Was Ron DeSantis lacklustre campaign doomed from the start?
Ron DeSantis entered the Republican primary this spring as the preeminent challenger to former President Donald Trump and as the heir apparent taking on the old guard.
The Florida governor was “Trump without the baggage,” a far-right fighter ready to rumble with the “radical left” and govern more productively than the chaotic reality TV star, blustering real estate mogul and grievance-filled showman.
In a race against the oldest president in US history, being born in the late 1970s instead of the mid-1940s would also be helpful. Part of the thinking was that Mr DeSantis could win the White House by simply standing next to President Joe Biden on the debate stage and not looking old.
But was his floundering campaign always inevitable? Was Mr DeSantis always too awkward to be president?
Former GOP strategist and Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson certainly thinks so.
‘The most overpriced stock in American politics’
“I said as early as in the spring of 2021 that Ron DeSantis was the most overpriced stock in American politics,” he tells “He didn’t win in Florida by some magical gift of his own, he inherited the best Republican machine in the country – it elected
