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You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / 2024 Primaries / Scrooged Open Thread: Ron DeSaster’s Cursed Campaign

Scrooged Open Thread: Ron DeSaster’s Cursed Campaign

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Infirm of purpose, give me the daggers…

By the time the 2028 campaign starts, their kids will be old enough that Mommy could leave them at home while *she* toured the redder parts of the country (assuming there hasn’t been a reputation-spoiling family crisis before then, and that the Republican Party still exists).

Were I Ron [*shivers*], I’d start sleeping with one eye open…

Gift link to the NYTimes, taking an undeserved victory lap — “What Went Wrong for Ron DeSantis in 2023″:

The Florida governor entered the year flush with cash and momentum. In the months since, internal chaos and Donald Trump’s indictments have sapped even his most avid supporters…

Boxed in by a base enamored with Mr. Trump that has instinctively rallied to the former president’s defense, Mr. DeSantis has struggled for months to match the hype that followed his landslide 2022 re-election. Now, with the first votes in the Iowa caucuses only weeks away on Jan. 15, Mr. DeSantis has slipped in some polls into third place, behind Nikki Haley, and has had to downsize his once-grand national ambitions to the simple hopes that a strong showing in a single state — Iowa — could vault him back into contention.

For a candidate who talks at length about his own disinterest in “managing America’s decline,” people around Mr. DeSantis are increasingly talking about managing his.

Ryan Tyson, Mr. DeSantis’s longtime pollster and one of his closest advisers, has privately said to multiple people that they are now at the point in the campaign where they need to “make the patient comfortable,” a phrase evoking hospice care. Others have spoken of a coming period of reputation management, both for the governor and themselves, after a slow-motion implosion of the relationship between the campaign and an allied super PAC left even his most ardent supporters drained and demoralized.

The same December evening Mr. DeSantis held a triumphant rally in celebration of visiting the last of Iowa’s 99 counties — the symbolic culmination of his effort to out-hustle Mr. Trump there — his super PAC, Never Back Down, fired three of its top officials, prompting headlines that undercut the achievement.

The turmoil at the super PAC — which followed a summer of turbulence inside the campaign — has been almost too frequent to be believed. The super PAC’s chief executive quit, the board chairman resigned, the three top officials were fired and then the chief strategist stepped down — all in less than a month, enveloping Mr. DeSantis’s candidacy in exactly the kind of chaos for which he once cast himself as the antidote…

The governor started the year as the undisputed Trump alternative in a Republican Party still stinging from its unexpected 2022 midterm losses.

But behind the scenes, the DeSantis candidacy has been hobbled for months by an unusual and unwieldy structure — one top official lamented that it was a “Frankenstein” creation — that pushed the legal bounds of the law that limits strategic coordination and yet was still beset by miscommunications. Those structural problems compounded a series of strategic miscalculations and audacious if not arrogant assumptions that led to early campaign layoffs. Profligate spending and overly bullish fund-raising projections put the campaign on the financial brink after only two months.

The candidate himself, prone to mistrusting his own advisers, did not have a wide enough inner circle to fill both a campaign and super PAC with close allies, leaving the super PAC in the hands of newcomers who clashed with the campaign almost from the start…

Spoiler: Maggie Haberman is one of three credited writers. Obviously Mar-A-Lago’s Court Jester would never have the seven-figure ‘insider advantage’ in a potential DeSantis administration, but her and her employer’s current loyalty to Dear Leader in Exile will be noted by the Right people. So, whole bulk cartons of salt when reading FTFNYT‘s hot takes, but they’re not alone in their assessments, either.

Speaking of the guy who ran the Ted Cruz for President 2016 campaign…

(If Jeff Roe tried to shake my hand, I’d count my fingers afterwards.)

Reader Interactions

84Comments

  2. 2.

    rikyrah

     

    I love this TikTok trend of the cousins showing up to the grandparents house for a sleepover.🤗🤗
    The joy on the grandparents ‘ faces 🥺🥺😢😢😍😍

     

    As someone whose grandparents didn’t live long enough to see me become an adult 🥺

  5. 5.

    piratedan

    ONLY Ron DeSantis can make himself out to be the victim while running against a guy with 91 Federal Indictments pending along with multiple other state judgments in the pipeline, as stating that it gave HIS opponent and unfair advantage.

