This is a totally freehand writing for CTH readers, not written with any intent other than our conversation.
For a long time, I have written various forms of an article and deleted it – crumpled it up and thrown it away… because it’s just so hard to write about.
However, an insightful comment by Dutchman today has just pushed me to write it. Unlike most writing, this is no notes, few citations, just thoughts.
You guys are having a discussion about Larry Hogan’s commentary to CBS News.
In the middle of the discussion, someone writes the familiar and common sentiment about Ron DeSantis, a reasonably decent and good governor, doing his big politically stupid run for 2024. Dutchman responds:
DUTCHMAN – […] “IMHO, you and others who express your sentiment, don’t REALLY “get it”;
The WHOLE reason DeSantis was the most popular Governor throughout his first term, was a CON;
EVERY action he took as Governor, was a political calculation planned and intended to create the image of “the free State of Florida” and RDS as “Trump lite”.
It wasn’t that “he changed” after getting the $millions, he was ALWAYS terrible at connecting with voters, a terrible campaigner, and he was NEVER MAGA; it was all a “PR.” or advertising campaign to create a totally artificial, and unconnected from reality IMAGE.
And it is that IMAGE that people “fell in love with” and it never existed.
This is important because if people don’t understand this, recognize they were “conned” and understand HOW they were manipulated, they will keep falling for it, every time.
However, once you understand your own vulnerability to being manipulated, accept you need to CHANGE how you view things, THEN you won’t need someone else (like Sundance) to point it out to you, again.
5 minutes of OBJECTIVELY looking at a candidate, will be about 4 1/2 minutes more than necessary, to spot the phonies.” (link)
Perhaps, let me take you back to the spring of 2022 in my thoughts, and show you just how subtle, weird and difficult it is to really understand the nature of this political world we are in right now. A political world where nothing is what it seems. I have been inside this research rabbit hole for over a decade, so bear with me.
[SIDEBAR – Y’all know how I dug, and dug, and dug, and dug into the GOPe after the 2012 election to figure out just how the powers that be are able to construct the illusion of choice. From that research I was able to drill down into the raw material, the stuff they actually did, that outlined the concept of the “splitter strategy”, which I then held in my notes until 2015 while watching for the replay. The work back in 2012 helped me to foresee what would happen in 2016, and like clockwork, it rolled out exactly as expected.]
In the winter of 2021 and spring of 2022, every Spidey-sense within me said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is setting himself up for a 2024 run for the GOP nomination. Every data point that I was looking at aligned with it happening, and that included the part that no one was paying attention to in 2016.
♦BACKGROUND – In 2015, when Marco Rubio filed to run as a candidate for the 2016 GOP nomination for President, then little known one-term congressman Ron DeSantis filed to run for Rubio’s Senate seat. WTF? DeSantis’ only real qualification to run for that Florida Senate seat was a big donor assist from the Club 4 Growth. CfG supported DeSantis in Congress, big time – and CfG was the financial mechanism behind DeSantis in 2016 to take the Rubio Senate seat if he won the GOP nomination. Just keep this in mind.
In the latter part of 2021 and early 2022, all of the obscure stuff in the background of DeSantis looked like he was being positioned to run in 2024.
It was January 6, 2022, when someone (Pushaw) organized that influencer confab at the governor’s office. However, and this is where my own intellectual bias comes into play at times defeating my cynicism, I kept telling myself there’s no way DeSantis could be so stupid.
No way, regardless of all the mechanics that were paving this path, that Ron DeSantis would be stupid enough to run against a likely reelection bid by Donald Trump. For over six months, I kept putting the human factor at the forefront and forcing myself to ignore all of the datapoints that indicated DeSantis was being managed to do this. After all, c’mon, he’s not a stupid guy…. I kept telling myself.
Even in July 2022, every time the thought crossed my mind to revisit this issue, I kept making the mistake of denying the data, denying what was visible, simply because the alternative to stupidity was almost unthinkable in scale.
♦The Alternative – If DeSantis wasn’t stupid, and if DeSantis was indeed going to run for 2024, the alternative to stupidity was a long-term plan… A plan that would have been laid out essentially before his first campaign in 2018…. A plan that times to the exact same moments when Paul Ryan and the other GOPe member of congress announced they were not seeking midterm reelection for Trump’s midterm race…. A plan that coincided with buckets of former CIA operatives running for congress in both the Democrat and Republican races in that 2018 midterm…. A plan that had Eric Holder working in California to trigger the first ballot harvesting test run….
