Ron DeSantis’s Failed Experiment

National Review Online

Monday, January 22, 2024

 

The Ron DeSantis campaign was a good idea that failed.

 

In the wake of the 2022 midterms, Donald Trump was significantly weakened and Ron DeSantis was at his zenith after a boffo reelection victory. It turned out that Trump began recovering strength soon afterward, though, and DeSantis started falling before he got in the race, pretty much in inverse relation to Trump’s rise. It took considerable guts for DeSantis to get into the race against a foe who was clearly formidable, and it was a service to Republican voters to give them a plausible, better alternative.

 

Yet, it all came to tears. It may be that Trump wasn’t beatable this year, especially after the indictments. Republican voters obviously still haven’t quit on him and consider him more electable and more likely to deliver on results than any other Republican. The DeSantis calling card of his standout performance during the pandemic had also become less relevant to voters. Then, there were the campaign’s serial mistakes.

 

It overspent from the beginning and was never able to match its arrogance with a commensurate effectiveness. After the campaign itself basically went broke, it had to rely on the super PAC to run everything, and it, too, was beset by dysfunction and infighting. Even if the tactics and implementation had been better, the DeSantis strategy proved unworkable.

 

He wanted to establish a beachhead among soft Trump supporters, then give non-Trump voters no choice but to come along, too. Trump’s grip didn’t give DeSantis the space to win those theoretically soft voters, though, while Nikki Haley took the non-Trump voters. It may have been that straddling these two constituencies was too hard, but DeSantis seemed actively fearful of doing anything to appeal too directly to voters not enamored of Trump.

 

That gets to another issue. DeSantis is at bottom a conviction politician, but he seemed overly calculating. His criticisms of Trump were highly modulated as he clearly worried about saying the wrong thing, while Trump heedlessly attacked, mocked, and lied about DeSanctimonious. As governor, he had a big pragmatic streak that was nowhere to be found on the campaign trail. He was also lacking as a performer. DeSantis was a hard worker and always knowledgeable and prepared, but he wasn’t an electric campaigner and didn’t excel at relationships, whether with donors or voters on the stump.

 

He was disappointing on Ukraine, where his strong rhetorical opposition to continued funding never felt sincere, and he managed to go from a courageous advocate of entitlement reform as a congressman to a full-throated opponent of reform who repeated Democratic talking points during the campaign.

 

DeSantis endorsed Trump in his exit video — a gesture that, like the defeat that led to it, confirms that the GOP remains a Trump party. The party and country deserve better leadership, but for now the party’s voters do not agree.