Florida governor Ron DeSantis has yet to officially declare his candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. But if he doesn’t run at this point, it’s going to be one of the most surprising noncandidacies in the history of electoral politics.

More than a few “Never Trump” Republicans have expressed enthusiasm for DeSantis as an alternative to the allegedly unprecedented lawlessness and authoritarianism of the forty-fifth president. And more than a few centrists and liberals have expressed relief at the idea of a supposedly normal Republican inheriting the GOP.

But DeSantis’s own deeply illiberal impulses have long been obvious from base-pleasing initiatives like his draconian election police, the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act (better and more accurately known as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill), and his disturbing assault on academic freedom at the New College of Florida.