Ron DeSantis Backs Down
Jeb! lasted longer against Trump.
Disney and the assorted forces of “wokeness” can rest easy. Ron DeSantis suspended his presidential campaign Sunday. After he was knocked on his ass in Iowa last Monday, the Florida governor responded with the same strength of character required to target vulnerable queer kids: He just gave up and nursed his glass jaw. His Super PAC is called “Never Back Down,” but he’s not legally obligated to follow that advice.
Jeb Bush fought on to South Carolina. Marco Rubio face-planted in Florida. This Florida man, though, exits the 2024 presidential race less than a week after voting started.
He explained himself in a somewhat pathetic hostage release video:
Talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words.
Reversing the decline of this nation requires leadership that delivers big results for the people we are elected to serve.
I have a record of leading with conviction, championing an agenda marked by bold colors, delivering on my promises, and defeating the people who are responsible for our nation’s decline.
Sorry, he was his usual smug, self-satisfied self for what seemed like forever. He eventually reached his thesis statement.
Now over the past many months, Casey and I have traveled across the country to deliver a message of hope, that decline is a choice, and that we, in fact, can succeed again as a nation.
Nobody worked harder. And we left it all out on the field.
Now following our second-place finish in Iowa, we have prayed and deliberated on the way forward. If there was anything I could do to produce a favorable outcome — more campaign stops, more interviews — I would do it. But I can’t 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.
I am proud to have delivered on 100 percent of my promises and I will not stop now.
But ya are stopping, Ron. The video was posted with the caption: “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston Churchill. However, he’s not continuing. That was the whole point of dropping out before he humiliated himself in New Hampshire. Also, Winston Churchill never said these words. If you found the quote printed on a towel in a bed and breakfast, you might want to double-check its veracity.
Anyway, just as California Gov. Gavin Newsom predicted barely two months ago, DeSantis immediately surrendered what was left of his dignity and endorsed Donald Trump.
It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance. They watched his presidency get stymied by relentless resistance and they see Democrats using lawfare to this day to attack him.
Remember when DeSantis said he would’ve done anything to produce a more favorable outcome? That apparently never included actually running against Donald Trump, the guy he needed to beat. Instead, he tried to pretend he didn’t exist while Trump mocked him mercilessly.
Only 56,260 half-frozen caucusgoers in Iowa have supported Trump so far. I wish that were a majority of Republican primary voters, but unfortunately, there are millions more out there.
While I have had disagreements with Donald Trump, such as on the coronavirus pandemic and his elevation of Anthony Fauci, Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden. That is clear. I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee and I will honor that pledge.
Trump attempted to overturn a presidential election and sicced a violent mob on the Capitol, but DeSantis’ “disagreements” with the insurrection in chief are over the five minutes he almost listened to Dr. Anthony Fauci.
DeSantis is so pathetic he once whined that Trump’s mounting legal troubles “distorted the primary” and “crowded out, I think, so much other stuff.” Eloquence wasn’t DeSantis’ strength, either. Well, if you can’t beat the guy with 91 felony counts against him, you might as well join him like a servile puppy.
He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear — a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism — that Nikki Haley represents.
That’s a low blow typical of DeSantis, especially considering DeSantis was once part of the old Republican guard, no matter how much he pretends he’s born-and-bred MAGA. He’s as much a calculating opportunist as Nikki Haley, and that’s probably why he resents her.
This primary is over, but desperate people in the media will insist it’s now a “two-person race” between Trump and Haley, but Haley is the dolt who doesn’t know when to leave a haunted house. She sees DeSantis standing in the corner waiting for the Blair Witch and she still thinks this will end well.
We once feared Ron DeSantis, but we should still loathe him. He banned books, had Black voters arrested, sent vulnerable migrants to Martha’s Vineyard as a sick joke, and torched the state’s educational system. We feared that he would expand his reign of terror across the nation. We worried that he was the “smart” version of Trump, but instead he was the dumber, more cowardly version of Trump. It’s a damning designation but one Ron DeSantis richly deserves.
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And lo, Felicia, the Patron Saint of Farewells, bids Ron and his campaign a well-deserved adieu punctuated with a swift kick in the nethers.
The "Miami Herald" article, published with the headline "DeSantis Was Supposed to Save the GOP from Trump, Not Endorse Him," brands DeSantis as having "𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘀𝗺𝗮 𝗼𝗳 𝗯𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼𝗮𝘀𝘁" and slams him for failing to break through the "Republican Party's addiction to Trump."
https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article284389660.html