DeSantis drops out!

Does he enter the VP Sweepstakes or is that not in the cards!

There will be a lot of post-mortem discussions about what went wrong with the DeSantis campaign. It simply made too much sense for so long to crash and burn as it did.

The concept of a successful Governor with similar ideals and similar personality as Donald Trump that just didn't carry all the baggage of the former President was appealing to many Republicans. I think at a certain time not too long ago, DeSantis might have been the frontrunner even.

Many suggest that his attacks on Trump backfired. Many believe that had he simply put himself on the same side of the issues with Trump, that he could be seen in the way he wanted (a better alternative). But like everyone else that has ever run against Trump, he took the bait. As they say, never argue with a troll, they will just bring you down to their level and win with experience. Trump is the ultimate troll (and I mean that as a compliment). He is literally able to bring everyone down to his level and reframe every argument to be about his terms. To the degree that Joe Biden might have avoided this in 2020 was simply because he hid in his basement and avoided campaigning all together.

I have to sort of agree with this position. I don't think you win over Trump supporters by demanding that Trump is a bad candidate. You are literally insulting the very people you are trying to pull into your camp. I think it would have been a better strategy to simply provide himself as an alternate with the same ideals as Trump. Provide to Trump supporters that they are correct to like Trump as a President and believe he would make a good President again if elected. While that sounds counterintuitive, he might have made more headway with that approach, especially if people really started to think about electability. But he needed the rabid backing of Trump supporters to win an election to remain electable.

This was all a giant catch-22 for DeSantis. We know for sure he picked the wrong strategy because it didn't work. Of course, it could be possible that if he had tried the other strategy that he would simply be in the same position, but for different reasons. Then people might argue that he needed to have engaged Trump. In other words, it is possible that no matter what DeSantis did that it simply wasn't his time with the former President in the mix.