Ron DeSantis’ epic failure
Here’s a Christmas present for all of you who don’t have subscriptions to the NY Times: a free link to this delightful bit of holiday schadenfreude: the story of Ron DeSantis’ precipitous fall. Grab an egg nog and add a double shot. It’s just so much fun:
Boxed in by a base enamored with Mr. Trump that has instinctively rallied to the former president’s defense, Mr. DeSantis has struggled for months to match the hype that followed his landslide 2022 re-election. Now, with the first votes in the Iowa caucuses only weeks away on Jan. 15, Mr. DeSantis has slipped in some polls into third place, behind Nikki Haley, and has had to downsize his once-grand national ambitions to the simple hopes that a strong showing in a single state — Iowa — could vault him back into contention.
For a candidate who talks at length about his own disinterest in “managing America’s decline,” people around Mr. DeSantis are increasingly talking about managing his.
Ryan Tyson, Mr. DeSantis’s longtime pollster and one of his closest advisers, has privately said to multiple people that they are now at the point in the campaign where they need to “make the patient comfortable,” a phrase evoking hospice care. Others have spoken of a coming period of reputation management, both for the governor and themselves, after a slow-motion implosion of the relationship between the campaign and an allied super PAC left even his most ardent supporters drained and demoralized.
It only gets better. I urge you to read it.
DeSantis is as bad as Trump in most ways and worse in others in terms of his philosophy and intentions. But he doesn’t have that celebrity glamour that really gets Trump over. He and his wife thought they could create it by flaunting their youth and pretending to be some kind of Florida version of JFK and Jackie. But their personalities are so weird (in his case) and grating (in hers) that none of that played with the crowd. Also, they don’t have the trappings of wealth that really make that work for certain people.
DeSantis’ campaign is turning out to be an epic flame out on the level of Scott Walker, Jeb Bush or Rick Perry. In fact, it’s exceeding all of them. What he did in Florida to get this nomination is a tragedy.
Ron DeSantis is one of the worst presidential candidates in history and if we’re lucky, we won’t be hearing from him again.
Update:
Oh my God