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While embracing a more conservative stance on some issues — including cryptocurrency regulation — DeSantis’s platform reflects the extent to which Trump’s policy vision has come to dominate the GOP, in a sharp break from party orthodoxy before 2016. DeSantis similarly hammered “elites” in Washington and Wall Street, mirroring Trump rhetoric in 2016 that the GOP had once rejected.
“We are today declaring our economic independence from the failed elites and policies that have harmed this nation’s middle class,” DeSantis told the crowd at a rally in the early primary state. “We are citizens of a republic. We are not cogs in a global economic empire.”
In light of how popular the former president is with Republican voters, some analysts said, DeSantis may be intentionally downplaying his policy differences with Trump.
A New York Times/Siena College poll on Monday showed Trump leading with the backing of 54 percent of likely Republican voters, compared to just 17 percent for DeSantis. DeSantis’s allies have argued that their candidate is more likely to defeat President Biden in the general election in 2024, pointing to the cloud of scandal surrounding the former president.
“DeSantis’s candidacy has been, ‘I’m the reasonable Trump — you don’t have to worry about the crazy tweets, but I’ll mirror him on the policy,’” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the conservative American Action Forum. “That’s what this is: Here he is just trying to match Trump.”
In a Fox News interview on Monday, DeSantis pointed to polling suggesting he would do better than Trump against Biden in Georgia and Arizona, while suggesting that Trump may not have the discipline and focus to execute a conservative vision.
“Voters will decide not only which policy proposals they support, but also who they trust to implement them. Donald Trump tried and failed, Ron DeSantis will get the job done,” said Andrew Romeo, the DeSantis campaign’s communications director.
Trump senior adviser Jason Miller said DeSantis was just imitating the former president.
“He literally cribbed almost everything from what we did with President Trump in his first term — down to the terminology, the language, the framing. It was quite remarkable,” Miller said. “It read to me like a ChatGPT version of how someone would try to recreate Trumpian economic policies.”
DeSantis’s platform does have some clear policy differences with his opponent. Unlike Trump, DeSantis is focused on stopping the Federal Reserve’s efforts to start a new digital currency, which the Florida governor alleges could lead to new government control of the economy. While Trump has expressed skepticism about cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, DeSantis vowed to protect them if elected.
“Biden’s war on bitcoin and cryptocurrency will come to an end when I become president,” he said.
DeSantis also leaned more heavily than Trump has on traditional conservative rhetoric around growing the economy by cutting federal spending. Whereas Trump’s campaign platforms have been frequently vague, DeSantis included some specifics about tax policy — such as allowing businesses to deduct the cost of short-term investments for machinery and equipment. DeSantis emphasized the need to fix decades of economic problems, an implicit contrast with Trump’s call to return to the economy under his administration.
“DeSantis’ economic plan is much more intellectually coherent than Trump’s … He’s trying to blend the nationalists and the free marketers” in the GOP, said Avik Roy, a former policy adviser to Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) who is now president of the Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, a D.C.-based think tank. “You see here a more advanced intellectual framework compared to what Trump ran on in 2016.”
DeSantis’s campaign thus far has often been defined by his “anti-woke” crusade, including his battle against Disney and a recent controversy over his attempts to rewrite the meaning of Black history.
It is unclear how much his economic framework will matter to voters. Attendees at DeSantis events in New Hampshire appeared more interested in discussing the Florida governor’s handling of covid than any particular economic policy proposal.
“DeSantis did a great job during covid,” said Eva Montibello, who previously supported Trump but said she was keeping her options open for 2024. “Given that his state has so many seniors and that’s how the whole United States is going just because of the baby boomer population, I think that it’s really important to have someone in office who has their eye on senior citizens.”
Wayne Sanders, 74, an independent from nearby Massachusetts who came to the economic policy speech, also praised DeSantis’s handling of covid and hailed him as a “sharp guy” who had attended Yale. Sanders said he agreed with Trump’s “overall views” but also expressed some reservations about the former president.
“His policies are good for America, good for the growth,” Sanders said of Trump. “And I think sometimes a little too much noise maybe.”
LeVine reported from Rochester, N.H.
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