Ron DeSantis. Ron DeSanctimonious, Ron DeSanctus, Meatball Ron, and my personal favorite, Ron DeSpectrum. He was built up to be the The Man…but he was not the man.

Unlike the many terminally online over-paid tradcath mutants on his campaign, I saw this from the start. Indeed, before he even declared he was running I knew he would be an abject failure. The reason? GOP voters want Trump sure, but more importantly, this interview: That face. The smug hubris immediately crumbling into deer-in-the-headlights-soyfacing the second an unscripted question appeared. You can complain all you want about politics and how they should be substance over surface and yet someone still has to be the public face of a campaign. And surely it couldn’t be…that face.

His official rollout on XXXtwitterXXX was a technical flop and embarrassment, immediately and easily parodied by the Trump campaign. This bizarre behavior wasn’t just shaking of the national spotlight adjustment problems and would continue throughout the campaign.

A cope phrase you will hear from DeSantis fanboys is that ‘well, he was a good governor.’ I’m not a rightoid so I can’t say if I am fit to judge here by their standards. But what I can say is that I do think his tenure as governor must be at least overrated. Everything seems to have been targeted from the start to pander to national culture war headlines. His state was effectively a laboratory for clickbait. And it didn’t even work most of the time because even when he rightly went after the special Chinese-Concession-Port-like legal exemptions of Disney, he still got his ass beat.

DeSanctimonious really lived up to his name when this opponent of cancel culture decided to attack what little independence educational institutions have by instituting pro Israel cancel culture. This hero opposed to affirmative action took it upon himself to impose affirmative action for Jewish students. Partisan hypocrisy is always off the charts in election cycles, but the timing and obvious attention-grabbing of these policies are craven even by the low standards of the trade. So craven even republican primary voters could see through them as transparently pandering and two-faced.

While not personally invested in the Republican primary, I was personally invested in seeing DeSantis’ strategy fail. Had he succeeded, the horrible Woke Era would have been replaced by an equally horrible Anti-Woke Era and the endless cycles of media driven grievance identity politics would have continued forever. This may still happen, but it won’t be with its flagship pioneer at the helm. I think many politicians on the right are misreading the long-overdue rebellion against puritanical progressivism by thinking it means their form of religious fundamentalism allied to 4chan phrenology is in the ascendant. In actual fact I think (and hope) it means culture war itself is on the way out for the time being. The two factions of elites sought to distract everyone with these obnoxious parlor games while they continued to pillage the country, let infrastructure rot, and continue to bloat the military industrial complex for use in endless and unwinnable wars. But it is impossible to ignore.

Trump and Biden have both been failed Carter-esque Presidents. Nikki Haley is the demonic reincarnation of John McCain. And DeSantis was the harbinger that maybe people want substance over style. He set himself up as the substance, but he was only the style. And what an awkward style it was, too.

So Please Clap for Meatball Ron. Maybe Trump will make him Secretary of Transportation. It seems to be the holding tank for failed overhyped presidential candidates.