You’ve seen his face everywhere in the past 36 hours as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis begins the process of his 2028 presidential election bid.

In the days leading up to the midterm election, DeSantis was putting himself at the forefront of predictive punditry in preparation for a negative Republican outcome.  Then immediately following the midterm election, DeSantis begins his national rollout using the national midterm election and the Florida outcome contrast as the springboard.

DeSantis has some of the best national Republican political operatives contracted to his administration. The downside to that professional system is that every DeSantis move becomes very predictable.  In his midterm review speech DeSantis uses the passive aggressive pitch in coded messaging to declare MAGA is dead via, “an extinction level event for” a certain kind of Republican. WATCH [the audio is challenging] 

Presidential campaigns are about two things, #1 The Candidate, and #2 The Team around the candidate.

One of the reasons why JD Vance rushed his response to the midterm election was due to his campaign team telling him to get out ahead of the issue and put distance between himself and Trump to mitigate collateral midterm blast damage.  However, the political team around JD Vance are not as good as the political team around Ron DeSantis.

The problem for the very good political team around Ron DeSantis is ‘the candidate’.  However, the candidate problem is also why we see DeSantis boosted by leftist media and political opposition.  CNN’s Jake Tapper also broadcast a DeSantis victory lap interview.

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DeSantis has a short window to go scorched earth on everything MAGA that he and the professional team behind him hate. The DeSantis team absolutely despise MAGA, that’s why the Never Trump are so attracted to DeSantis and vice-versa. This is the launch window for the 2028 contest.

You might note that President Trump called a fast press pool while DeSantis was making his post midterm ‘MAGA dead’ speech in Florida.  Trump wasn’t trying to interfere in the media blitz with DeSantis as much as he was trying to bolster JD Vance by taking some of the oxygen from the blitz.

Marco Rubio is not going to enter 2028; quite simply it doesn’t make sense. Rubio has the biggest golden ticket opportunity that has ever existed within the world of politics.  With a Rolodex worth billions, Marco Rubio will make hundreds of millions within months of exit.  I’ll explain more on that later.

That leaves JD Vance and Ron DeSantis to battle it out for 2028.  There may be others but that’s all just part of the ridiculous political games within the Republican SuperPAC industry and financial consultant class – the business side of professional political grifting.

For all intents and purposes, it’s a Vance -vs- DeSantis thing from here on out.

Vance has the younger tech guys/systems in support. DeSantis has the older tech guys/systems in support.   Neither will have trouble with money.

Vance has TPUSA and a network of influencers; many critical of Israel.   DeSantis has Club for Growth and a network of influencers; many aligned with Israel.

It will be interesting to watch these two camps compete against each other.

Let me finish by reminding everyone I am NOT AGAINST Ron DeSantis.  There are operational efficiencies that come along with DeSantis, and I have praised his execution in the past. However, when it comes to politics, his entire operation is transparent and predictable. We know what’s behind the doors of the DeSantis operation because everyone who has followed politics understand how that part of the institutional system works.  When he tries to pretend he is not political, he becomes a caricature of himself and the Republican apparatus because he is so typically political in most ventures. He’s awkward around ordinary people.