NO n Saturday, Ron DeSantis shook hands with his supporters at a restaurant in South Carolina. He said he was asking for their support. As president, he could “get the job done.” Less than twenty-four hours later, the Republican presidential candidate announced that he would be dropping out of the race before his party's second primary. On Sunday afternoon, DeSantis posted a video on the X platform, formerly Twitter, announcing his retirement. It was titled with a quote from Winston Churchill: Success is not final, failure is not fatal. What counts is the courage to keep going.
In the four and a half minute long video, DeSantis says his campaign has no chance of success. “If there was anything I could do to get a positive result, more campaign appearances, more interviews, I would do it,” said the Florida governor. “But I cannot ask our supporters to sacrifice their time and donate their resources if we do not have a clear path to victory.” Accordingly, he is ending his campaign.
Such a move by DeSantis was expected for a long time, but now comes surprisingly early in the primary campaign. In the first primary in Iowa last week, DeSantis came in second behind Donald Trump, but with a gap of around thirty percentage points. In New Hampshire, where Republican voters are called on Tuesday to cast their ballot for a Republican presidential candidate, DeSantis also lagged far behind third-party candidate Nikki Haley.
In the video from Sunday, the governor expressed his support for Trump. Although he had differences of opinion with him, it was clear “that a majority of Republican voters want to give Donald Trump another chance.” This is far superior to President Joe Biden. According to a CNN poll on Sunday, Trump could get 50 percent of the vote in New Hampshire and Haley 39 percent.
With DeSantis' exit, the Republican primary has now become a competition between Trump and his former UN ambassador. The 52-year-old Haley takes a more moderate tone and wants to embody a new generation of politicians. However, it is considered unlikely that she will ultimately be able to prevail against Trump, whose grassroots support remains strong. DeSantis, who has won many supporters in Florida primarily through culture war issues, was seen at the beginning of his campaign as the only candidate who could succeed in beating Trump.
The Republican primary campaign runs until June. All delegates will then be selected for the party conference in July in Milwaukee, where they will determine the party's presidential candidate. If, as expected, Haley also leaves the race soon, it will probably be an uneventful primary campaign. Even on the Democratic side, there is no challenger to President Biden who has a chance of success.
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