A group of over 100 former officials from the Trump administration, dubbed “The Eight-Year Alliance,” are planning to support Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. They believe that DeSantis can serve for two terms, or eight years, and hope to prevent former President Donald Trump from immediately becoming a lame-duck president.

DeSantis is “a proven winner,” a source connected with the group told Fox News, and a leader who “does what he says.”

Fox News stated that they do not possess the list of the group’s members; however, they mentioned five people who are believed to be part of the group. These individuals include Jesse Panuccio, the former Acting Associate Attorney General, Will Bushman, the former Special Assistant to the Secretary of Defense, Pedro Allende, the former Counselor to the Secretary and White House Liaison at the Department of Labor, James Uthmeier, the former Senior Counsel and Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Commerce, and David Dewhirst, the former Principal Deputy General Counsel at the Department of Commerce.

According to sources who spoke to Fox News, they were originally supportive of Trump’s efforts to bring change but have now shifted their support to DeSantis. This is not an uncommon occurrence among Republicans, as there were those who opposed Trump during his 2016 campaign and even some affiliated with his administration who endorsed Biden during the 2020 election, as reported by Forbes.

According to The Washington Post, DeSantis gave a speech at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention where he discussed the potential achievements of a two-term president with regards to the Supreme Court.

“I think if you look over the next two presidential terms, there is a good chance that you could be called upon to seek replacements for Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito and the issue with that is, you can’t really do better than those two,” he said.

Criticizing Chief Justice John Roberts, he added, “If you replace a Clarence Thomas with somebody like a Roberts or somebody like that, then you’re going to actually see the court move to the left, and you can’t do that.”

DeSantis hinted that there is a possibility of Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Elena Kagan, who were appointed by Obama and are part of the court’s liberal wing, retiring in the next two terms.

“So it is possible that in those eight years, we have the opportunity to fortify justices … Alito and Thomas as well as actually make improvements with those others, and if you were able to do that, you would have a 7-2 conservative majority on the supreme court that would last a quarter-century,” he said.

Reuters suggests that DeSantis may face complications in his campaign due to divisions within the GOP.

“You can’t court MAGA while courting the rest of the party. That’s a difficult decision he is going to have to make,” said Chris Stirewalt, a Republican analyst with the American Enterprise Institute.

Sarah Isgur, a campaign veteran, suggests that since there are several candidates running for the position, including Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Vivek Ramaswamy, Asa Hutchinson, Larry Elder, Perry Johnson, DeSantis needs to focus on winning the support of Trump supporters.

“He can’t win the nomination with only non-Trump votes. He has to peel voters away from Trump,” she said.

According to Republican pollster Whit Ayres, around 30 to 35 percent of the Republican Party is firmly in support of Trump, approximately 10 percent are strongly against him, and the rest belong to a group called “maybe-Trumpers.”

“It looks to me like DeSantis is going after the always-Trumpers rather than the maybe-Trumpers,” Ayres said.

He said instead, DeSantis should try to connect with “voters looking for an alternative to Trump that he’s the right guy.”