Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, one of the most able executives in the country, a polished veteran not just of the battlefield but the political field; the Congressman turned Governor who took a losing primary in 2018 into an upset victory, then won another upset victory in the devastating general election of 2018; who governed like a restorer, not just a conservative; a man with a young and growing family; who showed up to lead during times of crisis while rejecting the public health-surveillance state; who accomplished every plank of the GOP platform; who turned Republicans from underdog to running the state of Florida, who flipped blue counties red and ended voter fraud and allegations of misconduct into a non-entity, has suspended his campaign for President.
DeSantis didn’t get it. Not this time.
I knew his campaign was over when he received the drastically underwhelming 21% in the Iowa caucuses earlier last week. We had expected a red tsunami in 2022, and we didn’t see one. We had believed Trump would win re-election in 2020, but that didn’t happen. Like many DeSantis supporters and other disaffected Republicans, I believed that the polling for the last six months was flawed and just plain bad.
Governor Ron DeSantis was the best Republican governor in a generation, if not the current (and even previous) century. Governor Scott Walker, my first choice for president in 2016, had defeated Big Labor in their own Birthplace, the once progressive state of Wisconsin. Walker sharpened his stance on illegal immigration, and he notched an incredible array of conservative reforms in his state. He didn’t make it past September 2015 because he underestimated Trump and overextended his resources.
DeSantis was different. He had witnessed two prior campaigns for Trump, and he learned to harness the MAGA message for big wins in the Sunshine State. Throughout his presidential campaign, DeSantis hewed the finest line possible attacking Trump for failing to keep his promises, while hacking away at a corrupt media, an onerous corporate wing of American politics (which wants Woke until we all go broke), and without dishonoring Republican voters (he never called them “deplorables,” and Trump activists' attempt to pin him down for the “listless vessels” remark went nowhere).
DeSantis plotted and planned as best he could. He made it to Iowa, and then he plummeted.
What happened? Why couldn’t Governor DeSantis make the cut, cut the deal, and make the grade?
First of all, just as in 2016, Trump the master of marketing and branding, saturated the airwaves and the media’s attention. When he announced his relaunch campaign in 2022, Trump was a middling candidate getting lackluster polling. He already sounded old, tired, out of touch, uninteresting. Most of the major networks didn’t see or care all that much.
But then came the indictments, the lawsuits, all the lawfare against the former President. One charge after another, one banana-republic style persecution after another, and he was the king of the hill once again. There was no way that any candidate could have overcome all the free publicity and massive sympathy from Republican voters, the vast majority of whom still rightly believe that Election 2020 was stolen.
All the strongest, wisest DeSantis surrogates pleaded with the wide swath of Republican primary voters to explain to the rest of us: “How do you expect Trump to overcome the negative headwinds among Independents and disaffected Republicans if—or when—he is convicted of one or more crimes, felonies, etc.?” No answer was provided, because for the 51% (so far) of the Republican voters, Trump is just going to magically ride out and override all this lawfare.
Still, does the DeSantis campaign bear some burden of responsibility for not clinching the nomination, let alone not even getting close?
Call me biased, but I submit that that is not the case. He had the best conservative record of any of the candidates, especially including Donald Trump, who had failed to keep a number of promises and has either excused or doubled down on his prior executive mistakes. DeSantis was not charismatic, but he was consistent, competent, and compelling in diction, his company, and his campaigning. His case for replacing Trump, on paper at least, is unassailable.
But politics, especially a modern Republican brand that is driven so heavily by identity politics and emotions, is not open to reason, calculation, or prospective considerations. Too many of the current primary voters simply have nostalgia for the good times of the Trump Administration, when gas was cheaper, costs were lower, nations feared us, and criminals respected us. Of course, all of that was obliterated with Trump’s COVID-19 response, including his relatively disturbing inaction during the George Floyd riots.
Four years later, it seems as though GOP voters did not remember, or rather do not want to remember all the failures, fallouts, and just plain folly of Year 2020. I don’t blame them, but I do have to reproach them for ignoring the incredible work that Governor DeSantis accomplished during that very difficult time.
With the New Hampshire primary approaching, I predict a massive double-digit win for Trump, with a single-digit blowout against DeSantis. He was wise to assess the situation and quit. Nikki Haley will drop out once she craters to 21% in the Granite State against Trump. She has to save herself the embarrassment of losing her home state while running an active campaign.
Call my cynical, but I don’t have high hopes for a Trump return to the White House in 2025. Democrats can coalesce all their delegates for the Chicago convention, then Biden can release them to Gavin Newsom or Michelle Obama. What’s Trump going to do then? And even if Trump pulls of another upset win, can we expect anything less than another four years of middling performances and broken promises?
Governor Ron DeSantis didn’t get the nomination. Will Trump get the fact that he hurt himself in 2020 and learn from those mistakes in 2024? The jury is still out on that one.
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