Comment | The Republican infighting is getting fractious and very dirty

of the United States ahead of next year’s presidential elections, the Republican battle has started, in which the former president Donald Trump and the governor of Florida, who officially launched his campaign on Wednesday Ron DeSantis.

There are other candidates available, but now all attention is focused on this clear top two in the polls.

The fight takes place from an extremely uneven starting point and as if with two different rules. This is underscored by a campaign ad recently released by Trump supporters, in which DeSantis is accused of being a man “who sticks his fingers where they don’t belong.”

The election ad is coming From a story by The Daily Beast news site, according to which DeSantis would have eaten chocolate pudding directly from the jar with three fingers on a private plane flight in 2019. According to the ad, DeSantis sticks his “dirty fingers” everywhere, including pension benefits for the elderly.

Pudding eating with your fingers is certainly inappropriate for many. For others, it can be profane that it is Trump’s troops who hate to talk about dirty fingers.

Trump is remembered for the tape leaked to the public during the 2016 presidential election, with which he spread the word about how you can grab women by their genitals with impunity. ”Kun olet tähti, he antavat tehdä mitä vain… kouria pillusta, ihan mitä vain.”

Over the years, at least 26 women have accused Trump of sexual harassment and at least three of rape.

A couple of weeks ago, Trump received a verdict in a civil rights case for sexually abusing a journalist-writer. However, he was acquitted of the rape charge, but even a conviction for rape probably would not have affected Trump’s popularity.

Things are allowed from Trump that are not allowed from best friends or relatives. All-or-nothing fanatical and cult-like support is an extraordinary chapter in American political history. Even the most devout Christians are praying for Trump’s re-election.

DeSantis on the other hand, has to fight with the so-called old world rules, where a single blunder can sink the candidate into his starting scaffolds. Such an opportunity was available as soon as Wednesday, when DeSantis announced his candidacy as the Twitter boss Elon Musk’s in the audio broadcast.

The show suffered from an embarrassingly long stretch of technical issues that buried DeSantis’ message and launched a merciless chant of mockery.

The campaign opening brought to mind the 2004 Democratic primaries. A promising candidate in them Howard Dean lost all his chances in one squeal presented in front of the campaign crowd, interpreted as desperation, which was played non-stop by US news channels for days until Dean threw in the towel.

Incumbent president Joe Biden and Trump ran Wednesday to lash out at DeSantis’ ill-fated campaign launch. DeSantis’ luck may be that the actual primaries don’t start until next January, and by then the uproar will be distant history, unless it has already sunk his support.

Excitement In the battle between Trump and DeSantis, there are at least two reasons: each of the candidates seeks to appeal to the conservative extremes of their party, and the men were previously political allies.

When Trump ran for president in 2016 and his party was torn after a fractious primary, DeSantis appealed to Republicans to rally behind Trump. DeSantis also supported Trump when the special counsel Robert Mueller tonk the Trump campaign’s Russia connections, news agency AP recalls.

Trump, on the other hand, gave his presidential support to DeSantis when he was running for governor of Florida in a tight race in 2018. The men’s relations warmed to the point that Trump considered taking DeSantis as his vice presidential candidate in 2024.

However, during the 2022 midterm elections, the relationship between the two began to cool, when DeSantis did not express his support for Trump’s desire to run for president once more. Trump began calling the governor Ron DeSanctimonious, aka Ron DeHypocrite, and later accused the man of ungrateful mediocrity — a man who lacks “loyalty and elegance.”

The ad about the “dirty fingers” DeSantis is probably just a prelude to what kind of dirty bucket campaigning is expected in the coming months.

Democrats should be pleased with the Republican mud-wrestling ahead, but there is little cause for joy. The party’s problem is that it cannot find new faces for itself, when the 80-year-old Biden has announced his desire to seek a second term.

In addition to the fact that Biden’s age and sometimes his mental health are worrying, the polls show worrying signs about the general mood of Americans.

First, Trump is slightly more popular than Biden in some polls. The sitting president won’t be cheering either if DeSantis comes along. Republicans could also organize in support of DeSantis.

Although the meaning of surveys is currently largely entertaining, for example the recent one commissioned by Harvard University Harris poll indicates widespread dissatisfaction. In the survey, as many as 60 percent of Americans estimate that their country is on the wrong track, and 62 percent think that the economy is going in a bad direction.

A large number of economists a recession in the next 12 months. The atmosphere is darkened by the congressional fight to raise the debt ceiling and the concern of the US about a possible drop in the credit rating even in the coming weeks.

If the sentiments mapped by the Harvard poll were reflected in the reality at the beginning of next year, Trump would beat all the other Republican presidential candidates – DeSantis, Tom Scott’s, Mike Pence and Nikki Haley’s.

In the same poll, Trump beats Biden by 47-40 percent, which is a darker result for Biden than many other polls.

As said, currently, the assessments of the upcoming presidential elections are still mainly for entertainment. History knows that both Trump and Biden know how to win such elections when the time comes.