Republican strategists say their party is afraid of its own voters and DeSantis ‘lost his nerve’

By the time votes were counted in New Hampshire on Tuesday, ex-South Carolina governor Nikki Haley was vowing to continue her quixotic primary run against former president Donald Trump. “It’s time to put the negativity and chaos behind us,” she told supporters, as news of her second-place finish rolled in.

The conventional wisdom of how this year’s Republican primary has gone goes something like this: After the 2022 midterms, Trump was on the out in favor of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis won the hearts of GOP tastemakers with his anti-woke crusading and anti-media pugilism. He was the natural MAGA successor, famously labeled “DeFuture” by Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post.

Then DeSantis went on an unexpected journey. He barely defeated Haley in Iowa, and lost to Trump by double digits. It seems the Florida governor’s fortunes soured when Trump’s legal problems gained momentum.

The former president’s indictment by a New York City grand jury caused a rallying to the flag that brought skeptical voters back into Trump’s camp. Even those who had previously been turned off by his conduct and soured on his potency as an electoral force by disappointing results in the 2022 midterm elections seemed to change their minds.

This theory also posits that none of Trump’s opponents ever had a chance of dethroning him once he reached the status of criminal defendant four times over. Republican voters apparently believe that any effort to secure accountability from the disgraced former president is per se illegitimate.

But Republican political veterans and insiders who spoke to The Independent painted a different, far more damning picture of the failure of DeSantis, Haley, and the rest of the Republican primary field (save for