{"id":41139,"date":"2024-01-20T14:35:26","date_gmt":"2024-01-20T19:35:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=41139"},"modified":"2024-01-20T14:35:31","modified_gmt":"2024-01-20T19:35:31","slug":"florida-governor-ron-desantis-seems-to-be-building-his-exit-plan-from-the-presidential-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/01\/20\/florida-governor-ron-desantis-seems-to-be-building-his-exit-plan-from-the-presidential-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Seems To Be Building His Exit Plan From The Presidential Campaign."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After a humbling loss in Iowa, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is starting to signal that he is building an off-ramp from the race for the Republican presidential nomination, a seeming acknowledgment of his dim prospects of defeating Donald Trump given his low poll numbers in New Hampshire and South Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n

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So far this week, DeSantis has cast his eyes forward to 2028 with anecdotes about Trump supporters saying they would vote for him next time around if he runs again in four years. He has conceded that Trump\u2019s thumping victory in Iowa on Monday made for a \u201cgood showing in terms of him winning the nomination.\u201d And he has openly admitted that he believes he made a strategic mistake by icing out the traditional media earlier in the campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It all amounted to a kind of frankness that DeSantis has not always shown in his public comments about the nominating contest \u2014 and a marked change in tone for a candidate who spent most of last year brashly promising he would win Iowa, which he lost by 30 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Thursday, the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked DeSantis if his campaign would survive through the end of March. The Florida governor replied that things were not necessarily going to plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLook, my goal is to win the nomination. Had we won Iowa, we would have been in a great spot,\u201d Mr. DeSantis said, before suggesting there would be no point in staying in the race if it were to become clear that he could not win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to be VP, I don\u2019t want to be in the cabinet, I don\u2019t want a TV show,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m in it to win it, and at some point if that\u2019s not working out for you, I recognize that. This isn\u2019t a vanity thing for me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DeSantis\u2019s comments hint that a hard truth is setting in: the former president may be about to run away with the race. DeSantis is polling so badly in New Hampshire, which votes on Tuesday, that he is spending the weekend campaigning in South Carolina, which holds its primary a month later and where he thinks he has a better shot. In both states, he is trailing Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Andrew Romeo, the DeSantis campaign\u2019s communications director, reiterated that Mr. DeSantis was in the race \u201cfor the long haul,\u201d through South Carolina and beyond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His best hope of continuing to compete, his aides have said, is for Haley to lose her home state on Feb. 24 and drop out, leaving DeSantis with a one-on-one matchup against Trump. \u201cNo one will be funding a bubble-wrapped candidate who can\u2019t win her home state,\u201d Romeo argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Super Tuesday, when 16 states and territories votes on March 5, is well set up for Trump to dominate, polling shows, even in a two-person race against DeSantis. In that case, Mr. DeSantis may be looking at running again in 2028, the year after his term as governor ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In South Carolina on Tuesday, DeSantis said that Trump voters in Iowa had told him they would support him in four years. \u201cThey were coming up to me saying, \u2018We want you in 2028, we love you, man,’\u201d DeSantis told reporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He made similar comments during an interview with NBC News, saying: \u201cI had people come up to me saying, \u2018I love you, man. I\u2019m going to do Trump this time and you next time.\u2019 That\u2019s not what I wanted to hear, but being there we did make an impression and it\u2019s important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And during his interview with Hewitt, he praised Trump\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cClearly when you win Iowa by the amount he did, that\u2019s what you want to be doing if you\u2019re going to win the nomination,\u201d DeSantis said. He then expressed regret for his campaign\u2019s early strategy of limiting his media appearances to Fox News and other conservative outlets, acknowledging that he failed to reach a wide enough group of voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI should have just been blanketing, I should have gone on all the corporate shows, I should have gone on everything,\u201d he told Hewitt in a moment of introspection. \u201cWe had an opportunity, I think, to come out of the gate and do that and reach a much broader folk.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although he shaped his image in Florida as a conservative warrior by beating up on the traditional media, he and his team have lately turned on Fox too, accusing it of being in the bag for the former president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DeSantis, who for months has campaigned relentlessly and without complaint, also indicated this week that the rigors of the trail were beginning to wear him down \u2014 a rare admission. On Tuesday morning, DeSantis woke up in Iowa after his bruising defeat in the caucuses, flew to South Carolina for a rally and a news conference, and then traveled to New Hampshire to participate in an evening town-hall event on CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day, after two more campaign events in New Hampshire, a tired-looking DeSantis confessed to reporters that it had been \u201ca tough stretch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBy the time I walked out on that stage last night for CNN, I mean, it was adrenaline,\u201d DeSantis said. \u201cAnd I was like, \u2018All right, we got to get through this.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a humbling loss in Iowa, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is starting to signal that he is building an off-ramp from the race for the Republican presidential nomination, a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[7327],"class_list":["post-41139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-florida-governor-ron-desantis-seems-to-be-building-his-exit-plan-from-the-presidential-campaign"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41141,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41139\/revisions\/41141"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}