DeSantis Drops: Three Key Takeaways Impacting our Timeline

Topic: Perspective

Yesterday, my first of ten predictions for 2024 came perfectly true – Ron DeSantis dropped out of the campaign, and did so well before Florida’s March 19^th primary date. I wrote the following on New Year’s Day:

 Haley is still in the race because the next big name in the race, Ron DeSantis, underperformed in historical fashion after pulling himself out of the political oven four years too early.

Florida’s primary is on March 19.  By that time, so many primaries and caucuses will have passed by then DeSantis will be sitting on perhaps only a few more delegates than me.  While Marco Rubio stayed around for the home-state thrashing of a lifetime in 2016, he wasn’t the sitting governor.  I predict DeSantis will listen to today’s whispers and soon return to the position he was reelected for before dropping his own state by 40 points – an outcome that would tarnish his governorship and threaten his moral authority.  This will be an easy decision for him if he’s still burning up donor money by March 5.

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This dropout came even over the obstinance of the “Never Back Down” team and the talking heads who swore Florida’s governor would kick it into high gear after Nikki Haley’s inevitable loss in the forthcoming South Carolina primary and subsequent dropout, leaving a two-man race for the gold.  More than $100 million that could have been spent on the inevitable Trump campaign for the White House got burned up paying angry, rigid ideologues who still can’t read the 2012 electoral map and think the Republican Party can win while ignoring the working class, jet setting for book tours, and debating California’s sly governor, who lost on substance but won on style.

All my evaluations are relative.  If you read my work and I express a positive opinion about a celebrity, athlete, or politician, unless otherwise stated, you can assume I am speaking in relative terms.  My evaluation, before the presidential run, that Ron DeSantis was the best governor in America was relative to all the other governors.  In that sense, I liked Ron well enough, in these relative terms, through his blowout win in the 2022 Florida gubernatorial election.  The timelines and Trump’s pending presidential announcement didn’t make sense to me for DeSantis to run, as they may have if he had two years under his belt into his second term to give it a run, or if 80% of Republican primary voters didn’t believe Trump was cheated out of his 2020 reelection.  Turns out I was wrong.

Nine months later, and all that cash and relational capital spent, one more GOP primary Hindenburg has exploded. 

Notwithstanding the obvious financial assessment, in that candidates can’t spend $15 million per delegate and remain viable, here are the Top 3 Reasons, in my estimation, DeSantis bailed on the 2024 race and endorsed Trump:

1)    Eyes on the Future

Being ambitious isn’t always bad, especially if those ambitions are spelled out for those who share a common purpose or goal well ahead of time, and without obvious obstacles (like Donald Trump’s clear run already in place) standing in the way of achieving that goal.  The GOP has a very shallow bench, nearly as shallow as the Democrat bench, when it comes down to charismatic superstars who also have substance, conviction, and drive to headline the top of a ticket.  In November 2022, I’d have listed Trump, Kari Lake, and Ron DeSantis as the top three Republican stars.  Since then, DeSantis has removed himself from that mountain, affirming the 2020 election results, remaining tepid when it comes to a citizen of his own state being constantly harassed and persecuted by the judicial branch of the government, and ditching the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee with very little of his second term attended to.