Ron DeSantis ended his presidential campaign on Sunday, and the brutal post-mortems are already flying. His exit lets him avoid what was looking to be a distant third place finish in New Hampshire on Tuesday and in South Carolina next month. His endorsement of Donald Trump before New Hampshire is an attempt to get back in good MAGA graces.
Mr. DeSantis saw an opportunity after his sweeping re-election in Florida in 2022 while Donald Trump’s hand-picked Senate candidates were trounced. He had a fair expectation that GOP voters were looking for a fresh start after the Trump-led defeats of 2018, 2020, 2021 in Georgia and again in 2022.
What he couldn’t have anticipated is that Democrats would indict Mr. Trump so many times that they would turn the former president into a political martyr. All the media focus on Mr. Trump’s trials made it hard for any other candidate to get much air time. It also allowed Mr. Trump to duck the GOP debates, where Mr. DeSantis could have challenged the Mar-a-Lago denizen’s record on stage.
Based on the results in Iowa and the polls, Mr. DeSantis miscalculated that he could peel off Trump voters with a message that he would be a more competent culture warrior. Those Trump voters weren’t for turning. He lacked a larger vision of why voters should move on from Mr. Trump, and his attacks in the final days on Nikki Haley for “warmed-over corporatism” show the smallness of his message.
Mr. DeSantis lost many voters open to a Trump alternative when he seemed to be afraid to support aid for Ukraine lest he offend Trump voters. This made him look weak. Signing a six-week abortion ban in Florida wasn’t enough to win over evangelical voters in Iowa but alienated some moderates.
Does Mr. DeSantis have a presidential future? Perhaps. He’s not a winsome political personality, but he has an excellent record in Florida. If Republicans gamble on Mr. Trump again (see nearby), win or lose the former President can’t run again. Maybe then Mr. DeSantis will offer a conservative vision that offers more than second-string Trumpism.
