During a press conference on Tuesday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said that he believes the way Republicans have governed in Florida is a blueprint for how the party can “fundamentally change the overall political terrain in a very strong pro-freedom direction.” He went on to say that he believes this is the way forward for the Republican Party if they want to remain relevant and win elections.

“We focused on results and leadership. And, you know, at the end of the day, I would just tell people to go check out the scoreboard from last Tuesday night,” DeSantis said. “The fact of the matter is, it was the greatest Republican victory in the history of the state of Florida. And it wasn’t just the best governor victory, of course it was that, but we swept in super majorities in the Florida Legislature.”

“We have 85 Republicans out of 120 in our state house, we’ve never had that many before,” he continued. “We have 28 senators out of 40 that are Republicans, never had that many. … We had 16 Republican members of the U.S. House from Florida, now we have 20 going up there. So that’s four, four seats right there. So at the end of the day, I think people respond to the leadership, they respond to the results.”

With Biden in the driver’s seat, it should have been an easy win for Republicans, but it wasn’t. In fact, we failed miserably in the Senate and honestly should have done a lot better in the House. DeSantis echoed the same sentiment:

“It was a hugely underwhelming, disappointing performance, especially given that Biden’s policies are overwhelmingly unpopular, people think the country is going in the wrong direction,” DeSantis said. “The one place I think that people can look to as the blueprint is Florida. Because what have we done? I mean, you know, we came in, I had a very close election. In fact, before I became governor, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, all the major races, governor, presidential, were one point or less for that time. So in my race, was less than a point in 2018. And so we came in to a very, very large, diverse swing state. And we led, and we were on offense, and we didn’t, we didn’t shy away from big issues, we took on those issues. And we won victory after victory for the people of Florida.”

“We get people to vote for us who may not be in our party,” he later added. “And that’s really what you need to do. You don’t build, you don’t win by a million and a half votes if you only get your own party. And so what we were able to do, yes, obviously, we got a lot of Republicans turning out because they were supportive, and we appreciate that. But you know, we won Independents by between 15 and 20 points. We probably won 60% of Hispanics, statewide. That’s a record, no Republican has ever done that. I don’t think anyone’s ever done that. We won women, that hasn’t been done by a Republican governor for 20 years. So we did that. We won Miami Dade County, biggest, most urban county in Florida, 70% Latino, and not only did we win it for the first time in 20 years, we won it by 11%. It was a landslide down in Miami Dade. Not only that, we won Palm Beach County, which has not been won by a Republican for governor in almost 40 years. And we were able to win Palm Beach, which people didn’t think was necessarily possible.”

“You look at Osceola County, you know, we flipped that, I mean a huge swing in our direction. Again, that’s a predominantly Hispanic county. And so I think that what Florida showed is that the good policies, and the good leadership can reverberate just beyond your little silo of the people that agree with you on everything. You know, we had people coming out to vote for us who may not have voted for Republicans in the past. And I think that, ultimately, is the way forward.”

“And I think the other governors who were successful, had similar programs,” he concluded. “I think some of the others around the country, you had situations where these Independent voters aren’t voting for our candidates, even with Biden in the White House and the failures that we’re seeing, you know, that’s a problem. And so Florida, I think really shows the blueprint of what you can do to not only win, but really fundamentally change the overall political terrain in a very strong pro-freedom direction. And that’s what we’ve done here.”

So, in summary, for those who didn’t want to read everything above:

• DeSantis believes that the GOP’s victory in Florida is due to the party’s leadership and focus on results.
• He cites the increase in Republican legislators in the state as evidence of this success.
• DeSantis attributes the party’s lackluster performance in other states to a lack of leadership and big-picture thinking.
• He explained that part of what has made Florida successful is reaching out to voters who may not be traditionally Republican, such as Independents, women, and Hispanics.

And this is the blueprint DeSantis says that we should use going into the 2024 election.