While former President Trump celebrated the victories of many of those candidates that he supported in the midterm elections, saying “174 wins and 9 losses, A GREAT EVENING,” one of the bigger GOP victories came in Florida, where incumbent GOP Governor Ron DeSantis crushed his Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, by a wide margin.
In fact, DeSantis dominated the Democrat he was running against utterly, winning nearly 60 percent of the vote in a state that used to be a toss-up.
Fox News Digital attempted to push the message that DeSantis’ Florida victory, when contrasted with some high-profile Trump setbacks, means that he’s overshadowing Trump now, saying:
However, the former president also suffered major setbacks, from Mehmet Oz’s defeat at the hands of Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman in Pennsylvania’s blockbuster Senate battle, to gubernatorial nominees Doug Mastriano in the Keystone State, Tudor Dixon in Michigan, and Dan Cox in Maryland.
The former president held court as the election results poured in at a midterms party at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, that included some of the biggest names in Trump’s “Make America Great Again” world.
[…]Additionally, the mixed results for his endorsed candidates was vastly overshadowed by the powerful re-election performance of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 Republican rival.
Trump, who has taken a couple of shots at DeSantis in recent days, noticeably did not congratulate DeSantis during his Election Night comments.
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Similarly, Politico argued that Trump losses and DeSantis’ blowout victory are bad news for Trump and good news for DeSantis, saying:
“I mean, come on,” said Chuck Coughlin, a veteran Republican strategist based in Phoenix. “This should be a walk in the park for Republicans … If Karrin Taylor Robson was the [gubernatorial] nominee, it would be an ass-kicking this cycle. But we just have such poor candidates who don’t appeal to a broader base.”
Besides, Coughlin said, “This is a non-presidential cycle, which tilts against the White House, tilts against the party in power. That’s not going to be the case in a presidential cycle. [Trump] doesn’t have that wind at his back anymore.”
Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida — and a potential rival to Trump — won reelection in a 20-point landslide. In 2020, Trump carried the state by just more than 3 percentage points.
Ignored there is that DeSantis was able to focus on only one state whereas Trump was spread out across the country backing candidates, many of whom did quite well, and that DeSantis was both backed by Trump and is only supported by the Trump base so long as he’s associated with the Trump-led MAGA movement.
Also ignored was that while Trump’s more right-wing pick, the New Right JD Vance, did quite well in Ohio, it was the weaker picks that suffered, namely Dr. Oz and Herschel Walker. The Blake Masters race has not yet been called as of the time this article was written.
So, while DeSantis had a good night and Trump’s record was a bit more mixed, it was hardly a DeSantis victory and Trump defeat. Rather, it looks like the MAGA movement is a winner, particularly thanks to the incompetence of the Biden regime.