DeSantis, Trump and the Republican duel

El presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, escucha al gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis, hablar sobre la respuesta al coronavirus durante una reunión en el Despacho Oval de la Casa Blanca en Washington, Estados Unidos, el 28 de abril de 2020 - REUTERS/CARLOS BARRIA
photo_camera REUTERS/CARLOS BARRIA - U.S. President Donald Trump listens as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis talks about the coronavirus response during a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., April 28, 2020

José María Peredo Pombo, Professor of Communication and International Relations at the Universidad Europea, stopped by the microphones of "De Cara al Mundo" on Onda Madrid to analyse, in an interview with Javier Fernández Arribas, the future of the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, on the Republican ticket.  

 

What options does Ron DeSantis have a priori to be the Republican candidate? 

I think he has some important options. Since he emerged as a possible successor to Donald Trump after revalidating his seat as governor of Florida, he has appeared in the Republican party as a different option in terms of his age and the fact that he is from another generation at a time when the debate and uncertainties about Donald Trump's and Joe Biden's generation are on the table.  

I think he is a natural heir not so much to Donald Trump as to the ideas of that stricter, more nationalist right-wing; to the emergence of sectors in the United States that are critical of the policies of recent decades, more oriented towards internationalisation, towards the promotion of globalisation and towards that vision of the United States with a capacity for leadership abroad, but weakening, according to the criteria of this social sector, at home. 

Would DeSantis have more options than Donald Trump against a Democrat, who in theory would be Joe Biden? 

My opinion is yes, but it remains strictly an opinion at this point. That, first of all, would have to be contrasted a little with the polls that appear from this moment onwards when the candidacy is confirmed. So, we will have to see whether DeSantis does indeed appear as a successor to these ideas or not. He has tried to find a middle ground between traditional Republicanism and the options closest to Donald Trump, that is to say, on some issues he has distanced himself from former President Trump and on other issues, however, he has come quite close, especially in the judicial sphere. 

I would say that DeSantis' space is a space yet to be determined. If there were two traditional spaces in the Republican Party, one with a more economic-liberal orientation and the other with a more conservation and values orientation, the space that Trumpism has opened up has broken away from this traditional vision. Perhaps Donald Trump could be identified with the traditional Trumpism that he himself represents and Ron DeSantis as a figure who straddles this Trumpism and the more conservative options of Republicanism, while the third, possibly Nikky Haley, would be the candidate who in principle could represent this more economicist, moderate and liberal option within the Republican Party.

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