Our friends at SpaceX may have just brought us a new phrase to describe disaster, and that is “rapid, unscheduled disassembly.” Ron DeSantis, he who would obtain the GOP presidential nomination in 2024 and be Ron DeFuture, Ron DeFace Of the Party, is washing out, and we mean bigly. So when speaking of his campaign, which I personally don’t think is very long for this world, we will refer to it as RUD, rapid, unscheduled disassembly.

Why do I say this? Because as the days go by, one pundit after another decides to call the DeSantis campaign quits. Yesterday, Josh Marshall sounded the death knell.

Two more Republican members of Florida’s congressional delegation have completely ignored Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ plea to hold off on endorsing Donald Trump while he tricks absolutely no one into thinking he’s still mulling a presidential election.

Reps. Greg Steube and John Rutherford announced this week that they’re throwing their weight behind the other Florida resident’s 2024 bid, both issuing Trump endorsements dripping with MAGA flair.

Steube made his announcement via Newsmax, the right-wing promised land where Trump and others in MAGAworld landed after the former president’s relationship with Fox News soured in 2020. […]

Rutherford and Steube now join Republican Reps. Anna Paulina Luna, Matt Gaetz, Cory Mills and Byron Donalds of Florida in publicly pulling for Trump.

This is all made more pathetic for DeSantis when coupled with an NBC News report last week that found that DeSantis had recently contacted at least six members of the Florida Republican congressional delegation, asking lawmakers to hold off on announcing their 2024 endorsements. Steube was one of those contacted by DeSantis’ team. Per the local Herald-Tribune:

Steube’s Trump endorsement comes after he recently was contacted by DeSantis’ team. He told the Herald-Tribune that he assumed they wanted to talk about his endorsement, but did not speak with them.

So far, not one Florida House Republican has thrown their weight behind DeSantis, according to NBC.

And Charlie Sykes had this to say in today’s newsletter.

So how did your week go? Unless your face was being eaten by fire-ants while you were fighting off a raging case of dysentery, it probably went better than the one that Ron DeSantis is having. A few headlines capture the vibe:

The upper ranks of Donald Trump’s campaign and political operation exploded in jubilation on Tuesday, mocking Ron DeSantis’ staff as a bunch of “amateurs,” with multiple officials belly-laughing with one another over how much Trump had — in their verbiage — “cuck[ed]” the Florida governor on securing endorsements from the state’s congressional delegation, according to three sources familiar with the internal chatter.

Team Trump’s rollout of Florida endorsements on Tuesday was part of a plan to subvert DeSantis in his own state that the former president’s staff has been working on for more than a month, sources say. Trump’s aggressive, weeks-long outreach to secure Florida Republican endorsers this early in the game (when DeSantis hasn’t even officially declared a 2024 presidential run) has been spearheaded by top aides like Brian Jack and Susie Wiles, with the ex-president at times getting personally involved as well, the sources say.

This probably did not come as a surprise to those of you who have been following the campaign in the Bulwark. As we have noted repeatedly, DeSantis does not merely play an assh*le on television; he really is one. And his churlish qualities are coming back to bite him. The guy has personality issues.

One person in DeSantis’s orbit said a dearth of warm interactions — even with staff and traditional allies — has hurt him with endorsements, lawmakers and donors. “He doesn’t like talking to people, and it’s showing,” said this person, who is a vocal supporter of DeSantis.

Ron DeSantis has been compared to Ted Cruz before and it’s an apt comparison. Both men have fine educations, attended the best schools. That is laudable indeed. But a stellar legal background does not automatically translate into talent for government. In order to be a good steward of the public trust, a fundamental understanding of both how government works and how people work is necessary. All of our best legislators have these abilities in common. Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis don’t have them at all. They are power mongers. They are attracted to government because power is their aphrodisiac of choice.

