The future of the Republican Party is already a thing of the past. Ron DeSantis has given up the fight to become the next president of the United States after one primary election and abandoned his weak campaign full of personal discomfort. In a video message on Sunday, Florida’s governor said he sees “no clear path to victory” and expressed support for his main rival, former President Donald Trump. He now only faces Nikki Haley towards the Republican nomination.
A year ago, DeSantis (45) was seen as the most promising alternative to the damaged Trump (77). A populist culture warrior, without the chaos and incompetence of his example. A governor with a long list of right-wing achievements in Florida who achieved national fame with his opposition to scientific advice surrounding corona and then took on the battle with schools and Disney. A good working-class son with degrees from Yale and Harvard, a military career and three children by the same woman. Right-wing media ran away with DeFUTURE, according to the New York Post and Trump felt so threatened that he gave him nicknames: meatball Ron (meatball) and DeSanctimonous (sanctimonious).
But once DeSantis finally declared his candidacy for next November’s presidential election last May, the tightly inflated promise balloon slowly deflated. His campaign launch, speaking to Elon Musk on Twitter, crashed and was unintelligible. Trump was subsequently indicted for undermining the 2020 election results and withholding state secret documents, which mobilized his fanatical supporters but also won over other Republicans.
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Rehearsed texts
DeSantis may be a decisive administrator, but he proved dramatic in campaigning. He rattled off his rehearsed lines and lacked the humor and charisma to win over voters he met. The social discomfort radiated from every human contact. Even his public interactions with his wife and children came across as forced rather than authentic. For example, he greeted his wife Casey with a hand during the break of an election debate.
The raised or otherwise boots of the 1.75 meter tall DeSantis were the joke of the campaign. Moreover, DeSantis’ distrust of virtually all of his advisers plagued his campaign organization. He also avoided established media, which limited his reach.
In terms of content, DeSantis simultaneously tried to be a reasonable – nationally electable – alternative to Trump and to overtake him on the right. With the latter he undermined the former and it led to far-reaching legislation in Florida. Immediately after the Supreme Court abolished the nationwide right to abortion, DeSantis set the deadline for terminating a pregnancy in Florida to fifteen weeks in 2022. In 2023 he radically limited that to six weeks. In 2022, he had banned the discussion of sexual preference and gender identity in the education of children up to the age of eight. A year later, he extended that ban to include high school. Measures that also go too far for many Republicans.
DeSantis had focused his entire campaign on winning conservative Iowa, where primaries are traditionally won by deeply religious candidates who have visited every district. Last week, without campaigning to speak of, Trump crushed all competition there by getting 51 percent of the votes. DeSantis (21 percent) was just ahead of Nikki Haley (19 percent). These are impressive percentages, but due to the low turnout in the small state, only 56,260 Republicans actually voted for Trump’s candidacy for 2024.
Trump’s power
Ron DeSantis has barely campaigned in the past week and canceled planned interviews. On Sunday he formally stopped the fight. Even more than any obvious substantive or personal failure, his loss is the result of his opponent’s unprecedented internal popularity and power. “It is clear to me that the majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” DeSantis said in his video message.
There is a good chance that DeSantis’ support will help Trump attract even more voters in his battle with Nikki Haley, the former governor and ambassador for whom everything now depends on Tuesday’s primaries in New Hampshire. There is also a lot of speculation about how Trump will help — or at least not further damage — DeSantis in the future.
In recent days, Trump’s entourage has made it clear that anyone who worked for DeSantis or supported him politically would have no political future. Republicans were told not to hire DeSantis campaign staff and a Congressman was threatened with an internal challenger.
Trump is known to demand complete loyalty from people and to be vengeful towards those he sees as traitors. It is unknown whether DeSantis himself has been threatened with excommunication or whether he has been promised a good position in a new Trump administration. But the still young governor would certainly like to be the future of the Republican Party one day.