The press has gotten hold of the advice Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' team is giving the candidate ahead of next Wednesday's Republican presidential debate, and it is thin, thin, thin. It's not like the candidate is giving them much to work with. Bonus points to DeSantis for getting a whole Washington Post feature article written up about his cringeworthy campaign trail awkwardness a week before the debate. The memo's introduction, "Overarching Goals," sounds like an assignment in a beginner computer programming course.
Presumably Ron is supposed to have a little 3x5 card and a pencil so he can check off each instance of "state positive vision" as it happens. Can't leave these things to chance, after all.
The only interesting thing in the memo isn't even the product of strategists, it's a theory of politics that former Fox News head Roger Ailes once formulated and which shares no small part of the blame for civilization's subsequent downfall. The strategists want DeSantis to focus on "Roger Ailes' Orchestra Pit Theory."
Behold, the reason why modern political debates have few to zero actual policies being debated. Ailes emphasized that you want to avoid substance because substance will get you in trouble. Vapid flash is where it's at, baby. In fact, why even have debates at all? Give everyone five beers and record the resulting fistfight. Who the hell cares about pandemics and nuclear triads?
While you might think that DeSantis' super PAC is advising DeSantis to find a hole on the debate stage and fall down it, we're not so lucky. The next section lists all of the "Potential Orchestra Pit Moments" the consultants have come up with.
Really now? We're to believe calling a fellow candidate "Fake Vivek" is going to be the thing everyone's talking about Thursday morning? In the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump’s Orchestra Pit moment was an upchuck-inducing reference to his supposed penis size. "Fake Vivek" barely even counts as a tweetworthy dig.
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And since the memo has now been made public, Ramaswamy's campaign has already responded to that insult as if DeSantis had already used it: "These boring, canned attack lines from a robotic candidate doesn’t change that. If DeSantis struggles to use a spoon, I can’t imagine he is particularly agile with a sledgehammer."
Tee hee, oh, politics. How funny it is that the future of the planet depends almost entirely on which one of these assholes can best insult all the others. We may have a democracy, but we’re governed by aristocrats.
Number two is a suggestion that Ron faux-"defend" Trump from a Christie attack by telling Christie, "Trump isn't here so let's just leave him alone. He's too weak to defend himself here." Oh, what a zinger. They probably had every conservative comedian in the country all locked up in the same minivan and wouldn't let them so much as crack a window until they had arrived at what they thought was the perfect joke.
Number three urges Ron to "invoke a personal anecdote story about family, kids, Casey, showing emotion." Yeah, got it. Robot's gotta cry if Robot wants the audience to believe he's a Real Boy. And number four is a too-long proposed speech that basically boils down to "make sure you mention Iowa and New Hampshire."
There you go, that's the grand sum of the advice. It all boils down to, "Look, Ron, for the love of God, don't start debating your ideas because your ideas are godawful and everyone else on that stage will shred them like Dobermans fighting over a Slim Jim. You go out there and you throw three to five pies while calling Vivek Ramaswamy a name like you're both in grade school."
It's all terrible advice, but now DeSantis can't use it because if Ron does get up on that debate stage to do any of these things, the talking heads manning the post-debate commentaries will have their orchestra pit story: Ron DeSantis robotically checks off pre-debate memorandum passed to him by his super PAC.
Well, that's if they talk about him at all, of course. The odds of that happening are slim. What's probably going to happen is that they're going to have their little debate, and then Trump is going to weigh in with a misspelled social media post that announces that "Chris Christie is a Poop." All the political pundits will declare that Trump has once again won the day because who could ever top him when it comes to calling people names? Quick, make him president again immediately!
All of that aside, there might be a funny story behind all of this. You might assume that these new debate notes leaked because there's a mole in the campaign, or as the result of some journalistic super-sleuthing, but that's not it. Nope, they were just posted to the internet for all the world to see.
Specifically, the debate notes were posted publicly by a consulting firm attached to Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC DeSantis is using as a cut-out for much of his own campaign. That arrangement allows DeSantis to suck up a lot of dark money that would be illegal if it went to his campaign. The downside is that technically campaigns and super PACs aren't allowed to privately "coordinate" when boosting the candidate, so when the super PAC needs to give DeSantis advice, they have to do it publicly, hoping that the campaign takes their hints.
The New York Times says they were "alerted to the existence of the documents by a person not connected to the DeSantis campaign or the super PAC." Once they asked the super PAC for comment on the debate memo, it was hastily taken offline again. (After the deletion of the memo, the Times helpfully put it right back up again themselves.)
What that likely means is the super PAC quietly put the documents up quasi-publicly, not expecting anyone to find them, while perhaps surreptitiously letting the campaign know to go look for them. This would have satisfied the flimsy requirements for noncoordination and is a common enough trick. T'was merely bad luck that led to the press discovery of the totally above-the-board, no-coordination-to-see-here cache.
And, whoopsiedoodle, now the would-be DeSantis debate strategies aren't going to be a whole lot of use even if Ron wanted to use them, because the entire political world knows what they are and is looking for DeSantis to go down the list.
Again, though: Awkward reveal aside, it's not clear why anyone bothered. This ain’t the thing that’s going to revive Ron’s flailing campaign.
Did anything happen while we were all taking a well-deserved break? Something about Donald Trump being indicted not once, but two times! Also in the news: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign collapse. So much is happening!
