| Retiring Ron DeSanctimonious: Roughly 48 hours before the New Hampshire primaries, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis dropped out of the race for the Republican presidential nomination, leaving the contest to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and former President Donald Trump.
DeSantis ran a disappointing campaign all around, failing to do much with his admittedly solid anti-lockdown reputation, choosing to enjoy the pitched battle of the culture war instead and positioning himself as further right on many issues than Trump. Many political analysts have theorized that he misread demand for such a candidate and that his timing was off—the COVID era was just slightly too long ago for him to realistically tout his record to any effect. He also seems to have picked a particularly bad and far-too-online team of campaign advisors, who were plagued by scandal.
“The political stock of DeSantis rose considerably during the pandemic. He benefited from having recognized earlier than most that the massive restrictions imposed on society in the name of fighting Covid did more harm than good,” writes National Review‘s Philip Klein. “Add this to his legislative wins on traditional conservative issues (taxes, school choice, gun rights, and life), his demonstrated competence during hurricanes, and landslide reelection, and there was reason to believe that he was somebody who could cobble together a winning coalition in a Republican presidential primary.” |
