Ron DeSantis is flaming out - and Trump is on course for a Republican coronation | Lloyd Green

The Ron DeSantis boomlet is done. He consistently trails Donald Trump by double-digits. A Wall Street Journal poll out Friday pegs Florida's governor in severe retrograde, slipping 27 points since December. DeSantis mistakenly conflates his campaign's bulging war chest with adulation. Wrong!

He forgot that working-class Americans dominate the Republican party and that mien matters. Voting to gut social security comes with fatal backlash, and eating pudding with your fingers is gross. Said differently, largesse from the party's donor base coupled with little else is a losing recipe.

Charles Koch has but a single vote and David Koch is gone. Before he goes any further, DeSantis needs to be reminded of past campaign flame-outs - Jeb Bush, John Connally and Mike Bloomberg - if he is to avoid their inglorious endings.

In 2016, Trump bludgeoned Bush to an early primary exit. His name recognition bought a ton of campaign donations but little else. A son and brother to presidents and a grandson to a US senator, Bush left the race with a grand total of four convention delegates and zero primary victories.

He sat in the Florida governor's mansion between 1999 and 2007. The gig doesn't scream springboard.

Connally is another cautionary tale. Lee Harvey Oswald seriously wounded him as he was riding with President Kennedy that fateful November day in Dallas. Fast forward, Ronald Reagan left Connally in the dust in 1980.

The jut-jawed former Texas governor garnered just a single convention delegate after parting with $500,000 from his own pockets and nearly $12m from everyone else's.