Ron DeSantis has spent millions of dollars convincing Republicans to nominate a candidate who is a little more normal than Donald Trump. Nikki Haley defended many of the former president's suggestions but said it was time to put the chaos behind him. The first was defeated in the primaries. The second must have the same fate.
If Trump's election as a candidate in 2016 seemed like a joke and his defeat in 2020 sounded like a warning, the former president's likely nomination to run for the White House in 2024 with a good chance of winning caps a decisive shift on the American right .
Republican Party voters and elites embraced populism and Trumpist extremism without looking back. Even politicians with clear rightwing credentials spending cuts, social spending reviews, hardline diplomacy were seen as dull options compared to a figure like Trump.
The former president used the discontent of the American people, cultural divisions and a feeling of abandonment to change the axis of political discussion in the country. With a mixture of recklessness and arrogance, he delivered a speech that no other strong candidate dared to make, convincing voters that there were no other alternatives.
In fact, sticking with Trump as the sole candidate led to an epidemic of willful blindness to his coup past and autocratic aspirations. A dose of opportunism and a lack of moral backbone led the Republican Party leadership to abandon its political machine to the former president's personal project.
A new and contested Trump candidacy proves that the rightward shift seen in several countries around the world over the past decade was not a passing episode and can outlast even electoral defeats. If the former president returns to the White House, this movement has an even greater chance of becoming definitive.