Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis looks ready to run for president, again. He wants to present himself as someone different from Donald Trump, someone who can criticize the president’s mistakes without concern of his own involvement.
Chief among those mistakes is the Iran War, a conflict DeSantis now says was a mistake. This line should help DeSantis as a presidential candidate. However, he previously supported the war and is a long-time Iran hawk.
I explain in my latest American Conservative column how this might prove a tough sell to the public:
In his previous presidential bid, DeSantis sought to distinguish himself as a stronger hawk than Trump on the Islamic Republic. This was a central theme of a speech he delivered to Christians United for Israel in 2023, for example, and it featured consistently in his foreign policy messaging. His campaign website promised to “turn the screws on Iran beginning on Day 1—abandoning the naïve, disastrous Obama-Biden foreign policies.”
The Florida governor even attacked Trump for offering mild criticism of Benjamin Netanyahu in the fall of 2023, saying it was “absurd that anyone, much less someone running for President, would choose now to attack our friend and ally, Israel.” DeSantis made this rift a major part of his campaign and kept hammering Trump about it. It didn’t work, with one Republican operative saying it made him “look like members of the Lincoln Project to the base right now.”
Can we talk about the many flip-flops of “JD”? Everyone else’s past views are fair game, but we are to totally ignore everything “JD” ever said or did prior to 2022?
People can change their minds, even have complete paradigm shifts. Jim Kunstler, Megyn Kelly, Lara Logan, Tulsi Gabbard all left the liberal reservation. Lindsey Graham by contrast was always a callow opportunist.