Previously, DeSantis and his campaign had unveiled a Top Gun-styled ad in which DeSantis instructed, “Never, ever, back down from a fight.” One of DeSantis’s rallying cries was, “I have only begun to fight.” DeSantis’s super PAC chose to call itself, “Never Back Down.” That super PAC’s first ad touted DeSantis as “a man of steel roots,” and featured audio of him boasting, “we will always be courageous, and we will never back down.” When prepping for the televised debate with California governor Gavin Newsom, the DeSantis campaign asked voters to “choose your fighter.”

Last Monday, when the Iowa caucus was complete, and DeSantis had finished a disappointingly distant second, he stepped onto the stage and insisted nothing was over…

And then, six days later, DeSantis suspended his campaign and endorsed the man who last month accused his wife of planning a “plot to rig the [Iowa] caucus through fraud” in the Iowa caucus.

[The news yesterday stunned me as well. I expected both DeSantis and Haley to stick around through Super Tuesday, at least, and didn’t think doing so would do any damage to the GOP, Trump, or either of them. I suspect what happened was that DeSantis realized the polling had been fairly predictive, and that his distant third place in South Carolina portended a very weak end to the campaign. Bailing out now and endorsing Trump more or less freezes Haley, and gives DeSantis time to rebuild his standing with the populist wing of the party. — Ed]