Jim Geraghty of National Review Online assesses the latest developments in the Florida governor’s presidential bid.
When you launch as a highly touted challenger with high expectations, and national polls still have you in the mid teens a few months later, you have to shake up your staff the way Ron DeSantis is currently doing. Yes, we haven’t seen a televised presidential debate yet, but DeSantis has not had the launch he wanted to have. Trump, at least for now, is still indicating he won’t participate in that debate, which would deny DeSantis the opportunity for some sort of buzz-generating showdown.
DeSantis and his team thought, with some good reason, that “Florida is where woke goes to die” would appeal to current Trump supporters and peel off at least a portion of the Trump fanbase. So far, it just isn’t working. It’s going to take more, and I suspect it will require making a more explicit argument along the lines of, “I am a better candidate for the GOP in 2024 than Donald Trump is.” Trump fans may not be inclined to change their minds at all, but it is now more than abundantly clear that they won’t just naturally drift away or tire of the former president. DeSantis, or one of Trump’s other rivals, will have to stand up and make an argument against him. No Trump voter will shift from Trump to DeSantis or anyone else because some other candidate made such a terrific defense of Trump.
I also suspect that the “culture war, culture war, culture war” focus of DeSantis’s campaign so far is missing the mark for a bunch of Republican primary voters. In the Fox Business poll of Iowa, likely GOP caucus-goers were asked which issues will be most important in deciding whom they support for the Republican nomination. The economy was well ahead of all others at 41 percent, immigration and social issues were at 15 percent each, foreign policy/defense was at 12 percent, and populist issues, “such as corruption, elite power, and corporate activism,” ranked last at 9 percent.
