So, how’s DeSantis doing so far?

It’s early days yet, but this time next year, we may well look back on Ron DeSantis’ management of these challenges as the moment his campaign for the White House truly turned around.

Sunday, the evening after a desperate loner unleashed his squirming devils on a Dollar Store in a predominantly black neighborhood in Jacksonville, the governor strode upright into the heart of anger.

At a prayer vigil, DeSantis found what he no doubt expected to find, a community restless over a deplorable act of tragic mania sharpening grievances on old grudge stones. You know the rest. Some in the crowd of about 200 jeered, booed and heckled the governor when he took the microphone.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis — who is running for the GOP nomination for president, who has loosened gun laws in Florida and who has antagonized civil rights leaders by deriding “wokeness ” — was loudly booed as he addressed the vigil.

This latest episode of horribleness was one of those mind-bending acts of vicious depravity carried out by yet another lone white gunman. Now three innocent Black Floridians are dead at the trigger-happy hands of, say authorities, Ryan Christopher Palmeter, a 21-year-old unemployed college dropout, an absolute loner who, it seems, had spent the last couple of years tapping out manifestos behind a locked bedroom door.

Palmeter texted his father during the shooting, according to the sheriff’s office, instructing him to break into his bedroom with a screwdriver. The dad found a suicide note and last will and testament on the suspect’s computer. Investigators previously said that the shooter authored “several manifestos,” with portions describing the suspect’s “disgusting ideology of hate.”

So of course it’s Ron DeSantis’ fault. His policies did this, someone in the crowd hooted. There’s blood on his hands. Because he openly challenges wokeism. Because he’s OK with students learning the historically accurate fact that, despite their bondage, some indomitable Black Americans acquired skills that made their lives more endurable.

And also because … because … because … oh, here it is: Because he overruled a congressional map drawn by legislators that put in the same district Black voters in Jacksonville and, 180 miles away, tiny Chattahoochee, northwest of Tallahassee.

So, festering in self-enforced solitary confinement with his demons, a desperate soul saw these as signals to unleash his inner Nazi.

Yes. That’s not a stretch. At all.

The pile-on has been swift and predictable. 

To be clear: None of the hecklers spent the days before the murders volunteering at the local DeSantis for President office. Nor did any of those who amplified the heckling in the media. Vanity Fair cherrypicks this gem:

“I just felt like he had a lot of audacity to come there after he lit the match and fanned the flames and emboldened the individual to do what happened,” State Representative Angie Nixon said in an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid Monday evening, noting that HBCUs had already requested more than the money he announced earlier in the day. “You want to give us money after you have blood on your hands? I have a problem with that.”

The Washington Post gives us this:

The legislation DeSantis championed “is harmful to Black and brown people — we’ve been yelling it for years,” said Florida state Sen. Tracie Davis, a Democrat who represents Jacksonville and attended the vigil on Sunday night. She said she walked away as DeSantis spoke and believes he is part of the problem because of his policies and rhetoric.

Imagine, however, if DeSantis hadn’t gone. So, it was a lose-lose proposition, right? Not even close. Sometimes, proper leadership means leading with your chin. You know you’re going to get popped, but you go.

What did we learn? There’s no glass jaw on DeSantis.

Now the nation’s attention turns to a hyper-local event, the frothy approach of Hurricane Idalia to the quaint villages and islands along Florida’s Big Bend region along the Gulf of Mexico. The Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore is reporting from Cedar Key. That’s never good.

Only days before, very much on the campaign trail, the Family DeSantis yucked it up on Iowa’s famed Field of Dreams. Now the governor is back at his day job, monitoring evacuation procedures and overseeing the deployment of rescue and repair crews that will set to work the moment conditions oblige.

At midday Tuesday, he visited with electrical line crews waiting in a Central Florida staging area. More than 25,000 are in place already, and another 15,000, from as distant as Nebraska, will join them by tonight.

Wait. There’s more. Florida’s preparation includes:

• 5,000 National Guard troops activated.
• 580 search-and-rescue workers in eight teams mobilized.
• 1,100 generators poised for deployment.
• 400,000 gallons of fuel reserved for post-recovery.
• 200 ambulances sitting on ready.

Remember all that talk about “mission above all else” during the first GOP presidential debate? For DeSantis, that’s not mere rhetoric. When trouble comes knocking, from overlong pandemic lockdowns to wayward district prosecutors to facing down public sector unions, Mission Man is laser-focused on solutions that get results.

Maybe, because who doesn’t love a circus, meaningful solutions spearheaded by a proven, capable and disciplined executive won’t matter during the primaries.

But if Republican voters are paying attention to the character of candidates revealed by our recent tumult, these may be the days that made all the difference.