“Morning Joe” reported Monday that several top Republican Party donors are backing away from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proposed 2024 presidential bid following his hard-line banning of abortions in his state after six weeks.
Speaking with co-host Joe Scarborough, political commentator and The Bulwark editor-in-chief Charlie Sykes said the continued culture wars happening within the GOP is a case of “the normies” of the party continuing to “empower the crazies.”
The segment began with co-host Mika Brzezinski citing a new Financial Times story that quotes one key Republican donor on DeSantis, saying, “Because of his stance on abortion and book banning, myself and a bunch of friends are holding our powder dry.”
“Despite not even jumping into the 2024 presidential race yet, Florida governor Ron DeSantis is already losing support from key Republican donors over his extreme positions just days after the governor signed a six-week abortion ban into law,” Brzezinski said, eventually punting to Scarborough.
Her co-host then meditated on the state of the so-called “culture wars” between Republicans and Democrats, and how they’ve changed even in just the last year.
“A year ago, Republicans were attacking Democrats for obsessing over cultural issues and not focusing on inflation, the southern border, gas prices,” Scarborough said. “Now, here we are a year later, and it’s the Republicans obsessing on extreme gun issues, on abortion, on the social issues that used to help them overwhelmingly with their base and even with some independent voters. But it’s having the opposite impact. And this has all happened all very quickly, hasn’t it, as far as the political backlash.”
“And you left out, of course, the obsession with drag queen story hour and banning books,” Sykes added.
“It’s going to be all culture war all the time from the Republican Party,” he continued. “And in terms of the normies, we talked about this before — I am constantly being assured, as you are, Joe, that normies constitute the majority of the Republican Party. People in the legislature and Congress will say, ‘Well, most of us are normies.’ The problem is, the normies continue to empower the crazies, they continue to look the other way and let the most extreme voices in the party set the agenda. So the Republican Party is never going to look normie until ‘the normals’ actually assert themselves. And on this issue so far, we haven’t seen that. And you see that just by the confusion and the inability to articulate what they stand for.”
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment, which also features commentary from Axios co-founder Mike Allen, in the video above.
