Something went terribly wrong for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in Iowa – a far-off land of snow and butter that failed to give our Ronbo a win.
Yet he did everything right. He visited all 99 counties. He shook hooves with every single cow.
He showed his “human side” by having his security people drag so-called climate protesters out of his rallies, sugar-shaming a kid drinking an Icee and laughing – a lot! – a laugh many compared to the fun-loving Emperor Palpatine of “Star Wars.”
He took his kids to Iowa’s famous “Field of Dreams” where, in a delightful and totally unstaged family photo-op, he threw baseballs at his 5-year-old.
And he displayed the depth of his feelings toward his wife< Casey, when he gave her a warm handshake after one of the debates.
(Brandon Bell/Getty Images via Florida Phoenix)
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Gov. Ron DeSantis, seen here carrying his daughter Madison while campaigning at the Iowa State Fair in August. He visited all 99 of the state’s counties and shook hooves with every single cow, while Trump tended to his legal troubles.
Most of Florida’s government moved to Iowa to campaign for him: you know, the Cabinet officers, legislators, agency heads and state employees who are usually stuck doing boring “service” stuff for taxpayers. These loyal minions used personal leave days, paying their own way, buying their own snow boots and freezing their fannies off for the man who could give them sweet federal appointments, if only he could get to the White House.
Yet despite all of this, including Casey wearing extra-tight jeans to campaign events, Ronbo failed to win a single county.
How could that be? Iowa Republicans are very white, as white as a Moms for Liberty orgy, as white as a debutante in an ice storm, as white as George Washington’s Sunday-go-to-meeting wig.
These are DeSantis’ people!
So, who’s to blame? Not Ronbo, of course.
Maybe too many of his voters were on vacation in Florida (the Iowa of the subtropics), sitting by the pool in Boca when they suddenly exclaimed, “Aw, gee! I totally forgot the caucus!”
Ronbo’s theory of why he lost Iowa? The media.
The Associated Press and CNN called the winner before everyone voted, putting the hoodoo on the dozens who might have voted for him.
The media are obviously pro-Donald Trump. The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR? Riding the Trump train. CNN? They love Trump over there.
It’s also Nikki Haley’s fault. She should have gotten out of the way. She might even be a Democrat plant. Think about it: She’s practically the same as “crooked Hillary,” with her “strong woman” crap and her weird fascination with “the globe.”
As dropout Vivek Ramaswamy correctly said (though he should have endorsed Ronbo instead of Trump), that Haley gives “foreign multinational speeches like Hillary Clinton.”
Ronbo beat her, anyway, winning a full 21% of the 110,000 fine white Iowans who bothered to show up, while she only got 19%. In Dunnellon, Fla., baseball circles that’s called that a “whupping.”
Unlike Ronbo, Haley is a power-mad career politician. She sashayed off to New Hampshire, boasting about how she was ahead of him by at least 25 points, then Ronbo dropped out and endorsed Trump before he got his “whupping.”
Now Haley and Trump are off to South Carolina. There’s no snow there, but plenty of good, wholesome, vaccine-hating, Jesus-loving folks.
Yeah, Haley used to be governor there, but she messed up by taking down the Confederate flag and then flubbed a question about the Civil War when she should have just pointed out that slavery taught Black people many useful skills.
She’s a loser and Trump’s crazy, so why didn’t the nation jump on the Ronbo bus?
Again, blame the media – the media, its communist friends, RINOs, baby-killers, teachers’ unions, Soros-funded lawyers, weather politicizers and people who actually enjoyed going to an Ivy League college. They claim Ronbo is “uniquely unlikeable.”
Certain elitists who served in Congress with him say he’s arrogant, petty, paranoid and has no friends.
His Yale baseball teammates couldn’t stand him.
Jerks rule!
What about Hungary’s prime minister, Victor Orbán? He also gets called “awkward,” “a jerk” and sometimes “a fascist.”
But look what Orbán’s done in Hungary: shut down universities, replaced liberal judges with ones who think democracy is overrated and muzzled any so-called journalists who question his power.
Ronbo could have done all that for America, too, if only America liked him.
He’d be the first to tell you he’s a great guy. He’ll protect you from drag queens and scientists, bad books and woke theme parks.
Diane Roberts is an eighth-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Times of London, The Guardian and The Washington Post, among others. This commentary first appeared in the Florida Phoenix.