Conservatives must stay focused on the present, not the 2024 primary.

Since Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis officially jumped into the 2024 GOP presidential primary, the Republican Twittersphere has devolved into a giant cluster of insanity.

Take a trip to your favorite right-wing account, and you’re likely to find an untold number of tweets trashing either former President Donald Trump or DeSantis, accompanied by a lengthy explanation of why his or her preferred candidate will be the one to take down Joe Biden in the 2024 general election. The back-and-forth between Trump and DeSantis supporters — which continued into Memorial Day, a day when we’re supposed to honor those who have paid the ultimate price for our freedoms — has largely lacked any real substance. The insults thrown around have become so petty and personal, it feels like watching an episode of “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”

While it’s completely understandable to be on the lookout for a potential nominee given Biden’s disastrous presidency thus far, overzealously focusing on a primary we won’t be voting in until February, at the earliest, distracts from current issues and plays into Democrats’ hands. There will be plenty of time between now and then to decide who becomes the 2024 GOP presidential candidate. But that time is not right now.

At this given moment, we have highly-politicized U.S. intel agencies targeting conservatives and protecting Democrats, federal departments and left-wing nonprofits interfering in our elections, an establishment trying to drag us into World War III, major corporations glorifying gender dysphoria, so-called “red” states acting like blue states, leftists indoctrinating and “trans-ing” children, a Congress spending taxpayer money like drunken Marxists, a wide open southern border, Democrats attempting to destroy the Supreme Court, an inflated economy, and a dying military.

This is not to mention major off-year elections in Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and New Jersey this fall, several of which will be critical in determining the fate of issues such as election integrity, abortion, and biological reality, just to name a few. If Democrats learned anything from this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race, it’s that dangling presidential politics in front of Republican voters is a winning strategy.

The left would love nothing more than for conservatives to get caught up in the “My candidate’s better than yours!” drama of the 2024 GOP presidential primary for the next year. The right getting bogged down in the “Orange Man vs. Florida Man” showdown gives Democrats a free ticket to further ram their radical agenda down Americans’ throats unchallenged.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

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