Chris Hayes Says DeSantis Is Repeating ‘Failed’ Ted Cruz Campaign Strategy of Being ‘Extreme Conservative Jerk’
MSNBC host Chris Hayes compared 2024 Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis to 2016 candidate Ted Cruz on Friday and said DeSantis was repeating the “failed” strategy of being “an extreme conservative jerk.”
Reacting to Fox News host Will Cain’s interview with DeSantis, during which he asked about the Florida governor’s stagnant numbers in the polls, Hayes said, “To be fair to Ron DeSantis, it’s an impossible question posed by Fox News’ fill-in host last night, who has had his own troubles connecting in the past.”
Hayes noted, “There’s no good way for any politician to answer like, ‘What’s wrong with you? Why don’t people like you?'” before adding, “But that really is not the kind of question the candidate wants to be hearing at this point in the campaign, and on that front, DeSantis really does only have himself to blame for being in this position, polling 30 points behind Donald Trump six weeks after formally launching his bid for president.”
The MSNBC host said that while DeSantis had “made a career out of being the far right-wing king” and “the hardest core member of the MAGA army,” with his policies on LGBT, abortion, and immigration, such a brand could not be “broadly popular among the general population.” Hayes continued:
But also, there’s a precedent here he should think of, because others have tried this exact same model before and it failed spectacularly. Do you remember the disastrous presidential campaign of one Texas Senator Ted Cruz? In 2016 he tried to run on his record as, well, for lack of a better way of phrasing it, an extreme conservative jerk. In his very first year in office, Cruz helped engineer a pointless government shutdown, he alienated members of his own party, and fueled punchlines with his antics …
Cruz went on to stake out the furthest right positions on everything from immigration to gay marriage, calling the landmark Supreme Court ruling on marriage, quote, “among the darkest hours of our nation.” And on climate change, Cruz went so far to the right, he basically fell off the edge of his flat Earth.
He went on, “So that was the 2016 version of the Ron DeSantis playbook — be as obnoxiously right-wing as possible — and yes, Cruz did eke out a win in Iowa. Do we all remember that? He won Iowa, and he took on Carly Fiorina as a running mate, and he did look like a contender, sort of, for a little while. But in the end, how did the obnoxious far-right act work out for Ted?”
Watch above via MSNBC.
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