DeSantis lesson: You can’t crack a cult

Ron DeSantis, the annoying Florida governor who burned through a grotesque amount of money in a failed bid to wrest the Republican nomination for president from Trump, must, during his morning shave, look in the mirror and tell himself: “It’s a cult, and you can’t crack a cult.” I have no proof of that, of course, but he and other Republicans must have moments of introspection, when even they confront the obvious: MAGA is a cult.

My Oxford Dictionary defines cult a couple of ways: “a system of religious veneration and devotion directed toward a particular figure or object” and “a relatively small group of people having religious beliefs or practices regarded by others as strange or sinister.” And there’s a third: “a misplaced or excessive admiration for a particular person or thing.” The latter two certainly apply to Trump and his MAGA followers — though there’s nothing small about his following — and you can throw in religious veneration for all the evangelicals who apparently believe Trump is a prophet sent by God to save America.

DeSantis, who backed out of the campaign on Sunday, had access to a fearsome amount of money, starting with $80 million transferred from his Florida PAC to the Never Back Down PAC that supported him. Ultimately, his campaign apparatus had access to $100 million or more, but it failed for lots of reasons, the most cited: DeSantis’ horrible personality and inability to relate to voters. You’ll hear all kinds of other reasons for his failure to topple Trump. But the biggest one has been clear to rational people for a long time now: MAGA is a cult, and nothing cracks a cult. What did DeSantis do immediately after accepting this reality? He re-upped.