Among the books still available in Florida despite Ron DeSantis’s ongoing purge of “unsuitable” material is one the Republican governor might want to peruse.
Dale Carnegie’s 1936 bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People would appear to be the antithesis of DeSantis’s stuttering push for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination, as Donald Trump’s closest challenger traverses the country turning off voters to his dull personality and extremist policies.
By almost every measure, the rightwinger has had another lackluster week on the campaign trail, with “clumsy” missteps in New Hampshire, Texas, California and New York. Now, barely one month after his glitch-ridden launch on Twitter, DeSantis finds himself sinking in the polls, closer to the large field of optimists below him than the twice-indicted, twice-impeached former president who retains a stranglehold over the Republican party.
“The more voters learn about him, the less they can stomach the idea of him running the country,” the online magazine Jezebel concluded.
There are competing theories over the reasons for DeSantis’s decline. Analysts caution that with seven months still until primary season, and with Trump mired in legal troubles, it’s far too soon to write him off.
“Primary elections are volatile and unpredictable. Don’t believe anyone who says they know how this is going to turn out,” said Stephen Craig, professor of political science and campaign expert at the University of Florida.
But it is clear that many of DeSantis’s wounds are self-inflicted. In New Hampshire on Tuesday, he angered grassroots Republican women by scheduling a campaign event clashing with Trump’s appearance at their flagship lunch, a “stupid” and “rookie” mistake in the eyes of Republican strategists.
In a similar breach of protocol in New York, he vexed local Republicans by arranging a fundraising event without the courtesy of a heads-up that he was in town, Politico reported.
Another dollar-raising trip, to California, with whose Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, he is openly feuding over his controversial migrant flights to Sacramento, also provided an opportunity for mockery. After DeSantis railed against homelessness, and claimed in a campaign ad to have witnessed people “defecating in the streets” during a “comically short” 20-minute trip to San Francisco, pictures of squalor in large Florida cities began appearing on Twitter.
And in perhaps the highest-profile “miss” of the week, DeSantis’s big immigration policy reveal, made during a visit to the Texas-Mexico border on Monday, fell largely flat. Aggressive proposals such as deadly force against drug traffickers, separating migrant families, building a border wall and pledging to end birthright citizenship, enraged immigration advocates and failed to offer more to the Republican base than Trump’s own agenda.
“I used to characterize DeSantis as an awful lot like Trump, but smarter, and I’m not sure that applies any more,” Craig, the UF professor, said. “He just seems to be doing things that are not all that smart, his war with Disney for example, and some of the other things he does show a clumsiness that wasn’t so much apparent before he began being a national figure.
“I think he’s still a credible threat. But he’s going to have to get his act together. He’s showing some weakness and you can’t really do that if you want to knock off the big guy.”
Craig said DeSantis was in an awkward spot as Trump’s main challenger, targeted both by him and the field below.
“He is vulnerable to his actions [and] if the other candidates all ganged up on him, hoping that one of them might replace him as the alternative to Trump, then I see the potential for him to sink well in advance of the primaries,” he said.
“I’m not predicting that’s what’s going to happen. I’m saying that primaries are by their nature so volatile that I don’t think we should take any poll now as definitive evidence as to what is likely.”
Some senior Republicans are even less convinced. Larry Hogan, the former governor of Maryland, said DeSantis had underperformed. “[His] campaign is one of the worst I’ve seen so far, and he’s dropped like a rock. I think it’s getting close to being over,” he told CBS’s The Takeout.
The veteran Republican strategist Rick Wilson told the Guardian last month that the anti-woke governor was “all hat, no cattle”.
The DeSantis campaign continues to project an air of confidence. “This is a marathon, not a sprint,” he told reporters in Texas, according to NBC, after the network’s poll showed him with only 22% support from Republican primary voters, down from 31% in April.
“[Joe] Biden beats Trump in the swing states and I beat Biden handily in the swing states. That’s ultimately the election right there. If you don’t have a path to do that, then nominating [Trump] doesn’t make sense.”
Despite the defiance, there is evidence to suggest DeSantis is becoming more aware that some of his extreme actions in Florida might not be popular on the national stage.
He has largely avoided the debate over abortion after signing a six-week ban in his home state; and, significantly, made a legal move this week seeking to postpone the trial in Disney’s lawsuit against him until after the 2024 election. A wave of Republicans, including the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a presidential nomination rival, have accused DeSantis of betraying conservative values by retaliating against a private company for disagreeing with him.
One national issue DeSantis believes will be a winner for him is his stance on immigration. He has made several trips to the border, where he has committed Florida law enforcement resources to combat what he calls “Biden’s border crisis”.
But immigration advocates think DeSantis’s agenda and proposals will put off even more voters.
“He wants to overturn the 14th amendment, indefinitely detain children, and create a mass-deportation regime that would uproot families and destabilize communities across the country. It’s as ugly as it is unworkable,” said Zachary Mueller, political director of America’s Voice.
“It encapsulates the Republican party’s ongoing descent into dangerous extremism on immigration, all politics and red meat for the base and no real solutions or efforts to move beyond perpetual chaos, fearmongering, and bigoted extremes.”
Craig, meanwhile, believes DeSantis is running short on both time and personality.
“I used to view him as fairly charismatic, but his recent performance seems to belie that,” he said.
“Maybe he can smooth it out. Richard Nixon wasn’t Mr Charisma and he got elected, so it’s certainly not impossible.
“But DeSantis is facing the big guy and I don’t think he’s got a lot of room left. He needs to gain momentum somehow in the next month or two or some of the people who would like to move on from Trump may also decide it’s time to move on from DeSantis.”
