What The Hell Happened To Ron DeSantis In Iowa?

WEST DES MOINES, Iowa — “Thank youuuuuu!” Ron DeSantis thundered into the microphone, producing a harsh static feedback. “Are you ready to make some history on Monday night?”

The Florida governor asked this question of his supporters on Saturday as a blizzard whipped outside the West Des Moines headquarters of Never Back Down, the super PAC responsible for organizing much of his ground game here over the past nine months.

“They can throw a blizzard at us, and we are gonna fight! They can throw a windchill at us, and we are gonna fight! They can throw media narratives at us, and we are gonna fight! They can throw fake polls at us, and we are gonna fight!” the Floridian shouted at the crowd, their applause not quite matching his screeching decibel.

DeSantis did make history in Monday’s caucuses, but not for the reasons he or his allies had envisioned at the onset of this race for the Republican nomination.

In early 2023, the pugnacious Florida governor was seen as the next coming of Donald Trump — a Republican who shares the former president’s increasingly authoritarian vision for the country but not his 91 criminal charges .

But that promise for DeSantis diminished Monday with a distant second-place finish in the nation’s first presidential nominating contest, where he came in well behind Trump and just ahead of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, according to unofficial projections. And though candidates don’t necessarily need to win the caucuses to become their party’s eventual nominee (see: Donald Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020, for starters), it’s hard to imagine how this gets any better for DeSantis as more votes are cast in the coming weeks. Haley is poised for a strong second-place finish next week in