As far as I can tell, Ron DeSantis viewed Jack Smith as his deus ex machina. He could campaign without laying a glove on Trump and still win, because the GOP electorate would never nominate someone who was under federal indictment. He could stand strong with the base, attack the deep state, unite the party, and have the nomination simply fall into his hands. It was perfect.
Except it wasn’t, because the base isn’t appalled by the indictments, which it views, regardless of the evidence, as more proof of the depravity of the deep state. As a result, Trump is way ahead in the polls. In addition, DeSantis is finding that his laser focus on wokeness is too abstract and remote from the everyday concerns of GOP voters to move them much. So what does he do now?
Plan B, logically, would be an economic plan that sets him apart from the other candidates and actually promises to make the lives of GOP voters better. This could take one of two completely different forms: either a populist-friendly focus on reactionary workers over capitalists; or a dramatic attempt to suck up to the donor class by offering some sort of radically regressive change to the tax system, such as a flat tax. The former has never been tried by any GOP presidential candidate in my lifetime; the latter has been proposed many times, and has always flopped miserably.
Will DeSantis choose one of these two options, or stick with the existing plan and watch his campaign go down the drain? We’ll see.