Prominent conservative politicians gathered this past weekend at the Republican Jewish Coalition Leadership Conference in Las Vegas, where Florida Governor Ron DeSantis shared his recent success as the nationwide model for Republicans moving forward.
DeSantis spoke on Saturday night, detailing the extent of his recent landslide re-election victory and his record that includes fighting coronavirus restrictions and so-called “woke” ideology.
“When you stand up for what’s right, when you show people you’re willing to fight for them, they will walk over broken glass barefoot to come vote for you,” DeSantis said, drawing a standing ovation. “We’ve got a lot more to do, and I have only begun to fight,” reported Bloomberg.
DeSantis won a convincing victory for reelection, which included winning the reliably blue Miami-Dade County, Florida’s most populous, by 11 points. He was the first Republican gubernatorial candidate to do so in 20 years.
“We had the conviction to guide us, and we had the courage to lead. We made promises to the people of Florida, and we have delivered on those promises,” DeSantis said on election night. “Today, after four years, the people have delivered their verdict.”
During his victory speech, he said that not only has the GOP won the election but has rewritten the political map. He added that “Florida is where woke goes to die.”
To date, only former President Donald Trump has officially announced his candidacy for a 2024 presidential bid. He already has many critics saying he can’t get elected, and is even viewed by some as the enemy to Republican success. Billionaire Thomas Peterffy, founder of Interactive Brokers Group Inc., who supported Trump in 2020, said, “The problem with Trump is he has so many negatives, he can’t get elected, period.”
At the conference, several speakers and a few attendees reportedly “called for the GOP to move on from Trump after candidates he backed performed poorly in key Nov. 8 midterm races — denying the party control of the Senate and governorships in key swing states and barely delivering the House.”
“We keep losing and losing and losing, and the fact of the matter is the reason we’re losing is because Donald Trump has put himself before everybody else,” former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said in his speech on Saturday, drawing an enthusiastic reception.
Christie, a former Trump ally, said the GOP needs to get its “house in order” by not being afraid to stand up to the former president and “against the lies, to stand up against the pettiness, to stand up against the self-interest.”
Even former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, speaking on the Republicans’ poor election results on Sunday’s This Week, blamed Trump for the tight races, saying, “The biggest factor was the Trump factor.… I think we would have won places like Arizona, places like Pennsylvania, New Hampshire had we had a typical, traditional conservative Republican, not a Trump Republican.”
Ryan added, “We get past Trump, we start winning elections. We stick with Trump, we keep losing elections.”
According to Jewish Insider, DeSantis spoke of his “Israel policy accomplishments and efforts to block campus antisemitism, and delivered a lengthy anecdote about baptizing his children in water taken from the Sea of Galilee. He also boasted that he was the first statewide elected official to hold a public event in ‘Judea and Samaria.’”
“Those [West Bank areas] have thousands of years of connection to the Jewish people and I don’t care what the State Department says, they are not occupied territory, they are disputed territory,” he continued, to strong cheers from the audience.
Other 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls who spoke at the conference include former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Michael Pompeo, former Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Senator Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.), and outgoing Maryland Governor Larry Hogan.
Nikki Haley spoke on the final night of the three-day conference, repeating a line she used at this summer’s Christians United for Israel Conference hinting at a 2024 campaign, before confirming that she is going to “look at it in a serious way.”
“I’ve won tough general elections and tough primaries, and I’ve been the underdog every single time,” Haley said. “I’ve never lost an election and I’m not going to start now.”
But it was Ron DeSantis who was reported to have been greeted by the most vigorous cheers and applause of any of the weekend’s speakers. And it will be up to DeSantis to implement his “blueprint for success” that worked in Florida to gain nationwide support when, and if, he announces his run to seek the presidency in 2024.
