The odds are reasonably high that Ron DeSantis’s once-formidable 2024 presidential candidacy is on its very last legs. He’s been sinking like a stone nationally and in New Hampshire and South Carolina for months, having devoted nearly all of his resources to Iowa, where he’s struggling to head off Nikki Haley for second place, likely far behind Donald Trump. A third-place finish in Iowa would probably finish him altogether. And even if he finishes second, there’s no discernible path to victory ahead of him.
But you have to give the man credit for sticking to his tiny guns in what has become an underwhelming campaign. During his turn in the “Closing Arguments” series of pre-caucus interviews by the Des Moines Register and NBC News, the Florida governor continued to pursue his strategy of trying to out-Trump Trump, promoting himself as a more effective, ideologically consistent, and electable version of the 45th president.
Challenged directly to explain why he hasn’t talked at all about the crimes for which Trump has been indicted, DeSantis said he didn’t want to “align” himself with the “bad actors” who had “politicized the law” in pursuing the former president, but then argued that Trump’s legal problems as a “practical manner” would make him a less-electable general-election candidate. You’d think that perhaps the anniversary of the January 6 insurrection might give DeSantis a good opportunity to question Trump’s judgment, if not his respect for the rule of law or even his patriotism, but he won’t go there:
Ahead of the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, DeSantis downplayed the severity of the event, saying: “I know that this is a, like, Christmas Day for the media to talk about Jan. 6. I know it’s a big deal in a lot of the corporate outlets. I get that. I’ve not had a single question in Iowa about Jan. 6.”
He blamed “the left” for politicizing the event, adding, “I’m not going to spend time, you know, in my campaign either now or in the general election talking about rehashing that.”
But in the interview (as in his campaign appearances and advertising), DeSantis continues to focus on attacking Haley as a non-MAGA opportunist, even as Trump insults her as “Bird Brain” and smears her as “High Tax Haley” based on a gas-tax increase she once supported as part of a package that would have lowered income taxes in South Carolina. Calling her a “phony,” DeSantis also labels her the “darling of the Never Trumpers:”
You know, she doesn’t have a core set of convictions …
Nikki Haley can’t get conservative voters. She’s playing for voters who are not even core Republicans.
DeSantis is hugging the MAGA lane for all he’s worth. But his Trumpy pièce de résistance in the Register-NBC interview was auditioning as a future election denier:
DeSantis did not commit to accepting the results of the 2024 presidential election if Biden wins.
“If it was a transparent victory, obviously you accept the results. But I don’t know what Democrats have up their sleeve,” DeSantis said.
“I mean, what, you’re saying if there was fraud, I’m just supposed to turn a blind eye? No, I’m not going to do that,” he added.
There’s been enough nastiness between DeSantis and the former president during this campaign to make it very unlikely that the Floridian would get a plum appointment in a Trump administration, much as he would fit right in. But perhaps DeSantis is more confident that the future direction of the GOP is down the MAGA rabbit hole that he unsuccessfully sought to occupy this year. The dude is only 45; he won’t be Trump’s age until 2056.