If DeSantis wasn’t stupid, the alternative was that he was part of a larger operation being carried out by the real power brokers who control U.S. elections, the billionaire donors and control agents, ie. “The Big Club.”
Now, stay with me… Under this scenario, if DeSantis wasn’t stupid, then he was always a controlled ‘political’ operative waiting to be triggered and have his career boosted by the Big Club crowd who funded him. Names like Bush, Clinton, Cheney, McCain, Romney and McConnell all circle this controlled orbit.
The odd, and seemingly impossible, DeSantis registration to run for the Florida Senate seat of Marco Rubio aligned with this almost conspiratorial outlook; except it wasn’t based on conspiracy theory, it was just a big datapoint, sitting there – staring back.
All of the data aligned that way, but I kept telling myself to ignore it – because at a certain point human reason has to be placed into the analysis, and there’s no way that DeSantis would be so stupid. Surely, regardless of how much he was controlled and influenced, he -the person- would have the ability to say, “No, this is just silly.”
That said, throughout the spring and summer of 2022, 80% of the objective data, and even more when considered in historic context, indicated DeSantis was going to enter the 2024 election at the behest of the people who control the Republican National Committee, the Republican Governors Association and the various political fundraising committees in both the House and Senate along with PAC’s and Superpacs.
In essence, if DeSantis was indeed planning a 2024 White House run, then all of the datapoints reconciled. If he wasn’t going to run, then there was just a lot of coincidental questions that didn’t make sense in the activity.
When faced with that scenario, you apply the scientific method and try to prove the opposite of the thesis.
Could I prove: DeSantis was *not* going to run and was *not* under the control of the Big Club (Sea Island et al)? The answer was no.
Now it’s July 2022. The headlines were all about Donald Trump and the conflicts with the NARA over documents and presidential records. Something was coming.
I told myself to put away all of the DeSantis questions until that moment with Trump was triggered; then wait and see how he responds.
If DeSantis is abhorred by the outcome of the DOJ/FBI targeting of Florida resident Trump, then he likely was not part of the plan to use him. However, if DeSantis was not abhorred by whatever was being cooked up, well, that would tell a big story.
On August 8th, 2022, when the FBI raided the home of Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis sent out one short twitter comment from his “personal” page and then went fully silent and invisible.
Despite his extremely high Florida visibility, literally almost every single day of the year holding press conferences and media events, DeSantis went fully into a bunker after the raid, and for five days was completely silent and missing from the public. There was no opportunity to question DeSantis about his feelings on the raid.
Instead, the people managing the governor broadcast two pre-recorded video messages about innocuous subjects and never made a public appearance.
Simultaneously, the people around the governor restructured a newly branded national campaign, and launched a national tour outside the State of Florida immediately after the five days in the bunker. These tours are planned long in advance, so someone knew something.
Mid-August 2022, the national tour, the book, the media use, the change in tone and personality, the new branding message, the people visited for fundraising, all of it… carefully scripted, long planned and being executed on cue. All prior polling showed a double-digit lead in Florida. Democrats had pulled out of financing; the Democrat Governors Association didn’t put in a dime to support Charlie Crist, and yet DeSantis was banging a big tin cup raking in tens-of-millions.
Immediately, I said that’s it… that’s enough. The evidence is overwhelming… It’s August 2022, and its crystal-clear; DeSantis is running for 2024, and I was confident outlining every step in the customary sequence that would take place including the timing of his announcement to May 2023. It was all obvious.
But back to the scenario…. Back to the discussion y’all are having…. Back to my original thoughts in 2021….
….If DeSantis isn’t stupid, that means?
It means exactly what Dutchman has just said. “This is important because if people don’t understand this, recognize they were “conned” and understand HOW they were manipulated, they will keep falling for it, every time.”
It means Ron DeSantis was a Big Club operation put into play in 2018.
Start there, review the timeline, review the events and everything makes sense. Republicans are very good at creating the illusion of choice. They are doing it again, only this time they are failing.
