Although the lifts in his boots might have given him a couple of extra inches, Gov. Ron DeSantis still failed to keep his head above water in the 2024 Republican presidential primary.

What went wrong? Many on the right once saw the governor of Florida as Donald Trump’s logical successor, and some saw him as a potential replacement in the case of Trump’s weakness. Plenty of conservative pundits pinned the blame for Republicans’ poor showings in the 2022 midterms on the former president. Many of them saw DeSantis as an opportunity to leave Trump’s legal battles and personal baggage by the wayside. For them, a DeSantis candidacy would allow the “policy without the personality” to guide the America First movement into the future.

A year ago, FiveThirtyEight’s Republican primary polling aggregate placed DeSantis only 10 points behind Trump’s lead. Conservatives saw him as a hero because of his measured pandemic response, aggressive opposition to the progressives’ diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda, and a general fearlessness to fight the culture war with legislation. His electoral successes in Florida also made him a strong contender. DeSantis managed to build upon his razor-thin 2018 gubernatorial victory of just 0.4% in what was then a swing state, winning by a whopping 20 points against a former governor in 2022. Florida’s statewide shift to the right and the national media’s extensive coverage of DeSantis both seemed to indicate that his strategy might have had some potency in the national arena.

Unfortunately for DeSantis, his widespread appeal to Republicans as a presidential contender had dissipated since the midterms. By mid-May, when the governor formally announced his campaign, his polling had dropped to around 20%. This trend continued: he hovered just about 10% by the end of the summer, and those numbers failed to improve at all by the time of his campaign’s suspension. Trump, on the other hand, has increased his share of primary support to a whopping 70% as of late January.

The Iowa caucuses were DeSantis’ last hope of revitalizing his crusade for a “Great American Comeback.” Although he invested heavily in the state and made visits to all 99 counties, he failed to win a single one. Most importantly, his second-place finish put almost no distance between himself and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. That gave him nowhere else to prove his viability, especially given the subsequent New Hampshire primary’s abundance of independent and moderate voters who would be more likely to support a candidate like Haley.

The fact that Haley outlasted DeSantis, who fell from the clear runner-up to just another Trump challenger, tells much about voters’ loyalties in this primary. DeSantis’ focus on the culture war and active governance definitely enthused conservatives, but that was not enough to convince the Republican base to abandon Trump as a leader figure. 

The former president has tethered a multitude of issues that our base cares most about — immigration and border security, protecting domestic industries, and putting American interests first on the world stage — to his name and movement. Candidates who attempt to challenge Trump within the same party dynamics he himself established are destined for defeat, regardless of how enthusiastic MAGA voters might seem about their previous accomplishments.

DeSantis’ casting of himself in Trump’s image additionally prevented him from presenting his candidacy in clear opposition to the former president. Throughout this primary, Haley marketed her campaign as a clear alternative to the struggle between Trump and his many opponent-acolytes. She won the endorsements of key figures who share a disdain for the new order of the Republican party, such as fervent Trump critic Chris Christie and Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. It’s no wonder that she and Trump are the only two left in the race.

While campaigning, DeSantis often asserted that “American decline is a choice.” He will not be the Republicans’ nominee to fight American decline because we have not yet settled our own disagreement regarding whether we wish to keep fighting it under the populist banner that Trump ushered into the party just a couple of election cycles ago. 

The blame for these ongoing disputes partly rests on Trump himself. His movement will exist in perpetuity as an ideological referendum for Republican voters so long as he lives as its spokesman, and perhaps for longer. 

Until this era within the GOP comes to an end, no one will be able to win by proposing a compromise between the two sides of this debate.