What comes next in the management of Ron DeSantis is predictable. I know these guys. This is what I call the Alex Castellanos shift.
After failure to launch on the original strategy, team DeSantis organized a crisis intervention last Sunday. What comes next is entirely predictable. The people managing Ron DeSantis will now shift to the Alex Castellanos approach. Christine Pushaw and her bitter hate approach will be distanced, and she’s told to get quiet. The tone of the influencers will be told to soften immediately and follow the candidate.
Here comes the BIG HUG!
The managers will likely use the pre-planned CNN interview with Jake Tapper as the launch vehicle to shift Ron DeSantis into the mode where he praises Donald Trump (the hug). You might even hear phrases like “without him, I wouldn’t be governor,” and “look, what they did to President Trump is unfair and unwarranted.”
The shift will be strategic and intended to portray a softer, more deliberate and professionally demure Ron DeSantis sympathetically. Neutering the confliction between himself and the campaign target, Donald Trump. DeSantis will be trained to speak warmly, perhaps even effusively about President Trump, while reinforcing his agreement and opposition to the unfair DC attacks against the former President and frontrunner.
DeSantis will affirm the wrongful nature of the current DOJ targeting. Then, after affirming the wrongful nature of the Deep State effort to attack Trump, DeSantis will then tack to a position of saying ‘but here’s the deal.’ ‘While Trump was unfairly attacked by all of the DC mechanisms that are corrupt and wrong, and there were dozens of examples of that hatred we could rightly discuss, I’m the guy who can hold them accountable and target the enemies who attacked him.’
In this approach Ron DeSantis positions himself as the professional, strategic ‘white knight‘, who will combat the deep state machinery and deliver retribution because he is not emotionally attached to it. He’s the deep strategist who will defeat the Deep State with smarter maneuvers, less words, a sharper approach and better qualified people.
Factually, if he ever wanted a chance, this is how the DeSantis campaign should have started. However, their authentic campaign approach – the approach they believe in – didn’t work. Now the Brutus approach as outlined by Alex Castellanos comes out, “snuggle up real close and wait to shiv him in the ribs.”
Watch, you’ll see it.
An approach that gently shifts away from antagonism and combat into an approach that contains praise, even effusive praise, as a strategic move.
It won’t be subtle, it will be obvious to those looking for it, but it will be different. The problem they have is the same problem with the original launch, the shift is fake, inauthentic and transparently purposeful.
Watch and you will see the Big Hug play roll out….
…. But keep in mind, it’s all an act!
