Have there been any changes? By late Monday night news, we should know whether DeSantis’ presidential bid, once seen as the best bet to unseat Trump from Republican leadership, has a big future.
Turnout is expected to be slightly lower than the 186,000 who attended the last Republican caucus here in Iowa in 2016 due to the cold weather. Informed Republicans in the state are hopeful that Mr. DeSantis’ army of door-knockers will help them do at least a little better. His poll numbers. Iowans will probably be outraged by former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s comments at a campaign event in Milford, New Hampshire, last week. You know you’re fixing it. ”
DeSantis could certainly leave Wednesday’s debate satisfied that his opponent sounded like a malfunctioning robot programmed to mention “DeSantisLies.com” every two minutes.
But this all adds up to tweaking the edges of what will likely be a “Big Trump Victory” headline Tuesday morning. DeSantis has been endorsed by Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, visited all 99 counties in the state, and his campaign and supporting super PACs have spent tens of millions of dollars on TV and radio ads.
Mr. DeSantis did everything a Republican could do to win the Iowa caucuses. And it seems that it has not yet been put into practical use.
Just because the final numbers from the caucus were disappointing for DeSantis doesn’t mean he is obligated to resign. But there is the sore question of where he will bounce back. He is in the single digits in the next election, the New Hampshire primary. Trump trails Trump by about 40 points in South Carolina, traditionally one of the decisive moments in the Republican presidential primary. On top of that, they are trailing by about 40 points even in their home state of Florida.
Where is DeSantis? win?
Mr. DeSantis’ campaign was based on a seemingly plausible but ultimately flawed campaign theory. The idea is that Republicans desperately need a candidate with Trump’s populism and belligerence, but without the January 6 scandal or his other scandals.
In fact, the more times Trump is indicted, the more grassroots Republicans rally around him, and the more the former president’s legal problems become a threat to the establishment and the deep state, the more grassroots Republicans rally around him. I chose to interpret it as an indication of whether there was a presence or not. It’s as if some Republicans believe that supporting another candidate would be a de facto betrayal of Mr. Trump, a kind of failed loyalty test.
And if Mr. DeSantis had no intention of alienating Trump supporters, he would have to unify the roughly half of the party that accepts an option other than Mr. Trump. The Trump coalition did not exist. There are also people on the left and center who oppose Trump. Some oppose him, viewing him as a shaky and unreliable defender of conservative positions. In the end, DeSantis settled on a sweet spot of being too Trump-like for anti-Trump Republican voters, but not too Trump-like for Trump’s fan base.
Perhaps the early debate swings and negative “word spitting” reviews of Trump may be a sign that DeSantis realizes he cannot outrun Trump without more direct criticism. With the moment of reckoning just days away, the question remains whether things would have been different if DeSantis had been so proactive from the beginning.
