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Ron DeSantis<\/strong> fancied himself a bully. But in the end, he was nothing more than a toady of Donald Trump<\/strong>, the former president and GOP front-runner he endorsed Sunday after abruptly suspending his own 2024 campaign<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance,\u201d the Florida governor said. \u201cHe has my endorsement because we can\u2019t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear.\u201d<\/p>\n Think back to this time last year, when the glow of DeSantis’s commanding 2022 reelection was still in his cheeks, and this ignominious end to his presidential campaign might have seemed surprising. Now go further back\u2014and it’s maybe less so. Before DeSantis rose to the top of a heap of MAGA torch-bearers, he was merely a foot soldier in the movement\u2014a state-level enforcer in Trump\u2019s federal enterprise. He was an effective one, of course\u2014inflicting pain on the Trump movement\u2019s preferred victims, sometimes more successfully than Trump himself. But the movement was never really his\u2014at least not as long as its namesake was still in the picture.<\/p>\n Trumpism without Trump? It was always a fever dream. While Trump\u2019s personality and ticks have certainly permeated the Republican Party\u2014his petty predilections and grand grievances theirs, now, as much as his\u2014DeSantis was never going to be able to marshal those forces the way his party leader has. Trump is a depraved zeitgeist, a phenomenon in American politics. DeSantis? He’s a leech, a devotee whose thirst for the Kool-Aid seems equal to his appetite for punishment.<\/p>\n Indeed, for all his sadism, DeSantis turns out to be something of a masochist. DeSantis has endured more than a year of degrading Trump taunts and MAGA humiliations, mostly without rebuke\u2014except recently, when he finally summed up the truth of the Trump experience to Iowa voters. \u201cYou can be the most worthless Republican in America,\u201d he said<\/a> this month. \u201cBut if you kiss the ring, he\u2019ll say you\u2019re wonderful.\u201d But now, like Ted Cruz<\/strong>, Marco Rubio<\/strong>, and countless others in the GOP, DeSantis\u2014\u201cDeSanctimonious<\/a>,\u201d in the former president\u2019s confusing parlance\u2014is puckering up.<\/p>\n And for what? To preserve a shot at a future run, maybe, or to keep the prospect of a job in a potential second Trump administration alive, or, perhaps, so DeSantis aide Scott Wagner<\/strong>\u2014who was apparently preoccupied with a puzzle<\/a> in the final days before the Iowa caucus\u2014could finally finish that jigsaw. Or maybe he saw Trump as his best chance to defeat Nikki Haley<\/strong>, who finished third in Iowa but has stronger footing<\/a> heading into New Hampshire and other upcoming states, including South Carolina, where she served as governor.<\/p>\n Such is the nature of toadies\u2014pleased with their ability to push around who they can, and in the end, they appeal to the bully to finish the nasty work they could not. Trump seems glad to take on that burden, focusing his primary ire<\/a> on Haley, who has responded to his racist attacks<\/a> in recent days by questioning his mental fitness<\/a> but leaving his moral character mostly unexamined. \u201cI\u2019m not saying anything derogatory,\u201d Haley said<\/a> after Trump confused her and Nancy Pelosi<\/strong> during a campaign speech. \u201cBut when you\u2019re dealing with the pressures of the presidency, we can\u2019t have someone else that we question whether they\u2019re mentally fit to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n That kind of mealy-mouthed campaigning may do in Haley, too. But perhaps DeSantis\u2019s exit will make her bolder. After all, she now carries the hopes and dreams of the anti-Trump Republicans who hope they won\u2019t have to cast a second ballot for Joe Biden<\/strong>\u2014even though some of her base says<\/a> they\u2019d do that if it came to it. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t support [Trump] under any circumstance,\u201d one Haley supporter said<\/a> recently, vowing to back Biden again if the race ends up being between him and his predecessor.<\/p>\n One question, now, is if Haley will accept that mantle\u2014running not as a more electable Trump or a MAGA Lite, as she was in her Trump administration position and now in her current campaign, but as the more traditional Republican she claims to be. That role would hardly make her a moderate. But in the schoolyard of American politics, she might, at least, find a better place in the hierarchy than her nearest rival, who retreats to his petty kingdom in Florida humbled. \u201cWe wish him well,\u201d Haley told<\/a> New Hampshire voters Sunday. \u201cHaving said that, it\u2019s now one fella and one lady left.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n