From Never Back Down to Trump surrender: 3 fatal flaws that doomed Ron DeSantis’ campaign

ROCHESTER, N.H. – It turns out that Republican voters didn’t want Donald Trump Without The Baggage – a role that Ron DeSantis sought so unsuccessfully.

The failure of the Florida governor to sell himself to Republicans as a Trump alternative was one of several flaws that undermined his presidential campaign, a list that also includes a fractious campaign organization and a notable inability to project warmth on the campaign trail.

Dec 6, 2023; Tuscaloosa, AL, USA; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his wife Casey DeSantis at the conclusion the fourth Republican Presidential Primary Debate presented by NewsNation at the Frank Moody Music Building University of Alabama on Dec. 6, 2023.

“The candidate had an incredible track record of success, but he never learned how to communicate it,” pollster Frank Luntz said.

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A year ago, DeSantis was one of the most prominent Republicans in the country. Briefly nicknamed “DeFuture,” DeSantis was a prolific fundraiser and popular governor who seemed positioned to try to take the GOP into a post-Trump era.

After months of anticipation, he jumped into the 2024 campaign in May. But in a sign of things to come, his launch featured a botched rollout on Twitter marred by technological problems.

The Florida governor ran a hard-right campaign aimed at courting the former president’s MAGA base, even as Trump relentlessly attacked him.

In the end, voters never took to Trump Lite, preferring the real thing. Polls indicated that, while many voters liked DeSantis, they didn’t think he offered them enough reason to move on from Trump.

DeSantis was cautious about attacking Trump. Maybe too cautious.

The question of how best to take on Trump proved problematic for DeSantis.

From the beginning, he was careful about how he attacked Trump, seeking to avoid antagonizing the former president’s supporters. But some of DeSantis’s supporters feared he was going too easy on Trump.

Trump, meanwhile, savaged DeSantis in highly personal terms, branding him “DeSanctimonious.”

DeSantis did take Trump to task for failing to accomplish goals during his presidency, from a more complete border wall to reduced federal spending. He also hit Trump, occasionally, for his vicious attacks on him and other political opponents.

All to little avail.

DeSantis steered clear of trying to leverage the 91 indictments returned against Trump in four separate criminal cases. Instead, he granted Trump political cover by questioning the legitimacy of the indictments.

After a federal grand jury indicted Trump in June on charges of hiding classified documents from a subpoena, DeSantis tweeted that “the weaponization of federal law enforcement represents a mortal threat to a free society. We have for years witnessed an uneven application of the law depending upon political affiliation.”

In August, when a state grand jury in Georgia charged Trump with conspiring to steal the 2020 election, DeSantis called it “an example of this criminalization of politics.”

“I don’t think that this is something that’s good for the country,” DeSantis said.

Last month, DeSantis did criticize Trump for threatening prosecutions of political opponents. “Trump is fine with weaponization if it’s against people he doesn’t like,” he told the Real Clear Politics website.

By then, however, it was probably too late for DeSantis’ campaign.

Ultimately, the criminal cases helped to solidify Trump’s support with the Republican base as he rallied his supporters behind the accusation that the criminal cases were politically motivated.

Awkwardness, media shyness and testy exchanges with voters

DeSantis wasn’t a natural at the kind of retail politicking that can give candidates a big boost in early voting states like Iowa and New Hampshire.

He was widely viewed as stiff and awkward and was slow to warm to the spotlight.

DeSantis alienated some New Hampshire voters by refusing to take questions at events town hall-style.

In one of this final appearances on the campaign trail, he got into an argument with a woman in South Carolina who expressed her support for Republican rival Nikki Haley.

“It’s not your show ma’am, it’s not your show,” DeSantis told the woman, according to the Daily Mail.

Initially, DeSantis often declined to deal with reporters, a tactic that did little to help him get out his message to a broader swath of the Republican electorate.

DeSantis later said he regretted shunning the mainstream media in the early part of the campaign and not making himself more available.

“I think it turned out that he was Ron DeSantis: Awkward, weird, too conservative on a host of policies, seemed like a knock off version of Trump at best and at worst like a less appealing Floridian Ted Cruz,” said Republican political strategist Liz Mair.

Competing power centers in DeSantis World

Trump’s emotional hold on the GOP base always was going to be tough for DeSantis to break, but he made it more difficult by running a campaign plagued by missteps.

One of them was his decision to outsource much of his campaign to a super PAC, Never Back Down. That created competing power centers, leading to arguments and bad headlines.

The PAC imploded amid friction among campaign staffers; top PAC leaders were fired or left.

By July, DeSantis was laying off staff after burning through cash too quickly. In August, he switched campaign managers.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: From Never Back Down to Trump surrender: 3 fatal flaws that doomed Ron DeSantis’ campaign