OPINION:
Ron DeSantis needs to rob a bank.
The poor guy has played every good hand dealt him. Won a second term as Florida governor in a landslide. Served his time in Washington. Staked out all the right positions. Learned to raise money. Checked all the boxes.
He studied how to laugh more genuinely. He is working on being more personable with voters.
But it turns out America still wants an outlaw.
Poor Ron DeSantis. All the money in the world cannot buy him a proper indictment.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump is making it rain in the Indictment Primary. By the time of next year’s election, Mr. Trump will be a Christmas tree of indictments.
Local indictments by corrupt prosecutors. Political indictments from the Biden administration. Partisan indictments by people you never heard of desperate to make a name for themselves in Democratic circles.
If Mr. Trump plays his cards right, he will roll up indictments in all 50 states. After a tabloid career spanning real estate, reality television and politics, Mr. Trump has become the proverbial ham sandwich.
But a bad-boy ham sandwich. A ham sandwich with spicy mayo. Like the best ham sandwich ever made. A rebel ham sandwich with a cause.
You have to hand it to Donald Trump. He knows how to grab your attention and paint a picture to tell a story — a gift that has been sorely lacking among Republican politicians since Ronald Reagan.
In 2008 and 2012, Democrats and the media offered up political Jesus, and the best Republicans could scrounge together was a couple of guaranteed losers like John McCain and Mitt Romney. To be fair, people this stupid do not deserve to win.
Even President Biden is able to see through his senility well enough to know he needs to tell a story — a story that portrays himself as some kind of dangerous outlaw.
So his White House publicity handlers came up with Dark Brandon, a Batman-like figure with laser eyes lurking in the shadows. Dark Brandon’s superpowers are not falling down, not getting confused on stage and not sniffing the hair of little girls.
Pretty sad, I know, but it’s the best they can do with an 80-year-old who has been gathering barnacles of corruption in Washington for half a century.
Meanwhile, Ron DeSantis is trying to figure out how to cultivate his own rebel persona. Maybe get a leather jacket. Ride a Harley. Say a curse word in public or something really dangerous like that.
And Donald Trump just seamlessly glides from one indictment to the next, bathed in the warm glow of hatred from Dark Brandon and his political praetorian guard in Washington headquartered in the Department of Justice and newsrooms everywhere.
The only Republican in the field who has managed to draft off the political success of Donald Trump in the Indictment Primary is businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. For Mr. Trump’s indictment in Florida this week, Mr. Ramaswamy flew to Miami to issue a promise to pardon Mr. Trump if elected president and unveil a letter urging every one of his fellow Republicans seeking the nomination to do the same.
Mr. Ramaswamy specifically called out Mr. DeSantis by name for being AWOL from his own state in the heat of battle. So far, Mr. DeSantis has ignored Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign to pardon Mr. Trump. Others have waffled, too.
In addition to being the clearest communicator in the GOP field today, Mr. Ramaswamy has also proved a skilled political tactician.
While it appears he is undermining his own campaign by helping Mr. Trump, the truth is that Mr. Ramaswamy is removing one of the biggest motivators many Republicans have for voting for Donald Trump in the primary: Exonerating Mr. Trump in an unfair fight against the evil regime.
For Republicans who want “Trump policies without Trump,” Mr. Ramaswamy is becoming the clear answer.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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