DeSantis Has Discovered No One Likes a Copycat

The campaign strategists at the Ron DeSantis for president headquarters must be dosing their aching heads with Tylenol-Aleve-codeine cocktails and sobbing into their “DeSantis 47” monogrammed hankies.

Like their cousins in commerce, they studied the leading brand in their market — Donald Trump — and then devoted themselves to 1) imitating him, and 2) expanding on what he does. Trump rarely backs down? DeSantis stands his ground with a flame thrower. Trump growled at the press? DeSantis sneered and barely spoke to it. Trump demands allegiance? DeSantis requires worship. Trump picked fights with immigrants? DeSantis paid to fly them out of state. Trump shamed NFL owners for allowing their players to kneel? DeSantis went after Disney. Trump coddled the Russians? DeSantis dismissed the Ukraine war as a “territorial dispute.” Trump stands like a forward-leaning rusted robot on stage? DeSantis does the same, says New York magazine.

Like something conjured in a mirror, DeSantis copies every political stance and gesture Trump has made in the past eight years. But instead of supplanting Trump in the minds of the Republican base, the Florida governor appears to be fading. In a New York Times/Siena College poll published Monday, DeSantis won only 17 percent of Republican voters compared to Trump’s 54 percent and has declined in the aggregated polls over the course of the year.

Why doesn’t DeSantis’ me-too act generate greater appeal to Republican voters? Is it a matter of Trump being the Beatles and DeSantis being a one-hit-wonder Beatlesque band like the Knickerbockers? Why is it that none of DeSantis’ culture war sorties — banging on about critical race theory, curtailing talk about gay and transgender people, floating Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as a possible chief of the CDC or FDA — have lifted his campaign the way Trump’s similar gestures have his? Is it simply a matter of Trump having a niche, making DeSantis come off like Dr Pepper to his Coke, popular with only an insignificant minority?

Veteran Republican political strategist Ed Rollins just noted in Rolling Stone how DeSantis’ schtick has failed to connect with Republican voters. And he seems to lay the blame squarely on the man himself, not the strategy. Basically, it’s the singer, not the song.

“I think he’s been a very flawed candidate. I know some of the people around him, and some of them are good, talented people. But every time he opens his mouth, he has a tendency to — shall we say — think out-loud, and he clearly doesn’t understand the game,” said Rollins, who previously toiled on the DeSantis campaign. “When you get into these culture wars the way that he has, the vast majority of people don’t understand what they are.”

On what planet did DeSantis, thinking out loud again, imagine that claiming an upside to slavery, like learning the skills of a blacksmith, would win any fresh votes? It’s the sort of thing Trump might say to rile the press and feed the racists in his tribe, but Trump (who actually dined at his private club with a white supremacist) might get away with it because he’s established a unique standard for his behavior with his supporters. It’s a joke, he might explain. It’s an exaggeration. Or, my people know what I meant. DeSantis, being fresh to scene, has no such reservoir of understanding or sympathy among Republican voters to draw on. A candidate doesn’t have to be liked to win votes, but it helps.

Elemental to DeSantis’ failure has been his belief that Trump had — or would — self-destruct after the chaos and finger-pointing of Jan. 6. He merely assumed the position of front-runner without actually securing it, never devising a reason for voters to switch from the old brand to the newer, slightly less tarnished version. By underestimating Trump’s well-demonstrated comeback powers, DeSantis left himself exposed. The DeSantis flameout also reminds us how unique a politician Trump is. Yes, his charisma is as oily as beef drippings, but as a seasoned entertainer, he knows how to read an audience, whether in an arena or on TV. While the Trump presidency may not have improved the lot of his adherents, he still wows them when he goes on tour. As if sousing them with bargain gin, Trump’s flattery of his crowds and the affirmation that comes with it swells their self-esteem. Who feels better after listening to DeSantis grunt and grumble? As many have noted, Trump’s as much a stand-up comedian on the hustings as he is a politician. Trump’s humor might not appeal to you, but his followers can’t get enough of it. Compare the audience pleasing talents of Trump to DeSantis, who comes off to many voters like the doofus played by Steve Martin in The Jerk, fascinated by his own finger-snapping talent but a perplexity to everybody else.

Trump also seems to understand that his enthralled supporters know some limits, a lesson DeSantis has yet to learn. After getting booed at a December 2021 appearance for acknowledging that he had received a Covid booster shot, Trump laid off the topic and has continued to straddle the subject, taking credit for creating the vaccine but not endorsing it. “For some reason … people love the vaccines, and people hate the vaccines, but conservatives aren’t — and I understand both sides of it, by the way. I understand both sides very well,” he said, having it both ways. Such audacious duplicity would never occur to DeSantis.

In demanding the loyalty of every Republican, from U.S. senator to dog catcher, Trump has cemented a kind of monotheism into the minds of his faithful. There is only one god in the party, and as long as Trump is on the ballot and demanding fealty, Republican voters will have no god before him. Why praise an imitator when you can have the real thing? That’s the state of Republican fundamentalism today. It’s Trump on top. Trump underneath. And Trump all the way down.

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