Ron DeSantis Starts to Assemble a Backbone. Maybe.

Gage Skidmore | Flickr.com

After months of embarrassment and declining polls, Florida Governor and beleaguered Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis may have finally scrounged up enough vertebrae to cobble a spine together.

Recently, DeSantis took shots at both Donald Trump and House Republicans.

Trump, the Republican frontrunner and former subject of a disturbingly sycophantic campaign ad from DeSantis, has been a tenacious critic of the Florida Governor ever since it became apparent that DeSantis would challenge him for the Republican nomination. In contrast, DeSantis has been mostly reluctant to respond in kind—frustrating his fundraisers, who understood that a candidate must challenge their rivals in order to defeat them.

At last, DeSantis took the gloves off—or at least one—by attacking Trump’s mental fitness for office after a string of persistent gaffes and malapropers.

When asked about Trump’s recent criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and subsequent walkback, DeSantis opined that there are two Trumps: “the Donald Trump on the teleprompter” and “the Donald Trump when he gets off that teleprompter—and that’s the real Donald Trump.”

After claiming that Trump’s anger owed to Netanyahu congratulating President Biden for defeating Trump in 2020, DeSantis concluded that it’s “sad to see” that Trump “isn’t the same guy” he was in 2016.

Also in recent remarks, DeSantis rebuked the chaotic House Republican conference, comparing them to “chickens with their head cut off” with no “plan to make the country better.”

Whether this more aggressive approach will bolster DeSantis’s anemic polling remains to be seen.