Ron DeSantis isn't ready for this

The vetting process begins.

Ron DeSantis is on a roll.

Polling shows him within striking distance (or closer!) of former President Donald Trump. He just stared down the College Board. His brand of anti-woke politics is forcing Trump himself to recalibrate on the messaging front.

It’s all to the good for the Florida governor who looks to all the Republican world like the Next Big Thing.

But, there’s something big coming down the pike for DeSantis: The presidential vetting process. And he’s not ready for it (no one ever is).

DeSantis has been in politics since 2012 when he won a heavily Republican open House seat. None of his House races were particularly close. Ditto his 2022 reelection race where he used a massive financial edge to swamp former Gov. Charlie Crist.

The one close race DeSantis has had in his political life came in 2018 when he faced off against then Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum.

In it, DeSantis faced charges of racism after the Washington Post revealed that he had spoken — four times — at a conference organized by a conservative activist who had said that the America’s “only serious race war” was against whites.

DeSantis had previously faced criticism for saying of Gillum, who is black: “The last thing we need to do is monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting our state.”

Gillum, in a debate with DeSantis, said this of his opponent: “Now, I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”

DeSantis wound up winning that race by the thinnest of margins — edging Gillum by 33,000 votes out of more than 8 million cast.

That race provides something of a preview of what DeSantis will face in the coming months.

DeSantis, some time very soon, will start to draw the scrutiny of national news organizations. Those organizations will dig into his time in the House and his time as governor — as well as what he was doing before he ran for office.

No one — and I mean NO ONE — escapes that sort of deep dig unscathed. His past comments about race will absolutely come up again and DeSantis will likely have to find better answers than he did during the 2018 campaign. (“How the hell am I supposed to know every single statement somebody makes?,” DeSantis said at the time.)

And it’s not just the media who will dig into DeSantis’ past. His opponents will too. In fact, Donald Trump has already started.

“The real Ron is a RINO GLOBALIST who closed quickly down Florida and even its beaches,” Trump posted on his Truth Social website on Wednesday. “Loved the vaccines and wasted big money on ‘Testing.’ How quickly people forget!”

(It’s worth noting here that DeSantis only shut down the state of Florida after Trump changed his tune on the disease and its potential impact in the spring of 2020.)

And there’s more where that came from. As Politico reported earlier this week:

The operatives running former President Donald Trump’s cash-flush super PAC met quietly in December to sketch out their lines of attack against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other potential GOP rivals — the latest indication that the slow-burning 2024 primary is beginning to intensify.

During the meeting, which was held in an Alexandria, Va. office and led by Trump lieutenants Taylor Budowich and Tony Fabrizio, the group pored over confidential polling, went over legal and communications strategies and laid out a six-month plan for the race. That plan included an opposition research initiative targeting DeSantis and other possible candidates.

The contrast with Trump here is striking. Trump has run for president twice and has had his life dug through — to often shocking results — in a way no one else in the Republican field can even come close to.

Ask yourself this: What could possibly come out about Trump that would a) shock you or b) move voters off of him in any significant way?

Yeah, I can’t think of anything either. (If the “Access Hollywood” tape didn’t do it, I don’t think anything can.)

You simply can’t say the same of DeSantis. Ever since 2021 (or so) he has been on a remarkable political hot streak. The coverage he has received — especially among the conservative press — has been almost exclusively positive.

But he has NEVER been subjected to the sort of deep dive that is coming his way. And before people start declaring him the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, let’s see how well he handles that close up.