Trump and DeSantis: MAGAs vs. Republican elite

Trump’s setback in gubernatorial, Congressional, and State Legislative elections is provoking a class struggle between MAGAs, who still favor Trump, and the Republican corporate politicians, who are checking out DeSantis.

Bannon’s MAGA operatives failed to rig the precinct and county elections they controlled, because he failed to organize, train, and give them the legal protection they needed to violate election law. As with Jan. 6^th, Trump and Bannon retained plausible deniability—they’re authoritarians who despise elections, but won’t stick their own necks out.

Trump’s obsession with reversing his ’20 defeat made him fixate on Republican infighting, and choose weak candidates based on personal loyalty. He’s been sidelined from the MAGA offensives against CRT, “grooming,” trans kids, and wokeness that energizes the base.

Like Trump, DeSantis is racist, sexist, and authoritarian, but uses the tools the Supreme Court legalized—publicly arresting black people for alleged voter fraud—to suppress minority votes and win. Harvard-trained, DeSantis is a wily politician and effective administrator who appeals to politicians and cross-over voters, but he’s a careerist whose MAGismo is transparently fake, Ted Cruz beta version.

The Republican base, half the white population, are a permanent minority party who can’t win free and fair elections. The neofascist MAGA activists, with their apocalyptic need for a Christian state, drive the Party; the politicians, including Trump and DeSantis, follow. The Republican Party will either win or steal the Presidency to form an authoritarian government in ’25, or decline and split.