OPINION:
Uh-oh. Now comes the “Let Ron be Ron” phase of the Incredible Sinking Ron DeSantis campaign.
Every failed campaign goes through this phase. It is as sure as admitting you are powerless over alcohol in the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step program.
“Hi. My name is Ron. Let me be Ron.”
To casual political observers, this always sounds like a hopeful step on the long path to victory. It always sounds especially hopeful to early supporters of the struggling candidate.
I mean, Ron DeSantis is what got Ron DeSantis this far, so why not more Ron DeSantis? You know, more cowbell.
But for those of us who have studied more closely the tides and waves of political campaigns over the years, we know the “Let Ron be Ron” phase is something else altogether. It is otherwise known as “the kiss of death.”
This is the phase a campaign reaches after trying every other conceivable option to right the ship. The campaign is running out of money. Voters are not interested in the campaign. Big donors are sweating. The candidate is getting crabby.
All your “campaign reboots” — the equivalent of unplugging the cable box for 15 seconds before plugging it back in — have not worked. You have cut spending. Laid off staff.
Now you are out of ideas. Desperation seeps in.
But nobody wants to tell the candidate — who is already crabby and a little desperate — that the campaign is circling the drain. After all, if you are a consultant on the campaign, you pitched yourself as some kind of political genius. I mean, you basically assured the campaign of victory if they just hired you.
“Who’s going to tell the boss?” somebody asks nervously.
“Not me! I had to tell him about the last ‘campaign reboot’ — you know, the one where we took away his little private plane.”
And then somebody has the idea.
“Instead of another ‘reboot,’ let’s just tell him that what we really need is more Ron!”
Hidden in the advice, of course, is the passive blame that the campaign’s current problems are all the fault of the candidate himself. He has simply not been enough of himself lately.
But it’s served with a precious compliment: The solution to this problem is more Ron! They love you! They just want more of you!
Really, though, it’s all just one more step in the grift process of a doomed campaign. Er, I mean “grief” process.
You know let them down easy. (And keep the money flowing for all the political consultants and campaign advisers.)
“Let Rob be Ron,” Nick Larossi, a lobbyist and fundraiser for the Florida governor, told Politico recently about the latest campaign shake-up.
“That’s what got him here. That’s what made him the leader that he is in Florida,” he said. “We’re going back to our basics on all of this.”
The whimpering of the DeSantis campaign has not gone unnoticed, even among the most deranged of the anti-Trump “Republicans” who would rather vote for Dylan Mulvaney of Bud Light fame than Donald Trump.
Former Republican campaign operative Tim Miller, who put the exclamation point in the Jeb! Bush campaign back in 2016, posted a picture on the internet showing Mr. DeSantis speaking from the pit of a livestock auction in Iowa. The green bleachers were as empty as the rafters.
It appeared there were more reporters and staffers at the event than actual supporters. And the supporters who did show up looked deeply bored, probably checking their phones for the latest news about Donald Trump.
In very real terms, if Mr. DeSantis loses the Jeb! wing of the Republican Party — more like one wing feather these days — then his campaign is truly doomed.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor for The Washington Times.
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