In his initial pitch for the presidency, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis presented himself as Donald Trump with brains; Trump but you get two terms; Trump but he gets things done.

His strategists believed, with hundreds of millions of dollars behind him, he could easily brush the other Republican wannabes aside before taking on the Donald.

The path to the Republican nomination and the White House seemed clear. From late 2022, when the Trump-dominated Republican Party underperformed in the mid-term elections, to early 2023, Republican voters appeared finally to be suffering from ‘Trump fatigue’. The re-elected Florida Governor, Ron DeFuture, as Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post dubbed him, was ideally placed to capitalise.

But now it’s late January 2024 and Ron DeSantis looks worn out. After a huge push in Iowa, he finished a distant second in the caucuses last week. In New Hampshire this week, he’s polling at 6 or 7 per cent. And the muddle of his campaign strategy now belies the competent image he wants to project.

His aim now, such as it is, is to stop Nikki Haley finishing a close second to Trump on Tuesday, wait for Trump to thump Haley in her home state of South Carolina next month, then emerge as the only Trump alternative. ‘He’s going to do what Ted Cruz did, which is the smart thing,’ Bob Healey, a New Hampshire Republican state representative and Cruz supporter, told me on Friday. ‘Just keep coming second and third because this thing will keep going.’



It’s a survival plan, not a victory one: just hang around long enough and hope that, somewhere, somehow, Trump will implode, be sentenced to prison, or something.

But it’s De Santis’s campaign that seems to have crumbled. His staff, led by former Ted Cruz consultants, misjudged the mood of the Republican electorate — and have only proved that in 2024 the party’s voters are loyal not to conservative ideals.

QOSHE - Primary woes / Ron DeSantis’s cursed campaign - Freddy Gray
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Primary woes / Ron DeSantis’s cursed campaign

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21.01.2024

In his initial pitch for the presidency, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis presented himself as Donald Trump with brains; Trump but you get two terms; Trump but he gets things done.

His strategists believed, with hundreds of millions of dollars behind him, he could easily brush the other Republican wannabes aside before taking on the Donald.

The path to the Republican nomination and the White House seemed clear. From late 2022, when the Trump-dominated Republican Party........

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