While echoing the policies and positions of former President Donald Trump, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis took some veiled shots the runaway GOP primary polling leader – blasting Republicans as having been losers.
"I think the hope is both Florida and Iowa show how strong leadership and a bold agenda can defeat the left in this country, but there's no substitute for victory," DeSantis told a Sioux Center, Iowa, fundraiser speech Saturday that aired live on Newsmax.
"We must reject the culture of losing that has infected our party in recent years. The time for excuses is over. We've got to demonstrate the courage to lead and the strength to win."
DeSantis' crowd was small, but passionate, as he delivered a speech that sounded like a potential 2024 campaign rally, taking some shots at Trump – without mentioning the GOP polling leader by name.
"If we make the 2024 election a referendum on Joe Biden and his failures, and if we provide a positive alternative for the future of this country, Republicans will win across the board," DeSantis said. "If we do not do that, if we get distracted, if we focus the election on the past or on other side issues, then I think the Democrats are going to beat us again, and I think it will be very difficult to recover from that defeat."
The words are not that dissimilar to those of Trump, who is giving a Make America Great Again rally speech on Newsmax on Saturday night. Coverage begins at 7 p.m. ET, and his speech will commence around 8 p.m. ET.
But DeSantis took the mic in Sioux Center on Saturday afternoon and will speak again in Iowa later in the day.
"I think our country is floundering, in part because so many of our institutions have become unmoored from the truth: They've been lost in a sea of relativism," DeSantis said. "And this is important because we're really at a crossroads as a country.
"As bad as things are going right now, if things do not go well for us Republicans in 2024, it's going to get a whole lot worse. The left in this country is really playing for keeps. They are more aggressive and more strident than at any time in my lifetime."
DeSantis said he first ran for Congress in 2012 to stop former President Barack Obama's dangerous turn of America toward a progressive agenda and globalism.
"I got into politics, running for Congress in 2012, because I was motivated to oppose the policies of Barack Obama," DeSantis said, adding a joke that his first book "Dreams From Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama" was unpopular.
"I had even written, at the time, a book – which about a dozen people read – that outlined my concerns and why I didn't think his agenda was consistent with the aspirations of our Founding Fathers. And I believed that then, and I believe it now."
Those problems that started under Obama have only gotten worse, DeSantis warned.
"But I also look back on that and see some of those battles is somewhat quaint because I think the threats to freedom are much more profound today," he said. "I think they're much more pervasive.
"If the Democrats are able to sweep in '24, if they keep the White House, gain in the Senate, and take back the House, they will try to pack the U.S. Supreme Court. They will try to eliminate the Electoral College. They will try to make Washington, D.C., a state. And they will eliminate voter ID in every jurisdiction in this country and make ballot harvesting mandatory."
The election rigging claims oft-made by Trump were echoed by DeSantis, pushing for election integrity measures he says have to be hallmarks of America's future.
"Now that is not an agenda that appeals to us as Republicans, but I think objectively if you went to the typical political American family: How many of them are sitting over the dinner table, saying, 'Oh, man, I just wish we could force ballot harvesting in every part of the country?'" DeSantis asked. "No, that's not what American families care about. That's an agenda of a left-wing movement in this country that wants to make the conservative half of the country second-class citizens.
"They want to be able to call the shots, and they don't want us to have a voice in this government, and that will have profound implications for us, for our kids and our grandkids."
DeSantis hailed his ability to put the left on the run in the state of Florida, turning it from being a former battleground state to one that is now clearly Republican-held in the legislature and in the total of voter registrations.
"We had a lot of those folks in places like Miami who had been Democrats and voted for Democrats and they came on our side – not only voting for me, but now they're registering as Republicans," DeSantis concluded. "So don't buy this idea that we can't expand our bases of support.
"Of course you can do that. You can't win big with just Republicans, and we proved that.
"But here's the thing: We didn't do it by trimming our sails. We didn't comport ourselves to be anything that we're not. We lead boldly. We lead conservatively, and we delivered results and people responded."
About NEWSMAX TV:
NEWSMAX is the fastest-growing cable news channel in America!