    Fuck this guy and fuck all of these folks that gave him any air (much less money)

  6. 6.

    MagdaInBlack

    I’m sorry, but I could not make it through that clip of Casey DeSantis. Did Ron ever speak? And who is that horrible interviewer?

  7. 7.

    Chetan Murthy

    @MagdaInBlack: Deathsanus made a few noises at one point, but that was all, I think [I also fast-forwarded, after about half the clip].  Heh, he was like a mannequin sitting next to her.  She (and the interviewer) referred to Gov. Deathsanus as “he”.  Was never addressed directly or called by his name.

    Oh the horrors.

  8. 8.

    wjca

    @piratedan: ONLY Ron DeSantis can make himself out to be the victim while running against a guy with 91 Federal Indictments pending along with multiple other state judgments in the pipeline, as stating that it gave HIS opponent and unfair advantage.

    I’m beginning to think that DeSantis is a victim.  Of a wife who would want to be Governor, and then President . . . except that her personal programming restricted her to being the supporter (and, more important, the power behind the throne) of some man.  So she pushed him that direction for all she was worth.

    Except that the man she picked turned out to be very badly suited to the front-man role.  (Probably ill-suited for any role, but especially for that one.)  But, because she so desperately wanted to win it all, she kept forcing him to try anyway.  And keep trying, even after the writing on the wall was unmissable.

    So yeah, he is a victim.  Of his spouse and her ambitions.

  9. 9.

    Betty Cracker

    INJECT IT DIRECTLY INTO MY VEINS! 😂

    Seriously, the DeSantis 2024 implosion has been such a delight — best political Christmas gift ever! I just hope his epic, world-historical face-plant spooks the soulless billionaire donor drones so thoroughly that DeSantis 2028 won’t be able collect a damned nickel.

  10. 10.

    SoupCatcher

    I assume they focus-grouped everything, since they had more money than God, but did they really think they could get people to think Never Back Down when they saw NBD instead of thinking No Big Deal?

  11. 11.

    eclare

    Why was Ron even at that interview?  A potted plant next to Casey would have had the same impact.

  12. 12.

    Chetan Murthy

    @wjca: i feel a little uncomfortable with the way you put it, but only a *little*, a *teensy bit*.  It’s the 21st Century, and a woman who wants to make it in politics can and should raise her own flag and sally forth.  And yeah, Jill Casey chose poorly in her husband front-man.  If she weren’t involved in such a despicable political enterprise, I’d feel sorry for her.

  13. 13.

    Chetan Murthy

    @eclare: I’m trying to remember if there’s even any physical contact between the two spouses during the interview — and can’t seem to remember any.  I mean, you’d think that she’d touch her husband’s shoulder a few times, maybe they’d make eye contact a few times, stuff like that.  Instead, it’s like they were in separate, identically furnished rooms, and the recordings were spliced together after-the-fact.

  14. 14.

    wjca

    @Chetan Murthy: It’s the 21st Century, and a woman who wants to make it in politics can and should raise her own flag and sally forth.

    I totally agree.  “Should” being the operative word.  But, as we’re all aware, there are men out there who freak out at the very idea.  And, however inexplicably, some women who are on the same page.

  16. 16.

    Chetan Murthy

    @wjca: Yes, I’m reminded of Hillary Clinton.  But then she got a real live boy — and a talented one at that; Jill got a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  18. 18.

    Suzanne

    Casey’s eyebrows still freak me out. Ron has Ozempic face.

    Roast: PREPPED. Breakfast strata: ASSEMBLED AND CHILLING IN FRIDGE. Presents: WRAPPED.

    Stockings remain unstuffed, but I am feeling really rough and I think I should go to bed and let Mr. Suzanne handle that.

  19. 19.

    MazeDancer

    Many months ago, I made a Lady MacBeth type reference on Twitter about how dark Casey DeSantis is, And some kind soul on Twitter jumped all over me. “You don’t know her.”

    Yes, yes I do. Creepy. Graspy. Fakey. Power mad.

