After starting the year polling almost even with former President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis began losing ground in March and continued sinking through the spring. Notably, the decline began before Trump’s first indictment. A July Economist/YouGovAmerica poll shows Trump at 49% and DeSantis at 20% in a multicandidate GOP primary, which is similar to the polling averages. A Morning Consult poll released last week has Trump at a hefty 56% and DeSantis at a dismal 17%.
Fortunes can still change. The complaints about the DeSantis campaign often sound generic. He lacks the special sauce to catapult from statewide office to the presidency. He has no charisma. His staff isn’t presidential caliber. His message is too insular and online.
Maybe all these things are more or less true. Even so, there’s something odd about this campaign, which started with momentum, money and palpable enthusiasm from Republican elites and grassroots alike. Yet the oddness may have less to do with the personal awkwardness of DeSantis, or with any of his (thus far nonfatal) missteps, and more to do with the bizarre mental map of the Republican primary electorate.
DeSantis had carefully positioned himself to be the right-wing avenger that much of the Republican base seems to crave. He proved he would attack the enemies of the GOP’s White nationalist base and smite anyone seeking to displace White Christian conservatives from atop the nation’s political and social hierarchies. Migrants, trans kids, librarians, college professors – the entire woke-industrial-complex – would be made to suffer under a DeSantis presidency. He would deliver Trumpism’s authoritarian menace, but without the ignorance, chaos, criminality, and incompetence that defined Trump’s presidency.
Why isn’t that pitch working?
New York Times columnist David French offered one smartly compelling suggestion last week. DeSantis, he wrote, feeds the rage of the GOP base but doesn’t capture the joy of hobnobbing with one’s MAGA brethren. Trump boat parades, Trump tailgates, Trump rallies – “while countless gallons of ink have been spilled analyzing the MAGA movement’s rage, far too little has been spilled discussing its joy,” French wrote.
It's true that Trump is uniquely entertaining. But it’s also true that his typical performance is saturated with lies and vitriol. Part of the rollicking good time comes at the expense of those outside the MAGA pale. A Trump rally is a date with an insult comic, and most of the insults are directed at people far more honest, competent, and decent than Trump could ever be.
Yet like a moon held in orbit by the superior gravity of a more massive body, the entire GOP continues to revolve around Trump’s jagged ego.
The presidential primary offers a variety of escapes. Some candidates – Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson, former Vice President Mike Pence – appear eager to chart a road back to democracy for those who miss the dull, predictable days when Republicans supported the rule of law. Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie offers anti-Trumpism with Trumpy characteristics. Rich guy Vivek Ramaswamy offers a mystery voyage to parts unknown. Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley offers whatever the instant demands.
Any one of these people, perhaps even the inexperienced Ramaswamy, would be a less destructive leader than Trump. (DeSantis promises a political variation on a neutron bomb; he would destroy liberal America while leaving all the MAGA monuments untouched.) Yet the GOP electorate remains hesitant to leave its dank MAGA basement and walk into even partial sunlight.
Perhaps one third of the GOP has crossed a psychological border into a Trump cult. Focus groups conducted by Republican (anti-Trump) pollster Sarah Longwell convey the alternate universe in which this group lives, where each day is opposites day. “I like the guy because everything he says is true,” one focus group participant said of the most flagrant – and most obviously flagrant — liar ever to operate at the presidential level of American politics. Others discuss Trump, who contributed to the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans because he thought lying about a deadly pandemic would work better for him politically, as a selfless hero who sacrificed his lavish lifestyle and thriving business to enter politics and protect the little guy.
The cult is bizarre and frightening. But it’s still a minority of the party.
“There's a ‘Never Trump’ faction that's about 10% of the party, not much more,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres said in a telephone interview. “There’s an ‘Always Trump’ faction that's about a third of the party, call it 35%. There's a ‘Maybe Trump’ faction of people who voted for him twice and supported him when he was president and would vote for him again against Biden in a heartbeat. But they're worried that he carries too much baggage, that too many people hate him, that he won't be able to win in 2024. So, they're at least open to alternatives. They haven't seen the alternative that they want to rally around yet.”
In other words, the critical mass of the party, a decisive majority, which recognizes that Trump is a flawed vessel for their hopes, nonetheless remains open to Trump. And they may yet support the cult in rallying to the indicted former president.
Republican debates start in August, and perhaps the dynamics on stage will alter perceptions and possibilities. Perhaps DeSantis will figure out how to make the sale for Trumpism without Trump, or someone else will shine. But Trump’s playground dominance game clearly still appeals to Republican voters; it seems to have succeeded in undermining DeSantis’s stature, which will be hard to reclaim.
“No one has figured out how to combat a full-blown Trump barrage,” Ayres said, “where he questions not only your character and your record, which is par for the course, but your appearance, your background, makes veiled allegations about pedophilia — I mean, Trump has absolutely no lines.”
With one third of the party occupying MAGA homesteads on Planet Trump, and most of the rest of the party still contemplating putting down roots there, it seems that Trump personally might be more attractive to the bulk of GOP voters than a less outlandish, more competent, conveyor of Trumpism.
It's hard to know what to think of that. On the one hand, a weak attraction to Trumpism might be a good vital sign for democracy in the long run, suggesting that authoritarianism without Trump’s peculiar circus has limited appeal. On the other hand, tens of millions of Americans remain infatuated with an obviously crooked, plainly damaged, and damaging, demagogue. Frenzy is in the air, with perhaps more madness to come.
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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Francis Wilkinson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering U.S. politics and policy. Previously, he was an editor for the Week, a writer for Rolling Stone, a communications consultant and a political media strategist.
