And not just because he was a poor candidate
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspended his campaign. His loss was inevitable, because Republican voters want Donald Trump.
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Trump’s for the Asking
I wrote back in May that the Republican primary would be over before they really began. Too many of the candidates were featherweights or no-hopers, and even the more substantial challengers couldn’t bring themselves to go after Donald Trump, despite flaming indictments falling from the skies and covering him in a layer of dirty ash. My prediction is one step closer to fulfillment now that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has bowed out, leaving Nikki Haley as the last alternative standing.
The reality, however, is that the 2024 GOP primary was never going to end any other way. When the former speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy rehabilitated Trump, and the Republican Party once again lost its nerve in the face of its extremist base, the nomination was Trump’s for the asking.
None of this excuses DeSantis from presiding over one of the most comically inept campaigns in modern history. Not every candidate is at ease in public settings among ordinary voters. (Richard Nixon and George H. W. Bush come to mind.) But DeSantis aimed a kind of annoyed hostility even at his own voters. As Curt Anderson and Alex Castellanos wrote a few days ago in Politico, the DeSantis campaign introduced the candidate to the nation “as a bright but socially awkward introvert, a nerd who did not enjoy people—which was a problem since voters tend to be people.”
Worse, instead of running as a competent governor, he chose instead to present himself as a dislikable bully, perhaps as part of his overall attempt to emulate Trump. His commitment to democracy was never more than a few inches deeper than Trump’s, as he made clear in a strange, acronym-laden culture-war campaign. His inability to understand national politics led him into clumsy misfires, such as officially announcing his candidacy online with Elon Musk and David Sacks, a face-plant rooted in the fundamental error of mistaking the internet for reality.
The Florida governor is now likely finished in national politics. Few candidates ever get a second chance—or, more important, a second bite at the donors—after such a disaster. DeSantis and his allies amassed at least $150 million, but the candidate put it all in a big pile, and then, like the political equivalent of the Joker, lit it all on fire. But at least the Joker seemed to be having a good time when he did it; DeSantis has been projecting irritation and unhappiness since his first day on the trail.
Of course, the last remaining anti-Trump, non-MAGA Republicans had all of their chips on DeSantis. The editors over at National Review, for example, were early DeSantis boosters, and some of their writers are now blaming—wait for it—the Democrats for DeSantis’s failure. The Democrats, you see, understood that indicting Trump would make him more popular with the GOP base, and they wanted to run against Trump rather than much stronger candidates such as DeSantis and Haley, so they interfered in the Republican primary by prosecuting Trump.
I am not making this up.
Let’s leave aside the obvious problem that there was good reason for multiple grand juries to indict Trump, who himself cannot stop babbling about things that are almost certainly crimes.
