'Contradictory' campaign: Maggie Haberman says Ron DeSantis’ strategy doesn’t add up
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ flagging presidential campaign hasn’t yet developed a coherent strategy, New York Times senior political correspondent Maggie Haberman said Friday.
“There is a lot about the DeSantis candidacy that is contradictory,” Haberman said during an appearance on “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.”
Haberman noted that DeSantis’ comments during a recent Fox News interview in which the Florida governor acknowledges Republicans need to appeal to centrists, is at odds with his effort to appeal to Donald Trump’s MAGA base.
“At the end of the day people do want to win though and you know, you can't win with just Republicans voters,” DeSantis said in the interview, a portion of which Blitzer played video from during the panel discussion.
“I think we showed in Florida, if you want a big victory, you got to win independent voters, you’ve got to win people who haven't voted for our party in the last several cycles. I've shown I can do that, and I think we can do it nationally.”
Haberman noted several aspects of DeSantis’ campaign that do not appear to be “linear.”
“He deplores pollsters and yet he's quoting polls in that same interview that you talked about,” Haberman said.
“He talks about electability, and yet he's taking positions that are running harder and harder to the right, which helps him in a place like Iowa, but that is not necessarily helpful in a place like New Hampshire, and as you point out, not helpful in places like the suburbs.”
Haberman also noted a video produced by a pro-DeSantis super PAC that’s been widely condemned as homophobic, even by some in his own party.
“His campaign tweeted out a video that the campaign didn't even make that was decried as homophobic pretty broadly and he defended that video even though he had an opportunity not to,” Haberman said.
“There's a wide swath of voters in the general election that could be troubling to so yes, I think he is he is doing things that are not linear, and it's not entirely clear what the point is sometimes day to day.”
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