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Presumably Ron is supposed to have a little 3x5 card and a pencil so he can check off each instance of "state positive vision" as it happens. Can't leave these things to chance, after all.
The only interesting thing in the memo isn't even the product of strategists, it's a theory of politics that former Fox News head Roger Ailes once formulated and which shares no small part of the blame for civilization's subsequent downfall. The strategists want DeSantis to focus on "Roger Ailes' Orchestra Pit Theory."
Behold, the reason why modern political debates have few to zero actual policies being debated. Ailes emphasized that you want to avoid substance because substance will get you in trouble. Vapid flash is where it's at, baby. In fact, why even have debates at all? Give everyone five beers and record the resulting fistfight. Who the hell cares about pandemics and nuclear triads?
While you might think that DeSantis' super PAC is advising DeSantis to find a hole on the debate stage and fall down it, we're not so lucky. The next section lists all of the "Potential Orchestra Pit Moments" the consultants have come up with.
Really now? We're to believe calling a fellow candidate "Fake Vivek" is going to be the thing everyone's talking about Thursday morning? In the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump’s Orchestra Pit moment was an upchuck-inducing reference to his supposed penis size. "Fake Vivek" barely even counts as a tweetworthy dig.
Campaign Action
And since the memo has now been made public, Ramaswamy's campaign has already responded to that insult as if DeSantis had already used it: "These boring, canned attack lines from a robotic candidate doesn’t change that. If DeSantis struggles to use a spoon, I can’t imagine he is particularly agile with a sledgehammer."
Tee hee, oh, politics. How funny it is that the future of the planet depends almost entirely on which one of these assholes can best insult all the others. We may have a democracy, but we’re governed by aristocrats.
Number two is a suggestion that Ron faux-"defend" Trump from a Christie attack by telling Christie, "Trump isn't here so let's just leave him alone. He's too weak to defend himself here." Oh, what a zinger. They probably had every conservative comedian in the country all locked up in the same minivan and wouldn't let them so much as crack a window until they had arrived at what they thought was the perfect joke.
Number three urges Ron to "invoke a personal anecdote story about family, kids, Casey, showing emotion." Yeah, got it. Robot's gotta cry if Robot wants the audience to believe he's a Real Boy. And number four is a too-long proposed speech that basically boils down to "make sure you mention Iowa and New Hampshire."
There you go, that's the grand sum of the advice. It all boils down to, "Look, Ron, for the love of God, don't start debating your ideas because your ideas are godawful and everyone else on that stage will shred them like Dobermans fighting over a Slim Jim. You go out there and you throw three to five pies while calling Vivek Ramaswamy a name like you're both in grade school."
It's all terrible advice, but now DeSantis can't use it because if Ron does get up on that debate stage to do any of these things, the talking heads manning the post-debate commentaries will have their orchestra pit story: Ron DeSantis robotically checks off pre-debate memorandum passed to him by his super PAC.
Well, that's if they talk about him at all, of course. The odds of that happening are slim. What's probably going to happen is that they're going to have their little debate, and then Trump is going to weigh in with a misspelled social media post that announces that "Chris Christie is a Poop." All the political pundits will declare that Trump has once again won the day because who could ever top him when it comes to calling people names? Quick, make him president again immediately!
All of that aside, there might be a funny story behind all of this. You might assume that these new debate notes leaked because there's a mole in the campaign, or as the result of some journalistic super-sleuthing, but that's not it. Nope, they were just posted to the internet for all the world to see.
Specifically, the debate notes were posted publicly by a consulting firm attached to Never Back Down, the pro-DeSantis super PAC DeSantis is using as a cut-out for much of his own campaign. That arrangement allows DeSantis to suck up a lot of dark money that would be illegal if it went to his campaign. The downside is that technically campaigns and super PACs aren't allowed to privately "coordinate" when boosting the candidate, so when the super PAC needs to give DeSantis advice, they have to do it publicly, hoping that the campaign takes their hints.
The New York Times says they were "alerted to the existence of the documents by a person not connected to the DeSantis campaign or the super PAC." Once they asked the super PAC for comment on the debate memo, it was hastily taken offline again. (After the deletion of the memo, the Times helpfully put it right back up again themselves.)
What that likely means is the super PAC quietly put the documents up quasi-publicly, not expecting anyone to find them, while perhaps surreptitiously letting the campaign know to go look for them. This would have satisfied the flimsy requirements for noncoordination and is a common enough trick. T'was merely bad luck that led to the press discovery of the totally above-the-board, no-coordination-to-see-here cache.
And, whoopsiedoodle, now the would-be DeSantis debate strategies aren't going to be a whole lot of use even if Ron wanted to use them, because the entire political world knows what they are and is looking for DeSantis to go down the list.
Again, though: Awkward reveal aside, it's not clear why anyone bothered. This ain’t the thing that’s going to revive Ron’s flailing campaign.
Did anything happen while we were all taking a well-deserved break? Something about Donald Trump being indicted not once, but two times! Also in the news: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign collapse. So much is happening!
Embedded Content
RELATED STORIES:
Trump isn't as strong as he looks. The GOP field is just dismal
Florida Republicans predicted the DeSantis flameout
There's a lot of speculation about what Trump's alternative to debating will be