Last November, things momentarily looked auspicious for Florida governor Ron DeSantis and his allies in the Republican Party. Having barely eked out a win in 2018 over Democratic rival Andrew Gillum, DeSantis’s reelection bid was a double-digit blowout. As the most prominent face in the GOP, moreover, Donald Trump could be made to wear its lackluster midterm results and, perhaps, finally be cast off for good. To many apparatchiks and big donors, it looked like a perfect opportunity.

For one thing, DeSantis’s electoral track record proved that he was a winner: in just a few years, he had dyed an erstwhile purple state deep red and could pitch himself as a candidate who could replicate the same result elsewhere. His political antennae also seemed well attuned to the desires of conservative voters. As Florida’s governor, DeSantis’s strategy has been to stimulate the pleasure centers of the Republican base as much as he possibly can: by dispensing with vaccine precautions; by attacking Disney over “wokeness”; by declaring war on “woke capitalism” and “gender ideology.”

It did not seem unreasonable, therefore, to think he might be offered to the GOP primary electorate as a kind of compromise candidate — someone who could provide an ersatz simulation of Trumpism while, at the same time, severing it from the actual personality of Donald Trump. To this end, the spin doctors went into high gear and the big donors duly opened their wallets. No less than Rupert Murdoch publicly warned Donald Trump that it was time to move on.