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This seems to be the Trumpian line, but doesn't seem to be matching up that well with reality. Desantis is gaining ground in the early primary states pretty significantly and nationally has gained ground as well.
Flatly wrong. He went from 30% after the midterms to 20% now. He's down in both the polling aggregators like 538 and in betting markets. He's up maybe a point or two from his nadir, but that doesn't come close to catching Trump, or even to reversing his spring/summer slide.
Really unclear why he ran instead of letting Trump immolate himself and run next term.
Maybe he thought to strike while the iron is hot or, at worst, the GOP base won't hold a grudge even if he reran 4 years later? That slump doesn't really augur well in that regard...
He'd have a lot more trouble keeping the COVID->conservative legislation->destroying reelection momentum if he spent another 4 years just hanging around since he is term-limited as Gov.
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The reason that he's running now is because the GOP establishment need to provide a candidate who can sabotage Trump. From the perspective of the GOP politicians currently in power, their preferred outcome is to continue to lose forever because that allows them to never actually carry out the promises they make towards their base, which would interfere with the money they receive from wealthy donors. Desantis is running now because attacking and damaging Trump is the entire raison d'etre of his political campaign - if he was actually trying to achieve conservative policy goals and govern effectively, he'd have to recognise the obvious reality on the ground (the Trump voting base, which conservatives cannot win elections without, is loyal to Trump and not the GOP brand) and work with Trump rather than against him.
They were doing a lot of winning down ballot prior to 2016 for a bunch of people who like losing.
In fact, most of the losing they've been doing has been from 2018, onward.
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Presidential aspirants are highly incentivized to run whenever they see an opening. Losing a primary is not a political death sentence by any means. Romney lost 2008 before winning the R nom in 2012. Biden flamed out twice before winning the D nom in 2020. On the other hand, staying out could mean they miss their shot forever. Plenty of people said Obama should have sat out in 2008 with the logic that it was basically "Hillary's turn". There's a good chance Obama would have never been president if he didn't run in 2008. Chris Christie lost his best shot when he didn't run in 2012
Fair to both posts. It's easy to say the GOP is a Trump personality cult but hard to stay out with 30% of the vote and the guy having his...issues.
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Where else would he park himself? He's term-limited out of the Florida governor's office.
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