Rich asks what Ron DeSantis’s plan is to actually start winning primaries, if he’s just waiting for Donald Trump to run Nikki Haley off the road so he can finally stage a two-man race. As I noted in yesterday’s deep dive into where things went wrong for DeSantis, I am at a loss for the plan. Iowa was pretty much the perfect storm for DeSantis: a state Trump lost last time, an Upper Midwest holdout of decency for which Trump is a poor fit, a state where Republicans have recently built a dominant position and thus know what a winning GOP looks like (i.e., more like DeSantis in Florida than like Trump), a socially conservative electorate, a caucus that rewards organization, and the endorsement of the governor, legislative leaders, and key social-conservative leaders. And DeSantis not only lost to Trump by 30 points, he couldn’t stave off the collapse of turnout compared with 2016. Much as I still prefer DeSantis and would love to be proven wrong on this, I have a hard time seeing where things work better for him.
There’s a second flaw in that plan: Haley is likely to have money enough to linger in the race as long as she wants, if she’s inclined to do so, and if anything, she has stronger incentives to stay in the race long after it’s effectively over than DeSantis does. John Kasich, recall, did not run out of money or quit the race until minutes after Ted Cruz did. Haley, unlike DeSantis, doesn’t have a day job. She hasn’t been trying to build bridges with the MAGA electorate, so she is less likely to worry about making enemies by hanging around too long. She might, however, still see an opening to get Trump to offer her a position on the ticket to make her go away. DeSantis doesn’t want that, and couldn’t have it anyway, because of the constitutional rule that Florida’s electoral votes couldn’t go to a ticket of two Florida residents. On the whole, I think it may make more sense for Haley than for DeSantis to remain in the race all the way through the primaries, in order to claim the title of runner-up and next in line.
Yesterday, DeSantis talked with Jack Heath on Good Morning New Hampshire. This part jumped out at me:
When people say oh, you can wait, well, I don’t know what 28 is gonna look like then I may not have the calling, then. I had the calling now. I think that the party supporting me would lead to great results over an eight year period and a legacy that would last a quarter century. So you have to do that. Obviously with Trump in, it’s more difficult and I take these polls with a grain of salt like you do, but you know, the polls, when they have him up big nationally, when they take him out, you know, we run away with it in terms of in terms of the other Republicans. And so you know, I think you got it you got to do what you got to do. I’ve been taking it from all sides. But you know what, I’m still here.
Leave aside the elegiac touch of DeSantis talking about why he didn’t wait (much like his ruminations on how Trump has been helped by the indictments, they represent the natural grieving-in-public that all candidates do as hope slips away). The telling thing, to me, is that DeSantis is still thinking about how he would likely be the favorite in this race if Trump just went away. And you know what? He still might. Trump is 77 and overweight. He’s under four criminal indictments, plus a civil fraud case against his business and, at the moment, a civil sexual assault case. The Supreme Court is considering whether to throw him off the ballot — which it’s highly unlikely to do, but if the Court ruled against Trump, his campaign would be over. Add up a bunch of threats, however low-probability they are, and it might be that DeSantis is figuring he just needs to stay in the race competing with Haley for delegates in case we get past Super Tuesday and end up, by some stroke, in a Trump-less field. Sure, he could suspend his campaign now and reactivate later in the event of such a tectonic event, but it’s not impossible to see the rationale for clinging to that hope.
That’s a hard sell to donors and voters, though.