Cruz brings a wimpy, oleaginous spin to his public persona, which doesn’t even wash on Fox News, where he regularly has bent the knee to Tucker Carlson and DeSantis has no public persona. He’s already blown every card he may have once held by pushing Disney around, and they have outmaneuvered him every step of the way. So much for smart negotiator and so much for man of the people. What’s left?

DeSantis hasn’t got what it takes and he may soon reckon with that fact. That really is the only question left here:

  1. Will DeSantis decide to pass on 2024, instead holding out for 2028? Or beyond?
  2. Or, will DeSantis decide, out of sheer cussedness and spite, to go for the 2024 nomination, even if it means leaving the governorship and imperiling what political capital he has managed to build so far?

We’re going to find out and within the next four to six weeks, max.

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10 COMMENTS

  1. He’s not resigning to run for president. If the FL legislature doesn’t change the law, he ain’t running. If the legislature does change the law to allow DeSatan to run without resigning, then he (or his wife) needs to decide just how much humilation he is willing to endure for the long shot of becoming the rethug nominee.

    12

    • I think this week has been the determinative one. He can’t beat Trump. All of the legislators who didn’t endorse him and who did endorse Trump are the handwriting on the wall, blinking in neon.

      The smart thing to do is for DeSantis to just mouse away and not say much of anything. 2028 is not that far off. Although, here’s the comedic part of that: Where is it carved in stone that Trump won’t run in 2028, assuming he’s defeated in 2024? Or, God forbid he’s not defeated, then you know he’s going to run for yet a third term, right?

      10

      • You’re so right! He’s fixated on the word woke and uses it to support all of his fascist laws he’s enacting. I hope he drains FLA of every decent person who cares about their kids’ education, every doctor who cares about the lives of their wives, daughters, sisters. By the time he’s done with ramming his “ideas” down their throats, there won’t be a person with a viable brain left in the state.

        5

  3. I said it earlier this week and I’ll say it again. IF (and it’s likely a big “if”) DeSantis and his wife/campaign manager have one foot still grounded in the real world then they know it’s over. I’m not talking about the Presidency. I’m talking about his political career. Politically he’s a dead man walking and has been for some time now. Skipping 2024 and trying in 2028? Don’t make me laugh. Trump will take savage delight in doing to DeSantis what he did to Cruz only worse. Trump never forgets an insult or a slight and he truly believes he made DeSantis and that DeSantis betrayed him by even allowing speculation about a 2024 run. Of taking over for Trump. “Trump without the baggage” was the phrase.

    Does anyone actually think for one minute that Trump won’t spend the rest of his life tearing chunks out of DeSantis over that? It doesn’t matter if Trump himself falters and fails to win the nomination, or wins the nomination and loses the general election by a bigger popular vote and electoral vote margin than in 2020. It doesn’t even matter if our wildest hopes and dreams come true and Trump winds up being a convicted felon and goes to prison. Trump WILL find ways to carve chunks out of DeSantis like the dude in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre wielding a giant chainsaw! DeSantis won’t be able to get elected dog catcher when Trump REALLY starts going to town on him. And when DeSantis is carved into pieces, the pieces fed through a wood chipper and then run over by a steam roller Trump STILL won’t stop.

    So, if you’re DeSantis what do you do? Accept your fate meekly? Or decide that even though you’re going to die a horrible political death no matter what decide to take your opponent down with you? Or at least cripple him. Get whatever measure of “take that you a-hole” on Trump. Do his damndest to try and make sure if he loses that Trump loses too.

    I don’t know. Pence is completely round the bend delusional, thinking that somehow he’s actually got a shot at being President. DeSantis might, just might be more clearheaded and practical and, realizing it ain’t happening next year or any year down the road might decide to play political suicide bomber on Trump.

    4

  5. He should be working at the formerly big 3 instead of failing on the public stage. That industry is loaded with hacks with no original ideas….

  6. I’d say he’s waiting for diapers to go to jail or at least for all the flack from the upcoming trials to wound him so badly no one will vote for him.

    1

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