DeSantis Was Always Going To Lose

The Florida governor never had a shot with Trump in the race

Donald Trump won Iowa decisively Monday night. Despite spending little money and time in the state (especially compared to his rivals), Trump won the caucus by 30 points. This was a humiliating defeat for his closest competitor, Ron DeSantis. Despite spending over $30 million on ads and visiting every county, DeSantis only eked out 21 percent of the vote. The Florida governor bet his whole campaign on Iowa, and he came up well short.

However, he’s not dropping out. His campaign still insists he’s going to be the next president, but there’s no strategy or plan besides massive amounts of copium. Everyone not on DeSantis’s payroll realizes it’s over. 

Political reporters and commentators now have to wrestle with the question of what DeSantis could’ve done differently. Some will say his campaign failed in how it wasted money. Others will say he should’ve gotten in the race earlier. Many will argue he should’ve attacked Trump more. But the obvious reason will receive less attention. The fact is that nobody was going to defeat Trump in this primary. Trump sealed the race when he first announced his candidacy. The vast majority of conservative commentators didn’t get it. They deluded themselves into thinking another candidate could take down Trump. And no one was more delusional than Ron and his supporters.

It was evident from the very beginning that Trump would easily win the primary. The base is fanatically loyal to the former president. Thousands of people travel hundreds of miles to hear him speak. MAGA merchandise dominates flyover country. There’s enough MAGA rap to be its own genre of music. Polling always showed Trump as the dominant favorite of Republican voters. There’s a deep emotional connection between the base and Trump. Flyover Americans see the former president as their great champion. No one can replace him. 

But there was a brief period in the final months of 2022 where Trump’s support slipped a bit. Some Republicans began to entertain different options following the disappointing midterms. The entire media–both mainstream and conservative–blamed Trump for the results. DeSantis won reelection in a battleground state by a wide margin. The media portrayed him as the more respectable Trump, one “who gets things done.” The conservative lionization ignored DeSantis’s obvious faults, such as his complete lack of charisma and poor retail politics skills. His right-wing media fans imagined him as the Sunshine State Caudillo, ready to crush the woke mind virus.

While his shills continued to talk about DeSantis in rapturous terms, ordinary voters began to lose interest and return to Trump. By April of last year, Trump was back to leading the poll average by 50 percent. He only expanded his lead thereafter. Meanwhile, DeSantis’s support began to decline. He began 2023 with over 30 percent support in the polls. But by April it declined to below 30 percent and it kept sinking as the year passed. 

DeSantis supporters confidently predicted that his support would boom after he announced. That didn’t happen. They then said his numbers would improve once voters got to know him. The opposite occurred. DeSantis had several awkward viral moments with voters, stepped around in platform boots, and focused on extremely online topics that appealed to his Twitter supporters. 

While mentions of the woke mind virus and re-litigating COVID were popular among his Twitter fans, they didn’t connect with voters. DeSantis adjusted his message to focus more on immigration and the economy, but he didn’t fix his chief issue. His personality and lack of charisma remained. He’s heavily scripted, lacks humor, and seems bossed around by his wife. Republican voters came to learn that he wasn’t the Caudillo they were promised. DeSantis was just a bland politician in high heels with decent policies.

DeSantis became more anti-Trump as the campaign, fulfilling the wishes of his online fanbase. They felt there was a huge constituency within the GOP for anti-Trumpism from the Right. They were mistaken. Most of the anti-Trump voters were moderates who wished for John McCain back. Trump’s strongest support comes from “very conservative” primary voters. It was hard to drive them away from the Don. DeSantis alienated many of the NeverTrump moderates with his comments on Ukraine and other issues, undermining his chances of building a coalition against Trump.

The most common refrain you will hear about DeSantis’s campaign is that he didn’t criticize Trump enough. Somehow, if he went full Never Trumper, this would’ve shocked hardcore Trumpers into supporting him. This is idiotic. If anything, DeSantis’s passive-aggressive, feminine sniping at Trump hurt him. Nikki Haley is running a more coherent Never Trump campaign, yet she attacks Trump much less than DeSantis does. Unlike DeSantis, she has a chance of winning an early primary state. Some of DeSantis’s few smart advisers told him he should strongly defend Trump against his political prosecutions. He ignored that advice and tried to avoid this subject. Meanwhile, his online surrogates celebrated Trump’s legal woes and hoped he would go to prison. That’s a terrible message for the GOP primary. 

DeSantis ended up in the unenviable position of being too conservative for those who liked his Trump criticism while too anti-Trump for those who liked his right-wing stances.

While DeSantis would’ve still not won if he was aggressively pro-Trump, he would’ve boosted his future political prospects. Just look at Vivek Ramaswamy. The Indian businessman became a star on the Right just through his energetic personality and staunch support for the former president. He has a bright future ahead in politics. DeSantis does not. The Florida governor is now a punchline just like Jeb Bush. Trump’s party will not forget his poor performance in the 2024 primary. His uniquely terrible campaign made sure that voters lost respect for him.

Refusing to drop out after it’s clearly over doesn’t help DeSantis’s stock. His campaign’s last hope is South Carolina. The likely thinking is that Haley will be soundly defeated in New Hampshire and will bow out. This will give the two-man race DeSantis has long dreamed of. Unfortunately for DeSantis, he would still get crushed in a two-man race. Trump’s polling average in South Carolina is above 50 percent. Nationally, he’s well-above 60 percent. Some of the latest polls show Trump with nearly 70 percent support. Trump would expand his dominant margin in a mere two-man race. It would be the ultimate humiliation if Trump overwhelmingly crushed DeSantis in his home state.

On top of all this, the DeSantis campaign is practically broke. It could not be more over for Ron.

Anyone with decent political instincts could’ve seen this coming. But Con Inc. has the worst political instincts in the world and encouraged Ron to embarrass himself. The DeSantis campaign is the latest example of this crowd’s delusional thinking. Despite making a living in politics, most conservative commentators are wrong about everything, especially when it comes to Trump. 

In 2016, they insisted that Trump had no real support and would lose every primary. They were wrong. They then predicted he would get blown out in the general election. They were wrong. When he was president, they predicted he wouldn’t run in 2020 or that he would face a serious primary challenger. They were wrong. They then predicted another blowout in 2020. They were wrong. After January 6, they predicted Republicans would give up on Trump. They were wrong. After the midterms, they predicted Republicans would give up on Trump. They were wrong. After his indictments, they predicted Republicans would give up on Trump. They were wrong. And they predicted a wooden, humorless politician deeply insecure about his height could beat Trump in the 2024 primary. They were wrong.

Con Inc. doesn’t get the people it represents. The people who make it up profoundly hate Trump and can’t understand why people like him. It’s why the DeSantis campaign felt neo-Never Trumpism was a good election strategy. Everyone they talked to agreed with it, but the people who actually mattered strongly rejected it. 

DeSantis’s political career is likely over once his gubernatorial term is up in Florida. He learned the hard way that the GOP is Trump’s party. And that fact is why he was always going to lose.