DeSantis Is Not Dead Yet

By Rich Lowry

Tuesday, April 18, 2023

 

The Ron DeSantis presidential campaign sure was good while it lasted.

 

The conventional wisdom has turned so decidedly against the Florida governor that he’s getting buried a couple of months before he even announces.

 

There’s flaming out on the launch pad, and there’s flaming out while you’re drinking a cup of coffee early in the morning at your home before getting in a car to drive to Cape Canaveral to check in for your mission. It’s the latter that’s supposedly happening to DeSantis.

 

This is a bit much. Rumors of his political death are not just greatly exaggerated — they are absurdly overwrought, although that’s what a bout of bad national polling will do.

 

To listen to the pundits, DeSantis has gone from the political force who steamrolled his way to a historic reelection victory in a large, diverse former swing state to a socially awkward stumblebum who would stay out of the 2024 race if he knew what was good for him.

 

It’s wrong to characterize the last couple of months as a loss for DeSantis. His book was a success, and he’s in the process of racking up an impressive string of victories during the current session of the Florida legislature. But there’s no doubt that he’s hit turbulence. He, in effect, walked back the line in his statement about the Ukraine war calling the fight with Russia “a territorial dispute,” and he’s never forcefully hit back at Donald Trump, even though the former president has made slamming the governor one of his favorite pastimes.

 

Trump has taken a jag up in national polling lately, and DeSantis a step down. In the RealClearPolitics national polling average, Trump sits above 50 percent, a formidable position by any standard. DeSantis is far back at about 24 percent.

 

Clearly, some of the shine has come off DeSantis as his reelection win has become more distant, whereas Trump has benefited from getting further away from the debacle of the midterms — and from the free publicity and the GOP sympathy created by the Alvin Bragg indictment.

 

Still, DeSantis is a strong second in most states, and is well liked in crucial Iowa. If the Bragg bump wears off over time, and DeSantis gets a bump from his announcement — neither is inevitable, nor is either far-fetched — it will look like a very competitive race at the top of the field.

 

In addition to the latest polling, much of the new conventional wisdom about DeSantis is driven by the assumptions that he will never attack Trump and that he will be a poor campaigner. If either is true, he won’t be the nominee. But his super PAC is already shooting back at Trump, and if DeSantis isn’t a natural backslapper, he didn’t become the twice-elected governor of Florida by spending all of his time alone at home playing Wordle.

 

There’s much about the campaign we still don’t know and will find out as it takes place. How does the DeSantis announcement go? Does the Bragg indictment — and do possible subsequent indictments — continue to buoy Trump or eventually weigh him down? Who else gets in the race? How vulnerable is the former president to an electability critique? Who wins and loses the first debate in August? Does someone else in the field pop? If Mike Pence gets in, how much traction does he get in Iowa?

 

And so on. This is why we have primary campaigns, and they always hold surprises.

 

What we have definitely learned the last couple of months is that Donald Trump isn’t going to fade away. He is the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee a third time in a row, and if he is going to be stopped, someone is going to have to go out and affirmatively beat him. Can DeSantis — or, in the right circumstances, someone else — do that?

 

It’s an enormous task, but the governor shouldn’t be counted out before he’s in.