Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was the undisputed star of the first day of CPAC, delivering a speech that quite easily could be considered his first speech of the 2024 GOP primary.
DeSantis is a top 2024 GOP presidential contender, beaten only by Donald Trump.
This was my first time seeing him deliver a speech in person, and I’m here to tell you, Ron DeSantis will be president one day.
If Trump runs in 2024, he’ll be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee, but make no mistake about it, DeSantis will make it to the Oval Office eventually. Honestly, after his speech, there is a part of me that hopes Trump will sit out 2024.
Wait, what? Really? It’s true. I was surprised myself when I discovered that feeling. But it happened during DeSantis’s speech, and I can’t deny it.
Related: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis Gives the Roadmap to Liberty at CPAC
Believe me, I say this as someone who really wants Trump to get his revenge. But there is something more polished and disciplined about DeSantis that doesn’t send my blood pressure through the roof. However, when Trump speaks—particularly when he goes off-the-cuff—I often get nervous. What is he going to say? Will he put his foot in his mouth? As effective a president as Trump was, he often spoke more than he should have, saying things that opened him up to attacks unnecessarily.
Remember the daily COVID briefings?
With DeSantis, you get the agenda and effectiveness of Trump without the increase in blood pressure.
As a disgruntled New York resident, I often find myself envying those who live in Florida, who enjoy their freedom and love their governor. But when DeSantis spoke about the things he’d done in his state, I didn’t feel jealousy, I felt inspired. This guy not only has the right agenda; he knows how to get things done, and as much as I know Florida residents don’t want to give him up, I look forward to the day when I get to vote for him for president.
While many states are experiencing surges in crime because left-wing political leaders are letting criminals walk the streets unpunished, that’s not happening in Florida. “We are a law and order state in the state of Florida,” DeSantis explained. “We reject weak-on-crime policies. We reject Soros-funded prosecutors.”
“After the 2020 summer riots, we called up the national guard here immediately. We had law enforcement. We said ‘We are not letting Florida cities burn down,’ and we didn’t.”
“But we’ve also since then signed the strongest anti-rioting legislation in the country,” he continued, and the crowd cheered. “It says we will not let the local government defund the men and women of law enforcement and put their citizens at risk.”
Gov. DeSantis explained how his state won’t tolerate mob violence. He said that Florida was not going to be like Portland, where “they arrest you, take your mug shot, slap your wrist, and put you right back down the street to do it again.”
“Not in Florida,” DeSantis said. “You’re not getting a slap on the wrist. You are getting the inside of a jail cell.”
DeSantis also boasted about his efforts to ensure election integrity, especially during the pandemic.
“Florida has done more than any other state in the country to ensure the integrity of our elections,” he said. “We didn’t change the rules when COVID came; we followed the law. We counted 99% of the ballots by midnight on election night it was transparent. It was fair.”
“We did a good job, but we also understood there were a lot of shenanigans and other parts of the country. So last year I signed legislation banning ballot harvesting in the state of Florida. Banning mass mail balloting, unsolicited mail ballots in the state of Florida. And maybe most importantly, we have banned Zuckerbucks in the state of Florida.”
The crowd really cheered for that.
“Not gonna let tech titans commandeer the machinery of our elections by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars in for partisan purposes,” he added.
DeSantis has also shown that, like Trump, he can grow the Republican Party with effective conservative leadership and by creating a beacon of freedom.
“Now people are coming to Florida—yes to visit but also just picking up and moving,” he explained. “We have led the nation in net migration since COVID started. But, I can tell you this is not just because we have lower taxes—we’ve always had lower taxes. These are people who are fleeing leftist governments in this country and even around the world.”
“People will sometimes ask me, ‘Governor, all these people are moving here from blue states. Are they just gonna vote the same way and make our state a blue state basket case like the states they came from?’ Well, when I got elected governor in 2018, there were almost 300,000 more registered Democrats in the state of Florida than Republicans. And Florida has never had more registered Republicans than Democrats in the history of our state. Today, standing here in February of 2022, there are 82,000 more Republicans registered.”
DeSantis covered a lot of topics in his 20-minute speech and nailed every topic flawlessly. And he truly inspired the crowd.
If Trump doesn’t run in 2024, DeSantis has proven he’s ready to have the baton passed to him to lead the party and the conservative movement.