{"id":1463051,"date":"2024-01-25T00:14:25","date_gmt":"2024-01-25T00:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=311654"},"modified":"2024-01-25T06:55:25","modified_gmt":"2024-01-25T06:55:25","slug":"when-the-cookie-crumbled-the-ron-desantis-campaign-ends-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/01\/25\/when-the-cookie-crumbled-the-ron-desantis-campaign-ends-2\/","title":{"rendered":"When the Cookie Crumbled: The Ron DeSantis Campaign Ends"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
\n
\"\"

Photograph Source: Gage Skidmore – CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

So much for that.\u00a0 Much had been promised by Florida Governor Ron De Santis to derail Donald Trump\u2019s bid to return to the White House.\u00a0 But the attempt to wrest the Republican Party from the orange ogre\u2019s meaty, waving hands was never convincing.\u00a0 In the end, DeSantis was more stumbler than balancer, a woeful mismatch before the forces he never staved off.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n
While he made his name fluorescent bright in Florida\u2019s politics, launching attacks on Disney, skirmishing with public health officials regarding pandemic measures, and railing against minorities (LGBTQ youth figured highly), he seemed awkward away from the swamp.\u00a0 On the national stage, Trump was to DeSantis what the boulder was to Sisyphus, having to be constantly pushed, a crushing, seemingly perennial burden.\u00a0 But to win the nomination, let alone have any prospect of a shot at the White House, DeSantis had to extricate himself from that task without anybody else noticing.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
He did so in a myriad of ways, none successful.\u00a0 One particularly shallow effort involved DeSantis\u2019s attempt to woo the right-wing of the Twitter\/X-sphere, going so far as to invite social media figures<\/a> (one dare not call them personalities) in January 2022 to Tallahassee for a package visit.\u00a0 The agenda: a pop in to the governor\u2019s office, dinner at the gubernatorial mansion, topped off with drinks at a rooftop bar near Florida\u2019s state house.\u00a0 Many of the feted bloviators had recently made the move to Florida, where they could bask in freedom\u2019s airy glory.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
This all looked like an effort to sketch a separate agenda, bringing out the paving for his own way to the White House.\u00a0 But DeSantis\u2019s reasons for wading into that particular echo chamber were unmistakable: Trump was going off him, and the emotionally distant DeSantis was not one to press the flesh with enthusiasm. (His social circle, it had been said<\/a>, was so small it \u201ccould fit the back seat of a Mini Cooper.\u201d)\u00a0 Cornered, and not willing to go for such savoury electoral items as the economy, DeSantis chose culture of the most \u201cRight\u201d sort.\u00a0 The governor\u2019s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, told<\/a> Politico<\/em> that the tactics were not out of the ordinary.\u00a0 \u201cTurns out that a governor who stands up for individual rights against federal tyranny is popular among conservatives.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Whatever Pushaw\u2019s view on this, conservative commentators could not but notice the heavy reliance on digital campaigning as the be-all and end-all.\u00a0 Jack Butler of the National Review Online<\/em> was sceptical<\/a> from the start.\u00a0 \u201cAn essential element of its emerging strategy appears to be rooted in the belief that Twitter is not merely a means to disseminate information and messaging produced elsewhere, but an essential political background itself \u2013 a digital Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina.\u201d\u00a0 It was his effort to seek the \u201cTerminally Online aura\u201d that captured such figures as Blake Masters in 2022 or Elizabeth Warren in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
And terminal it proved to be.\u00a0 The DeSantis campaign was chaotic, controversial without constructive return, fatally weak, and inclined to needlessly sap resources.\u00a0 It also started late, enabling Trump to gather steam and mount his own offensive against \u201cMeatball Ron\u201d and \u201cRon DeSanctimonious\u201d.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The mounting legal challenges for the former president were also failing to shrink his popularity.\u00a0 Each indictment and charge came with an invigorating effect.\u00a0 The May 2023 launch by the Florida governor also began in ominous fashion, with DeSantis choosing the venue as Twitter Spaces, with his facilitator being the erratic billionaire Elon Musk.\u00a0 By controlling access and the message through the audio-format, the governor could eschew meeting actual human beings.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
As it transpired, the site creaked and glitched.\u00a0 It took almost half-an-hour of technical problems before DeSantis took off.\u00a0 Even then, his presentation, delivered to a significantly smaller online audience, could not resist<\/a> the digital aura.\u00a0 \u201cI think what was done with Twitter was really significant for the future of our country.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Described once by Trump as a \u201cbrilliant cookie\u201d, the crumbling DeSantis saw the dark writing on the electoral wall after the results of the Iowa caucus.\u00a0 The January 15 outcome did place him second on the returns at 21.2%, ahead of Nikki Haley at 19.1%, suggesting that the campaign would continue into New Hampshire and South Carolina.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
It was not to be.\u00a0 Rather than risk further defeat and likely humiliation, DeSantis suspended his campaign.\u00a0 Inevitably, the announcement came on the platform now known as X.\u00a0 He declared that there was \u201cno clear path to victory.\u201d\u00a0 Like many politicians in the US, he could not resist relying<\/a> on words supposedly uttered by Britain\u2019s wartime leader, Winston Churchill, and making a hash of it: \u201cSuccess is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Churchill never said anything of the sort, though he did write<\/a> that, \u201cNo one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it\u201d and that, \u201cSuccess always demands a greater effort\u201d.\u00a0 Both quotes appear in the 1949 publication Their Finest Hour<\/em>.\u00a0 DeSantis, it would seem, had used the words<\/a> of a Budweiser advertisement from 1938, rather appropriate given the watery quality of that beverage, and the governor\u2019s weak, haphazard effort.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The Republican candidate, branded Trump 2.0 or \u201cTrump without the baggage\u201d, is no more.\u00a0 And just to sweeten matters for the man whose hold on the Republicans he could not break, DeSantis gave his own endorsement.\u00a0 It leaves Trump in a near unassailable position, with Haley\u2019s purportedly more modest bid more vulnerable and quixotic than ever.<\/div>\n

The post When the Cookie Crumbled: The Ron DeSantis Campaign Ends<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So much for that.\u00a0 Much had been promised by Florida Governor Ron De Santis to derail Donald Trump\u2019s bid to return to the White House.\u00a0 But the attempt to wrest the Republican Party from the orange ogre\u2019s meaty, waving hands was never convincing.\u00a0 In the end, DeSantis was more stumbler than balancer, a woeful mismatch More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post When the Cookie Crumbled: The Ron DeSantis Campaign Ends<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":533,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463051"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/533"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463051"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1464714,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463051\/revisions\/1464714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}