One of the most entertaining Ron DeSantis stories of the week was only a parody, although he might wish it was not so. The satirical website The Onion had Florida’s rightwing governor settling his ongoing feud with Disney by taking a guest role in its hit Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian.
Behind the mocking comedy was hard truth for a vain politician embroiled in the energy-sapping scrap with Florida’s biggest private employer over LBGTQ+ rights.
There’s clear evidence the Disney fight, and his numerous other cultural battles, including his signing of an extreme six-week abortion ban, are costing DeSantis significant political capital on the national stage as he prepares a likely presidential run. And while the road to the 2024 Republican nomination is likely to have many ups and downs ahead, there is little doubt DeSantis has hit a rough spot.
He has fallen well behind Donald Trump in the polls, can’t seem to find a Florida congressman to endorse him, and is hemorrhaging support from influential Republican donors.
But there’s no easy way out, even if he wanted to find one.
“It’s a combination of vanity and vengeance for him. He suffers from what a lot of politicians do, which is vanity, and this is about retribution,” said David Jolly, a Republican former Florida congressman who served with DeSantis in the House, and was briefly a rival in the 2016 race for Marco Rubio’s Senate seat until the incumbent reversed his decision to stand down.
“On Disney, his ego’s gotten the best of him and he’s been called out for it. He has to win this [but] the momentum is going in the wrong direction, and it’s getting serious.
“To use a hockey analogy, he’s always known how to skate to where the puck is going. But the puck’s going to the wrong goal right now.”
By any measure, DeSantis has had a rough week. It began with a torrent of criticism when he suggested building a state prison on land next to Disney’s theme parks as payback for being outfoxed over control of the company; and continued with a humiliating odyssey to Washington DC in search of congressional endorsements, only to find a succession of former allies defecting to Trump.
At home in Florida, there has also been irritation with DeSantis and his extremist agenda, according to Politico.
“People are deeply frustrated,” Republican former state senator Jeff Brandes told the outlet, adding that party colleagues he had spoken to felt “they are not spending any time on the right problems”.
It’s a view echoed by Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor mulling his own challenge for the party’s nomination. DeSantis’s obsession with vengeance on Disney, a private company, for opposing him is not conservative, in Christie’s view.
“If you express disagreement in this country, the government is allowed to punish you?” he told Semafor.
“That’s what I always thought liberals did. And now all of a sudden here we are participating in this with a Republican governor.”
According to Jolly, however, it’s not attacks by such as Christie that should set alarms ringing for DeSantis’s advisers.
“The most damning criticism of him on Disney is from Justin Amash, the founder of the House freedom caucus, who was a colleague of his, and who condemned DeSantis for his take on Disney. That stings for DeSantis that the freedom caucus leader came out against him on it,” he said.
“He also goes to Washington and four of his Florida colleagues turn around and endorse his competitor.
“A lot of politicians are affable, some are cerebral [but] from the time he stepped on the stage, DeSantis has been a loner. He considers himself the smartest person in the room, but has not built relationships or loyalty and in return there are no loyal members of the delegation to him now.
“The credit to him is it works. He’s the governor of the third largest state and could be the next president. So it’s an observation of his personality more than a criticism, but it’s no surprise that now when he needs people they’re not there for him.”
Ultimately, Jolly believes, DeSantis might not be ready for the demands of the national stage.
“His confidence for the past few years has been because everything has been scripted, with friendly crowds. He doesn’t speak to the press, and when he does it often becomes adversarial,” he said.
“The question is, how long can he run out that model in a presidential race before he really has to suffer the spotlight? His greatest strength nationally is not polling, it’s that he’s a fundraising juggernaut who for five years has captured the attention of the nation’s largest Republican donors.
“If they’re worried about either his culture war overreach, or that he’s unprepared for the national stage, that’s real. They want a winner.”
Some analysts believe the feuding with Disney, which began last year with the company promising to help overturn DeSantis’s flagship “don’t say gay” law banning classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender preference, could be a campaign killer.
“He declared thermonuclear war on a cartoon mouse,” the Orlando Sentinel political columnist Scott Maxwell wrote.
“The governor’s scriptwriters seemed to envision this as the ultimate power play. They’d teach Disney a lesson, rev up the base and show every other employer in Florida what happens if they don’t bow down before DeSantis.
“Instead, he became a punchline. This may be remembered as the moment the wheels came off.”
Others are more cautious. Susan MacManus, distinguished professor emeritus of political science at the University of Florida, warned that “one bad week is not enough” to discount a candidate’s viability.
“If you decide to run for president, and everyone assumes [he will], you know going into it you’ll have bad weeks and good weeks, and DeSantis has never been a traditional campaigner,” she said.
“There are different portions of the electorate for whom things resonate more, so some Republicans were disappointed that he was going after Disney and making a joke about the jail. Others were disappointed by his statement about Ukraine way back, others about the endorsements.
“But in the big picture, it’s way too soon to tell the damage done by one week, nine months ahead of the primary season, and the first Republican debate scheduled for August.
“As an analyst, I can see people’s assessment of this as a bad week. But as someone who studies historical presidential campaigns, I don’t see it as an end-all week.”
