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DeSantis Blame Games & Witch Hunt Mania

News and notes on the political erogenous zones of the modern right: Is Jeff Roe or Generra Peck to blame for the DeSantis slump? And Is Kevin McCarthy really going after the president?

Ron DeSantis’s boosters have frequently invoked McCain’s come-from-behind, early-primary-state-targeting, momentum-slingshotting strategy as their new lodestar after his national polling faltered.
Ron DeSantis’s boosters have frequently invoked McCain’s come-from-behind, early-primary-state-targeting, momentum-slingshotting strategy as their new lodestar after his national polling faltered. Photo: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Tina Nguyen
July 26, 2023

It’s been a slog in Jacksonville. Last week, the DeSantis campaign revealed that it had defenestrated nearly a dozen staffers from its bloated Tallahassee operation after burning through most of the $20 million it raised last quarter, primarily from donors who have already maxed out. As I recently reported, the insular Ron-and-Casey family office likely wasted millions of dollars by overspending on in-house campaign infrastructure that should have been outsourced to third parties. But they clearly erred by over-hiring, too, among other sins.