After blowing through millions of dollars, Ron DeSantis finally ends his presidential bid

Just a year ago, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was riding high. Stung by their losses in the 2022 midterms, Republicans pointed a finger at the list of candidates chosen by Donald Trump who went down to defeat. By contrast, DeSantis sailed to victory in a landslide, while echoing many of the same MAGA themes. By the time he announced his presidential bid, DeSantis looked like the post-Trump future of the party.

That seems a long time ago. Now, DeSantis has finally admitted the inevitable. His campaign is over, and he has to bow to the real leader of the GOP: Trump. It’s a humiliating moment for the governor, buried by the man he intended to bury.

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DeSantis ran a campaign that was a disaster from start to finish. His announcement on Twitter was a glitch-filled flop. Staffing changes and stories of infighting dogged the campaign. DeSantis’ strategy of capitalizing on a strong showing in Iowa began to erode almost from day one.

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The biggest problem was the candidate himself. From the lifts he wore to look taller to the “unhinged” laugh, DeSantis was a truly terrible candidate on the trail. He spoke in acronyms no one understood. He even shamed a little girl for drinking an Icee at an Iowa fair: “That’s a lot of sugar, huh?”

Meanwhile, DeSantis lived in a bubble, refusing to do mainstream media interviews and traveling on private jets at a rate that was bleeding his campaign dry.

And what a rate! Between his campaign and his PAC, DeSantis is estimated to have spent over $35 million in Iowa alone. That amounted to about $1,500 for each vote he got in the caucuses.

After his pitiful showing in Iowa, DeSantis had no real shot at the nomination. (Nikki Haley doesn’t either, but that’s not stopping her.) He was polling in the single digits in New Hampshire, the next state to vote. His campaign apparently considered making a stand in South Carolina, where Haley was governor, but Trump has already sewn up endorsements from most of the state’s Republican officials.

So DeSantis bowed to the inevitable yesterday and pulled the plug on his already dead campaign.

The inevitable post-mortems will point to all the conditions that led to DeSantis’ failure. The GOP base rallied around Trump when he was indicted. Trump is essentially running as an incumbent, with all the advantages that that brings. Haley solidified the not-Trump vote. All of those factors are true.

But the biggest contributor to DeSantis’ failure has to be DeSantis himself. The signs of his fallibility were always on full display. DeSantis is hoping that he will be able to come back again in 2028, after Trump is done with his second term. (This assumes Trump will leave office should he win it.)

But it’s hard to imagine how DeSantis ever recovers from his biggest flaw: himself.