    Every time she goes on one of her icky, sweet, but mean, Sorority President tough talks, Ron just sits there. Like he has been taught, “Don’t you interrupt me!”

    They are scary folk.

  20. 20.

    Suzanne

    I will also note that I ordered a Christmas gift for the puppy: a Nerf tennis ball launcher. Might me more of a gift for me.

  22. 22.

    Alison Rose

    Sorry to be a bitch (not really) but Casey, darling, those eyebrows and that lipstick is what happens when you don’t have any gay men in your circles.

  25. 25.

    West of the Rockies

    I’ve wondered for months how his handlers/trainers have told him a few essential facts:

    “Ron, I know this will sound crazy, but some people apparently for some unknown reason don’t think you’re likeable.   Now,  I think you’re amazing, but some voters think you, well, laugh weird–I know, crazy, right?–and smile strangely.  Apparently,  some–I don’t know, nut jobs–think Casey is kind of creepy…”

  26. 26.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Suzanne:

    I had heard the commercial jingle for years, but it did a Mondegreen on me and I always thought they were singing “Oh- oh- oh- Ozantic.” It was at least a couple of years after I stopped watching tv and started hearing/reading about the pharmaceutical that I realised they were singing “Ozempic,” not “Ozantic.”

    I don’t know what Ozempic face is. Ron just looks completely drugged and zoned out to me. No eye contact with his wife at all (until that stupid “Trying for more kids?” question), just a dead-eyed, disconnected affect.

    They are both so fucking weird. They creep me out.

     

    ETA: Also too, and in addition, that ridiculous vest and woefully ill-fitting shirt, with the sleeves all puffing out fatly from the vest armholes. Ugh.

  29. 29.

    Shana

    My brother asked the other day when I thought DeSantis would drop out – this was after his Pac cancelled all their TV ads – and I said I thought after Iowa and New Hampshire. Sound right to you all?

  30. 30.

    Chetan Murthy

    @Alison Rose: I think in some liberal circles they call her by her deadname, as a way of referring to her and her husband’s anti-trans politics.  I took up the habit after reading about that.

    P.S. But it’s probaby better to call her “Jill Casey”.  Less confusion that way.

  33. 33.

    Shana

    @SiubhanDuinne: As far as I can tell all of his clothing is ill-fitting.

    People seem to think smaller sizes make them look thinner when all they really do is make them look heavier. Properly sized and altered clothing will make you look, perhaps not thinner, but certainly not heavier. Can you tell I sew most of my own clothing?

  34. 34.

    Another Scott

    They should be wearing monogrammed hats and scarves / cravats to go with their fancy monogrammed vests and jackets.

    (groucho-roll-eyes.gif)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  37. 37.

    Suzanne

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I don’t know what Ozempic face is. Ron just looks completely drugged and zoned out to me. 

    Some people who take Ozempic tend to lose a lot of weight quickly in the face and neck, and there is a distinctive droopiness pattern that shows up. Ron’s got it in recent pictures.

  38. 38.

    Alison Rose

    @Chetan Murthy: Except it’s not a deadname. That term means something. She didn’t change her name from Jill to Casey, she’s just using her middle name. Honestly, even if she had changed it, it still wouldn’t be a deadname. I’m all for going after them for being transphobic shitwhales, but calling her Jill, with or without the strikethrough, and labeling it a deadname seems on par with calling him Rhonda. It’s not making the point that the people saying it think they’re making.

  39. 39.

    Leto

    I watched part of that, at least through the “planning anymore kids” and Mrs Death trying not to jump out of her skin saying no. She kept mentioning her 7, 5, and 3 y/o. If she had political ambitions, they’re rich enough where they’d be able to afford full time help. Maybe that’s part of all the tv time she’s had lately. Starting to establish her own political brand outside of her puppet for an eventual higher political run. All I know is that they’re all evil as fuck and belong nowhere near anything resembling authority.

  42. 42.

    Suzanne

    @SiubhanDuinne: I want to be clear that I don’t have any issue with people taking Ozempic. It’s just a notable change in his face…. looks droopy and sleepy. He’s not diabetic, AFAIK, so I wonder if he’s selling out big bucks for it.

    I have also read that Ozempic can give you a distinct flat butt.

