Ron DeSantis is 'losing' voters and 'alienating' them: columnist

The Guardian's Richard Luscombe can't help but notice that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) appears to have peaked too soon, and the more people get to know him, the less they want to vote for him. Luscombe has dubbed it "how to lose friends and alienate people." It's a take off of Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People."

"By almost every measure, the rightwinger has had another lackluster week on the campaign trail, with 'clumsy' missteps in New Hampshire, Texas, California and New York," the report explained. "Now, barely one month after his glitch-ridden launch on Twitter, DeSantis finds himself sinking in the polls, closer to the large field of optimists below him than the twice-indicted, twice-impeached former president who retains a stranglehold over the Republican Party."

“The more voters learn about him, the less they can stomach the idea of him running the country,” Luscombe cited online magazine Jezebel.

DeSantis' wounds, Luscombe explained, are "self-inflicted." Each early primary/caucus state has its own rules and norms. They've done it long before DeSantis and they will continue to do it long after DeSantis. Still, the candidate has been caught making “stupid” and “rookie” mistakes, like scheduling events at the same time as other state party events.

In New York, DeSantis started setting up fundraisers not only without including, but without even telling the local Republicans ahead of time.

Meanwhile, DeSantis has allowed himself to get pulled into an internet fight with California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who isn't even running for office. While DeSantis attacked California, it was still good enough for him to have fundraisers in the state. The plot thickened when DeSantis started attacking San Francisco with an ad that captured video from a “comically short” 20-minute stop in the city.

His videos of San Francisco promoted conversations about cleaning his own house. A number of photos surfaced showing Florida homelessness, squalor, red tide, trash and other things. Meanwhile, Florida is second in the nation for drug overdose deaths with an increase by 37 percent in just a year, WUSF reported.

But The Guardian described the biggest flop coming from his trip to the Texas-Mexico border on Monday.

"Aggressive proposals such as deadly force against drug traffickers, separating migrant families, building a border wall and pledging to end birthright citizenship, enraged immigration advocates and failed to offer more to the Republican base than Trump’s own agenda," the report explained.

“I used to characterize DeSantis as an awful lot like Trump, but smarter, and I’m not sure that applies anymore,” Craig, a University of Florida professor told the site. “He just seems to be doing things that are not all that smart, his war with Disney for example, and some of the other things he does show a clumsiness that wasn’t so much apparent before he began being a national figure.

“I think he’s still a credible threat. But he’s going to have to get his act together. He’s showing some weakness, and you can’t really do that if you want to knock off the big guy.”

For months ahead of DeSantis' announcement, NeverTrumper former Republicans attempted to explain that DeSantis doesn't have the temperament to campaign in states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Speaking with The Guardian's David Smith in February, Rick Wilson went in-depth on the weaknesses of DeSantis' bid for national office -- who he claimed has the "charisma of a toaster oven."

One month later, Wilson wrote in an essay that DeSantis was done.

"Candidate quality matters, and Ron DeSantis is shaping up to be an average to poor example of the class," writes Wilson. "By last night, DeSantis had to face the stark 2024 reality that he was the exception to a political rule as old as time; for almost all campaigns, the easiest and best day is the first day of the campaign."

Last October, "The View" pointed out how "robotic" DeSantis is.

Mother Jones’ Noah Lanard wrote in May: "And even if DeSantis can overcome his awkwardness and learn to make small talk, it’s unclear whether he’ll be able to hide his general weirdness once he steps more clearly into the national spotlight."

Even conservative commentator Charlie Sykes told MSNBC’s “The 11th Hour” in April that DeSantis has a “personality problem.”

“He’s got a personality problem which I think a lot of people always knew might come back to bite him – it certainly is now. But also, I think that with Ron DeSantis, you’re also seeing that he doesn’t have the kind of political instincts that he needs to be able to scale up, and you know, I hate myself for what I’m about to say here, but this last week, Donald Trump has outmaneuvered him on every single issue – actually looking more reasonable than Ron DeSantis," Sykes explained.

Read the full report at The Guardian.