Today at CPAC, I watched Ron DeSantis give an amazing speech. I’d never seen him speak in person, and I was pretty excited to see him live up to expectations and cement the idea that he’s who we need in 2024.

However, I’m going to nitpick something I heard him say that I’ve heard too many other conservatives say at this same convention and for the last year: Joe Biden is not target, socialism is the target.

Joe Biden is not running things. What’s happening right now are not Joe Biden’s ideas. He didn’t enter the election with any kind of promises, goals, or agendas, and he’s not enacting those now.

What he’s doing is enabling the socialists around him to implement their agenda at every conceivable level of government. What’s happening to this country is not the result of Joe Biden, per se. It’s the result of surrendering our institutions to the goals of socialism.

Because the goals of socialism aren’t to put America, or Americans, first. It’s to enrich those chosen few who, through their connections or through luck, have ascended to the top by knowing the right people or having the right tech start up idea at the right time.

Essentially, they’ve made enough money that they can afford to tell everyone else how to live and not suffer their own edicts.

If the heat gets to be too much, and we may be getting their soon, the Democrats could easily replace Joe Biden with someone else and say, “that was just Joe.”

What’s happening in the country and the world right now is a natural outgrowth of the pitfalls of socialism, and the Republican Party has to make that case. They can’t blame this on Biden. Biden is irrelevant. They need to be looking beyond Biden, and the way to do that is to brand what’s happening now as socialism or even liberalism.

It’s not only a better strategy now, but it’s a good long-term strategy that would serve conservatives for years to come. (Just see what Democrats have done to the Republican brand, as an example.)