A desperate DeSantis courts a key GOP demographic: sexually insecure white males

For a Republican attempting the Sisyphean task of besting Donald Trump in a primary election next year, the options are decidedly limited. No one knows this more than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. It’s bad enough to be running against someone who can constantly belittle and insult you without ever fearing any serious repercussions, let alone retaliation.  But it’s worse when the only way to distinguish yourself is by trying to somehow co-opt his most pathetic supporters.

Despite his formidable record of performative cruelty in his home state, and despite his loud and public embrace of a wholly fascist agenda, DeSantis has thus far been unable to make any significant dent to Trump’s overwhelming popularity among Republican primary supporters. Still, flush with cash from at least 42 billionaires who would prefer the stability of a DeSantis to the mercurial and probably fatally unelectable Trump, he has to find some way to get people who matter — in this case, Republican primary voters — to actually consider him, especially in the event that Trump is a convicted criminal by the time Nov. 2024 rolls around (an event that DeSantis doubtlessly hopes and probably even prays for on a daily basis).

So, he puts out an over-the-top, inflammatory transphobic video, replete with interspersed “masculine” images, from oiled bodybuilders to gladiators.   He knows it will garner a lot of attention, almost entirely negative, from the mainstream press, but that’s OK. As Philip Bump, writing for the Washington Post observes, “Each time it’s embedded in an article from a news outlet expressing condemnation, two DeSantis staffers high-five.”  But successfully “owning the libs” with a sick video won’t do the trick for DeSantis at this point. He needs to make some semblance of inroads with the Republican base, or he’s toast.

Which is why the video (amply dissected on this site here and here) aims for the lowest of the low-hanging fruit as far as Trump’s base is concerned: The aggrieved, insecure, white male whose masculinity is acutely threatened by a world seemingly filled with LGBTQ people demanding rights and representation. The over-compensating, apparently embarrassingly-endowed men for whom a big and burly pickup truck and an AR-15 are essentially pacifiers for their tragically wounded sense of maleness. The ones who would dearly like to act out their fantasies of control and domination if a disgustingly feminized and “woke” society would only allow them to.