There’s a lot of talk about Ron DeSantis’s poor showing in the Iowa caucus. It’s destroyed his future. He’s not ready for primetime. The race exposed a dour and robotic personality. He’s just too unlikeable to be president.
I’m skeptical. For one thing, I suspect in a few months no one is going to care about the 2024 GOP primary results. In a few years, no one will even remember them.
DeSantis bet that Donald Trump would either step aside because of his mounting legal troubles (they’ve only galvanized the former president’s candidacy) or that Republicans were ready to move on to a more stable, competent, and traditional candidate (they are definitely not).
It’s still early, but the uncomfortable truth is that there is probably nothing DeSantis did or didn’t do that really would have mattered.
For one thing, the former president is effectively running as an incumbent, and incumbents have a lot of things going for them. They have built-in party loyalties. Voters have already seen the incumbents win. There is name recognition and Trump, no matter what he does, is perpetually at the center of the political universe.
Trump, understanding all this, ran for the general election, refusing to debate Republicans and moderating some of his positions. He could sit and watch Nikki Haley and DeSantis pound each other while his stalking horse, Vivek Ramaswamy, dropped bombs on both. Fair or not, as a campaign strategy it makes complete sense.
Although, of course, the notion that debates could
