The Republican Party’s future can go in many different directions. Will they have to face another Trump loss in 2024? Will Trump get reelected and put back in office? Or will there be a new contender within the GOP? Obviously only time can give us the answers, but decisions leading up to the 2024 presidential election will have a key impact on who represents the conservative community in a few years. 

The Governor of Florida, Ron Desantis, has made headlines as a potential 2024 nominee. Desantis performed extremely well in the midterm elections, dominating Charlie Christ 59-41, winning by nearly 20 percentage points. When Desantis first ran four years ago he won by just one percentage point. The amount of momentum that Desantis has gained in such a short period of time is extremely impressive. 

The single most surprising statistic of potentially the entire midterm election was what Desantis did in Miami-Dade county. The county went red for the first time in over twenty five years. This is an area flooded with minorities who favor the Democratic party. However, the one outlier of those minorities is Cuban Americans. Outside of Cubans, who typically vote for conservative candidates, Desantis was able to flip Black, Hispanic, and Puerto Rican voters to get him the advantage. Although Florida was favored to go red anyway, no one expected a win by such a large margin. Many GOP voters may be thinking that the tide is turning within the party. Is Ron Desantis the future of conservative America? 

Obviously, Donald Trump may be getting a little nervous about his “buddy’ now creeping up on him. Trump chose other candidates to endorse during the midterm campaigns. This could be because Desantis didn’t need support, but the duo that once had a tight-niched friendship are now in less contact with each other. It wasn’t as if Trump wasn’t in Florida around the election. In the weeks prior, he spoke on behalf of Marco Rubio, but didn’t invite Desantis to the event. A Politico article described how Trump even went as far as mocking Desantis, nicknaming him “DeSanctimonious.” 

All this to say, the Democrats still held up very well in the midterms considering they are the party currently in the White House. A lot can change before 2024, but the “red tsunami” doesn’t seem to look any bigger than a kiddie pool wave right now. It is going to take a candidate like Ron Desantis to rally the Republicans to try to take back the White House. The momentum he has already proven he can gain is astronomical and he doesn’t seem satisfied with settling as the Governor of Florida. Ron Desantis gives the Republican party a brighter future and a better chance in the 2024 presidential election than former US President Donald Trump.