DeSantis Campaign Postmortem

Ron DeSantis insists that his presidential campaign will continue after Iowa; he told Hugh Hewitt this morning that he’s in the race through March. But with a make-or-break stand in the caucuses that broke — a 30-point loss to Donald Trump amidst disastrously low turnout — things have not gone as planned for the Florida governor. It’s time to look back on what went wrong for a campaign that stood at 30 percent in national polls two months before DeSantis announced his bid.

There’s a perennially roiling debate over DeSantis’s criticisms of Trump: Did he criticize him too little? Too much? On the wrong grounds? In the wrong venues? But the critics have it easy — they don’t have to actually win votes.

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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Ron DeSantis insists that his presidential campaign will continue after Iowa; he told Hugh Hewitt this morning that he’s in the race through March. But with a make-or-break stand in the caucuses that broke — a 30-point loss to Donald Trump amidst disastrously low turnout — things have not gone as planned for the Florida governor. It’s time to look back on what went wrong for a campaign that stood at 30 percent in national polls two months before DeSantis announced his bid.

There’s a perennially roiling debate over DeSantis’s criticisms of Trump: Did he criticize him too little? Too much? On the wrong grounds? In the wrong venues? But the critics have it easy — they don’t have to actually win votes.