After a campaign marked by awkward Twitter Spaces debuts, ambitious culture war crusades, and a startling talent for alienating large swaths of potential voters, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has officially suspended his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. The announcement, made in a video released on Sunday, brought a quietly anticlimactic end to a campaign that once promised to be a grand showdown within the Republican Party but ultimately fizzled into a prolonged exercise in strategic missteps and diminishing returns.
“If there was anything I could do to produce a favorable outcome — more campaign stops, more interviews — I would do it,” said DeSantis, presumably while glancing sideways at a calendar that read “January” and a polling chart that resembled a ski slope. He continued, “I cannot ask our supporters to volunteer their time and donate their resources if we don’t have a clear path to victory. Accordingly, I am today suspending my campaign.” In what will surely be remembered as a particularly chewy piece of political theater, he also threw his support behind former President Donald Trump, who, in a development that shocked precisely no one, remains the firm frontrunner for the Republican nomination.
The endorsement lacked a certain cinematic flair, occurring in a pre-recorded video where DeSantis appeared both resolute and vaguely relieved, the political equivalent of a man stepping off a treadmill that had been set to sprint from the start. He praised Trump’s first term as having been “superior to the current incumbent,” a bar so notably low that one wonders if it was even visible to the human eye. He also stated, not for the first time, that any Republican candidate “will be better than Joe Biden.” One imagines this sentiment was intended to be rousing, although it landed with the enthusiasm of stale toast.
DeSantis’s exit comes just before the New Hampshire primary, where polls had been painting a less-than-flattering picture for his candidacy. A recent CNN/University of New Hampshire poll placed him in a lackluster fifth position, barely registering behind former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who has since bowed out and pledged his loyalty to Trump with the fervor of a Renaissance courtier.
Once heralded as the great hope of those desiring a Trump-like platform with slightly fewer indictments and a touch more Ivy League polish, DeSantis’s campaign quickly became mired in its own peculiar cocktail of overly online messaging and tacit disdain for the mechanics of retail politics. Despite being buoyed early on by a formidable war chest and media anticipation that treated him as the thinking conservative’s Trump, DeSantis discovered that charisma remains stubbornly unshakable in presidential primaries, no matter how many book tours one completes.
He briefly flirted with the idea of being the anointed anti-Trump candidate but was quickly overshadowed by Haley, whose rise in New Hampshire illustrated a rare phenomenon in the GOP primary season: a competitor gaining ground by simply not being DeSantis or Trump. DeSantis did manage a second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, narrowly edging out Haley, though 30 points behind Trump, which is another way of saying he did not lose quite as spectacularly as he might have.
Trump, never one to miss a self-congratulatory opportunity, issued a statement saying he was “honored” to have DeSantis’s endorsement, which is undoubtedly more gracious than his prior remarks likening the Florida governor to a glitchy robot and coining the nickname “DeSanctimonious,” the political equivalent of giving someone a wedgie in front of the class.
“I’d like to take a moment to thank Governor Ron DeSantis, a very capable person, for running a great campaign for President,” Trump said. “He was a strong and good candidate, and he will continue to have a very bright future.”
Whether that bright future includes another run for the presidency or simply warm weather and pointed legislation in Tallahassee remains to be seen. For now, though, DeSantis returns to Florida, where the books are scrutinized, the mouse is sued, and the governor’s mansion offers significantly fewer town halls.
As for the Republican primary, it appears we are now down to Trump, Haley, and the lingering ghost of consensus politics — though only one of them is legally allowed to talk about classified documents.
DeSantis may be out of the race, but at least he finally figured out how to exit a room.