GOP COVID War

Maybe the central issue in Trump vs. DeSantis

IT should come as no surprise that the pandemic will play a starring role in the Republican presidential primary. Donald Trump served as commander-in-chief during the first leg of the fight against COVID, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ bucking of “Fauci-ism” vaulted him into the national political conversation.

And although the two candidates’ approaches were often compared in the spring and early summer of 2020, hindsight has revealed their differences.

As early as March of that year, Trump worried aloud that heavy-handed “cures” might be more injurious than the disease itself, expressing his sincere hope that the country might reopen by Easter.

He also occasionally lashed out at the face of his own government’s response team, Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Yet, as with any number of issues, Trump’s rhetoric could be contrasted with the substance of his administration’s policies.

Trump made fun of the then 79-year-old Fauci’s pitching arm and deemed his answer on school reopenings for fall 2020 unacceptable.

But Fauci remained in his capacity for the duration of Trump’s term in office, where he boasted considerable influence both within the White House and over public opinion from his bully pulpit.

Despite Trump’s tough talk, Fauci and other public officials who misled the public about masks and proved incapable of balancing the first-order effects of the virus with its second and third-order ones remained in control through January 2021.

On Trump’s last full day in office, he even awarded Fauci a presidential commendation.

In his stewardship of Florida, DeSantis exemplified a leadership style dissimilar from and preferable to Trump’s.

He mandated that all Florida schools offer in-person schooling to mitigate the foreseeable academic and emotional damage wrought by closures on American youth. He reopened most of the state by early May 2020 to avert economic disaster. And he took steps to protect vulnerable populations by ensuring that nursing-home patients who tested positive were removed from those facilities.

DeSantis also ensured that family members could visit each other during their final days and took a hardline stance against divisive vaccine mandates. All of this in the face of mercilessly shrill, near-universal condemnation from legacy media, too. For those who recall with horror how readily other officials dismissed predictable consequences from COVID rules and squashed liberties, there’s no doubt about which man offered a braver, more effective alternative.

So as the frontrunner and his closest competitor begin to trade punches, it’s the latter who can land the more devastating blow in the COVID round.

Will he? Last week, the DeSantis campaign’s rapid-response account highlighted Trump’s answer to a question from an Iowa voter who asked what Trump would do differently vis-a-vis the vaccine, given the people “lost” because of its widespread distribution.

“Iowa voter tells Trump ‘we have lost people because you supported the jab.’ Trump responds by praising the COVID mRNA shots, doesn’t acknowledge any of the adverse effects,” tweeted the DeSantis War Room.

This is dumb politics, and more importantly, just plain wrong on the merits. Whatever Trump’s failings — and they are legion — Operation Warp Speed and the vaccines it produced proved to be one of the great American accomplishments of the 21st century, preventing millions of deaths in the United States and tens of millions worldwide.

Yes, they are imperfect. Yes, like any medical innovation, there are side effects and risks associated with them. But no, they are not the cause of a statistically significant number of deaths.

The vaccines were safe and effective — and in the context of a deadly novel disease, they were not just an unambiguous asset but a godsend.

DeSantis’ attack on Trump reflects a working theory of his campaign: He must outflank Trump from the right.

It’s a keen intuition, but as in the case of the plodding, misguided statement the Florida gov offered to Tucker Carlson on Ukraine (which he later walked back), it’s not always expertly applied. There is nothing inherently conservative about rewriting history to malign the coronavirus vaccines.

It’s a tactic that’s all the more inexplicable given DeSantis’ aforementioned advantage.

He should remain laser-focused on the most important issues to the widest range of voters, rather than alienating many to appeal to a mistaken minority.

Over the last three years, DeSantis’ blending of message discipline with rock-ribbed conservative governance has made it possible for him to unseat Trump atop the Republican ticket. He can’t abandon that former ingredient if he hopes to succeed.