RAW STORY
I said last week that if Ron DeSantis had not been so busy trying to be Donald Trump’s doppelgänger, by now he might be known as one of his sharpest critics. Over the weekend, he gave voice to yet another bit of wisdom, which is that the Washington press corps has gone easy on Trump. He added, while campaigning in South Carolina, that if Trump wins the Republican nomination, “the polls are going to turn on a dime,” meaning polls suggesting weakness on Joe Biden’s part are going to flip.
As you know, I think he’s right, but no one is going to give him credit for speaking the truth, because after saying that, and just two days before New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary, he dropped out. Then he endorsed Trump for president, leaving Nikki Haley as his lone challenger. Trump is going to win that state and the nomination. And when those polls turn, it will be in part because DeSantis accelerated that turning.
This isn’t to say that he should have stayed in the race. I don’t think he had a chance. I don’t think Nikki Haley has a chance. Everything about GOP politics right now begins and ends with Trump. This is to say, however, that DeSantis just isn’t good at this. You will see many autopsies of his campaign, most of them about how weird he is personally, or about how sadistic he has been as Florida’s governor. But we should resist identifying reasons for failure that can’t otherwise be explained by incompetence.
First and foremost is the fact that he dislikes interacting with donors and supporters. That’s according to the Post. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see the point in being a politician if you don’t like the most basic feature of the job of being a politician. You have to talk to people! It makes you wonder how DeSantis got this far, and the only explanation that seems right to me is that he didn’t have to do “retail politics” as Florida’s governor. That state’s good-old-boy system did all that work for him.
Second, and related to the first, is that he didn’t assess the political terrain on his own. (He was too used to Florida’s Republican machine.) Instead, he seemed happy to believe whatever hype was being said about him by people who are paid to hype. It was like, when the Washington press corps…
