Well dammit, now even the highly esteemed Mike Walsh is missing the essential point. Or so I think, at least. YMMV, as always.

Ron DeSantis has made his first unforced error in his nascent, as yet still-unannounced, campaign for the Republican presidential nomination 2024. Even worse, he showed weakness – and that, in this late-Roman Republic political climate, is an unforgiveable sin. If DeSantis is not to be bullied out of the primaries by the raging bull elephant that is Donald Trump, he needs to do better, asap.

Not just no, but oh HELL no. Wait one while I get the turntable spun up for my broken record: RON DESANTIS NEEDS TO STAY WHERE THE HELL HE’S AT.

To hell with national (notional) “elections,” to hell with running for Prez-Mo-Dent, to hell with all that. If we should’ve gleaned but one hard fact by now from observing the whole “pResident” Biden clown show of a dumpster fire of a shit-circus as it crashes and burns before the eyes of the entire world, it’s that it no longer means one damned thing who might be roosting behind the Resolute Desk and posing for press photo-ops out on the White House lawn. The people who really run the federal goobermint don’t come up for election and/or reelection, don’t pose for pictures, and above all don’t care one whit about being responsive to the Will of Duh Peepul.

If DeSantis doesn’t know this full well, then he’s nowhere near as smart as I thought he was. I note yet again that as of right now, he STILL hasn’t said a damned word about running in 2024, other than that he ain’t gonna. I hope and pray it stays that way, and that he holds to it. If he does decide to run, it will tell us all about him we’ll ever need to know. This might not bode all that well:

Note I said do. Not talk. Talk is Trump’s realm, a world in which only words, not deeds, matter and the rest is just boob bait. The Wall, unbuilt; the Swamp, undrained. The 2020 election stolen right out from underneath him, and by perfectly legal means: they said they were going to do it, they explained how they were going to do it, and they did it. All while Trump was prancing and dancing at pointless rallies. Never mind: things will be better next time, we are told. 

Up until last week, action was DeSantis’s realm: taking on Disney, sacking Soros prosecutors, signing a sweeping school-choice bill, firing the board of the leftist New College in Florida and replacing it with sane conservatives not in thrall to the diktats of Wokism; the new board promptly canned its entire, useless “diversity” office. All these events were cheer(ing) moments for a GOP base long starved for victories unbesmirched by Jared, Ivanka, Jeff Sessions, or Stormy Daniels, as well as the promise of further bold, decisive steps to come.

DeSantis was also a rare voice of Republican sanity among the chorus of pro-Ukraine capons in D.C., led by Turtle McChao and Lindsey Graham when he correctly stated that the U.S. has no vital national interest in whatever happens to Vladimir Zelensky and his war-by-photo-op in the historic heart of Russia. 

While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them. The Biden administration’s virtual ‘blank check’ funding of this conflict for ‘as long as it takes,’ without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges.”

And that’s where he should have stopped. But the media, the warmongering neocons, and Mitch’s minions screamed bloody murder, buffaloing DeSantis into a near-fatal error: in an interview with British professional mediocrity Piers Morgan (someone no American political figure should ever speak with) he backtracked: and by so doing, dug himself deeper and deeper into the media Pit of No Return. Behold the peril of talking (at least as quoted by Morgan):

Writing in The New York Post about the interview, Morgan quoted the Florida governor as saying: “Well, I think it’s been mischaracterised. Obviously, Russia invaded (last year) – that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 – That was wrong.” The Florida governor, who is laying the groundwork to win the Republican nomination against former president Donald Trump for the 2024 elections, faced a torrent of criticism from Republicans for his remarks.

“What I’m referring to is where the fighting is going on now which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don’t think legitimately but they had,” Mr DeSantis clarified. “There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there. So, that’s some difficult fighting and that’s what I was referring to and so it wasn’t that I thought Russia had a right to that, and so if I should have made that more clear, I could have done it, but I think the larger point is, okay, Russia is not showing the ability to take over Ukraine, to topple the government or certainly to threaten NATO.

“That’s a good thing. I just don’t think that’s a sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement. I would not want to see American troops involved there. But the idea that I think somehow Russia was justified (in invading) – that’s nonsense,” he said. Mr DeSantis also added that he viewed the Russian president as a “war criminal” who should be held “accountable”. “I think he is a war criminal,” he was quoted as saying.

Mamma mia! As the old political saying goes, when you’re explaining, you’re losing.

Yep—a fact which one would think a man who had given Jurassic Media the back of his hand as deftly and as many times as DeSantis has would be well aware of.

Actually, the only real problem I have with what Morgan says Meatball Ron said above is the very last bit, about Putin being “held accountable.” Maybe so, maybe not, but either way that is NOT within the FUSA’s proper purview. At the risk of sounding like a rock-ribbed isolationist—a position, incidentally, that no lesser a Presidential light than one George Washington explicitly endorsed with the “no foreign entanglements” proposition from his farewell address—we have plenty enough business right here at home to attend to without futzing about overseas in other nations’.

There’s more, but as Walsh’s whole argument is built around the hopefully unfounded assumption that DeSantis will indeed run, I didn’t read it. These days, my only interest in presidential politics is poking fun at the Senile Stumblebum In Thief’s latest tumble down the Air Farce One stairs, and little if anything else.

Which, speaking of.

Yeah, Old Jaux has his palsied hands firmly on the tiller of the Ship of State, doesn’t he? Pfaugh, pish-tosh, stuff and nonsense, I say.