The DeSantis Delusion

A fter finishing second in the 2016 Iowa caucus, first-time Republican candidate Donald Trump took to Twitter to allege skullduggery.

“Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it,” Trump tweeted. “That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!”

Trump attacked Cruz for “lying” about his stand on Obamacare and for allegedly spreading a rumor that surgeon Ben Carson was dropping out of the race. Trump alleged these tactics were “illegal” before deleting a tweet containing the accusation Cruz had broken the law.

It was the first time Trump’s name appeared on a major political ballot and would provide a blueprint for how the future president would handle his electoral losses.

Trump’s tantrum shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone. His entire life, he had operated by the rules that notorious “fixer” Roy Cohn had taught him. Never admit defeat. If someone punches you, punch back harder. Even if you end up settling, never admit you settled. Create your own reality and never back down from it.

Following the 2022 midterms, it finally appeared that a growing number of Republicans were willing to move on from Trump. Many had stuck with him after he tried to reverse the results of the 2020 presidential election he lost. They stuck with him after two impeachments. They still adored him after he sided with Russian president Vladimir Putin over U.S. intelligence officials and after he paid a porn actress $130,000 in hush money and after he absconded from the White House with the highest level of intelligence documents.

But finally, these Republicans found an aspect of Trump they could not abide. He was making them lose elections.

This wasn’t exactly news. During his tenure, Republicans had lost control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the presidency. But failure to win the Senate and only scraping up a bare majority in the House in 2022 has caused some notable Republicans to openly opine that it might be time for a new party leader.

And many are looking toward Florida’s pugnacious governor, Ron DeSantis, to be the penicillin that does away with the Trump years.

But there is no guarantee DeSantis will sail into the 2024 election. Trump has once again announced he is running, the first time in recorded history a candidate appears to be running for president to evade criminal charges. (If he was spending his time at Mar-a-Lago golfing, he would be a sitting duck for prosecutors — as a candidate, he can at least claim law enforcement is engaging in a partisan exercise to keep him from regaining the presidency.)

While DeSantis’s headline-grabbing media stunts have earned him the status as Trump’s chief challenger, there is scant evidence to suggest he has overtaken the former president in the eyes of GOP faithful. While one recent poll had DeSantis 23 points ahead of Trump head-to-head, the RealClear average of polls shows Trump up by a nearly two-to-one margin (48 percent to 27 percent.). A Wall Street Journal poll of likely GOP primary voters had DeSantis leading Trump 52 percent to 38 percent.

Of course, there are other candidates sniffing around as well. If you think popular candidates in December of a midterm election year are locks to be the party’s nominee in two years, just ask presidents Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, and Rudy Giuliani.

And it’s not as if DeSantis has a lock on Republicans nationally, who have yet to really get to know him. Some of his hijinks in Florida would make a traditional conservative look as if DeSantis just told them Darth Vader was their real father. He has used the power of the government to micromanage speech he doesn’t like, launch politically advantageous investigations, and round up illegal immigrants — in Texas, no less — and ship them off to blue cities.

But whatever DeSantis’s benefits or demerits, he is not the main story of the 2024 presidential campaign. What matters most is the presence of the large orange shadow emanating from Mar-a-Lago.

And given Donald Trump’s history, he will not go down willingly. If someone like DeSantis (or “Ron Desanctimonious,” as Trump has labeled him) were to mount a real challenge, there is ample evidence to suggest Trump will come at him with the fire of a thousand suns.

And if another candidate were to actually win the primary, the GOP would no doubt once again be cast into a morass of accusations of “fraud” and “stolen elections.” We now know that Donald Trump does not concede — even if the Republican primary has a clear winner who is not Trump, that candidate will have to wrestle with the former president all the way up to Election Day, rather than focusing on whoever ends up being the Democratic candidate.

And, of course, Trump always has the nuclear option, which would be to run as an independent. If we know one thing about Trump, it is that he will always put his own needs ahead of those of the party, so he wouldn’t hesitate to burn the 2024 election to the ground to get his way. (Given what we saw on January 6, 2021, one shudders to think of what could happen in any number of state-capitol buildings after a caucus or primary election.)

Many of Ron DeSantis’s fans see him as the acid bath the party needs to finally rid itself of the Trump stench. But when Republicans nominated a game-show host in 2016, they signed up for a lifetime of histrionics. The GOP may look far and wide for a new leader, but the former president is not going away. DeSantis may win the primary, but if the former guy is still around, he will preside over the burning rubble of a political party.