Following months of campaign dysfunction that culminated in a disappointing January 15 Iowa caucus showing, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Sunday that he would be suspending his campaign and endorsing the former President Donald Trump.
“It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,” said DeSantis in his pre-recorded statement on X, formerly Twitter.
“Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden,” he commented. “That is clear. I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee, and I will honor that pledge. He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear.”
DeSantis’s departure leaves Nimarata “Nikki” Haley, formerly U.N. ambassador and governor of South Carolina, as Trump’s sole competitor in Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary. Haley pulled 19.1 percent of the Iowa vote, behind DeSantis’s 21.2 percent and Trump’s record-setting 51 percent.
The Florida governor’s departure shows the America First wing of the party consolidating behind its old standard-bearer to defeat Haley, a proxy of the old GOP establishment consensus. As The American Conservative‘s Dan McCarthy wrote after Trump’s blowout victory in the Hawkeye State, “As things stand, DeSantis now functions as Haley’s most valuable ally. He splits the right-wing primary vote with Trump, while Haley has the pseudo-moderate lane all to herself.”
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McCarthy wrote,
The Florida governor is a proud man, and he has much of which to be proud, his disappointing showing in Iowa notwithstanding. But he was ill-served by those who told him 2024 was his “moment,” and he will be ill-advised to remain in the race without a hope of winning. There are no better results awaiting him after Iowa, and in the next two major contests there are clearly worse ones.
It looks as if DeSantis has decided to put America first.