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    The Florida governor entered the year flush with cash and momentum. In the months since, internal chaos and Donald Trump’s indictments have sapped even his most avid supporters…

    Did DeSantis ever have any avid supporters outside Florida who were not members of the press?

    After seeing how repellent he is, I still don’t understand how he is powerful and popular in his home state.

    It’s interesting to read about how shambolic the DeSantis campaign organization apparently is; but I would like to know more about how he has been received by Republican voters in Iowa and New Hampshire. And there must be more off-the-record assessments of DeSantis by potential donors that we need to know about.

    I don’t think that there is any point in speculating about what might happen in 2028. It is sufficient to know that DeSantis is pretty much Dead Man Walking here and now.

  45. 45.

    3Sice

    Without sound, he appears on the verge of tears and then completely dissociates.

    Why is she dressed like a mission specialist?

  52. 52.

    Alison Rose

    @NotMax: They’ll probably be starting up here in a day or two. I fucking hate it. At least my current cat doesn’t get too bothered by them, except those ones that just emit a BOOM that sounds like Oppenheimer in beta. My previous cat hated all of them and would hide under the bed.

  53. 53.

    eclare

    @Alison Rose:

    We’ll get gunfire here.  I once lost cable for the New Year’s Day bowl games because a bullet struck a cable box or something on a pole.  Gravity…bullets fired toward the sky…what could go wrong?

  56. 56.

    NotMax

    Beginning prep of a big pot of cabbage soup on the stove top. Torn between making it traditional or sweet ‘n’ sour. Both are equally tasty.

  60. 60.

    NotMax

    @Chetan Murthy

    Kind’a sort’a. Beef broth , no turnip, no celery, no bacon, no raisins, sour salt in place of vinegar, scantest splash of either white wine, sherry , bourbon or rye, squirt of lemon juice.

    Have found using dehydrated diced carrots in place of fresh works like a charm. Boon for arthritic fingers when they are acting up.

  63. 63.

    NotMax

    @Chetan Murthy

    Can easily leave out the bacon altogether. Or if just pork belly averse, use turkey bacon.

    In short, it’s a very forgiving recipe, amenable to any number of variants.

  68. 68.

    wjca

    @Brachiator: Did DeSantis ever have any avid supporters outside Florida who were not members of the press?

    Well, them and the fools with more money than sense who were bankrolling him.

  73. 73.

    Chetan Murthy

    @West of the Rockies: it seems like it depends what particular use you’re making, whether a particular kind of meatless bacon actually works.  Though, as NotMax says maybe turkey bacon will be good enough.  I’m inclined to try.

  77. 77.

    Ken

    Is the Scrooged reference just for the fates curb-stomping DeSantis?  Or is it specifically because he looks at Trump’s 91 indictments and four simultaneous trials, and howls “You can’t buy publicity like this!”

  78. 78.

    karen marie

    @Chetan Murthy: I thought it strange that he harped on “Soros-backed” Bragg’s civil matter without even acknowledging Trump’s far more serious criminal charges for election fraud and theft of top secret documents.

    I get the impression Trump knows something about Ron that would destroy him in a humiliating way and has threatened Ron if he attacks Trump over his legal problems.

    Casey remains gung-ho because Ron hasn’t told her about the deal he’s made because she’d divorce him if she found out what the “something” is.

    I am always delighted to hear they’re struggling and unhappy, though I do feel bad for the kids.

    During his run for governor I saw a news photo that included the kids, the oldest daughter wearing eyeglasses. She was maybe four? Cute. Then they released a formal family potrait. No glasses on the daughter. My heart sank at the thought of what those kids are having to deal with..

  80. 80.

    BethanyAnne

    Oh! Cabbage Soup! I haven’t made that in over a year, and it used to be a favorite. Mmm. I’mma make some tomorrow

  83. 83.

    Geminid

    @yellowdog: A Casey DeSantis run could work if DeSantis is a popular governor at the end of his rerm. That seems like a big if though.

    It might set up an primary with Matt Gaetz. Jackals would be rooting for injuries if that came about.

  84. 84.

    Ruckus

    @Leto:

    They seem like rather bad actors playing parts that are actually about them and they really don’t like the characters they are playing but can’t tell why.

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