Well, it finally happened. The mainstream media dug up something so shocking about Ron DeSantis that one can't help but wonder if it disqualifies him from the Republican primary.
If you haven't already heard, brace yourselves: Ron DeSantis campaigned for Mitt Romney.
I should probably tell you that this was twenty years ago, when DeSantis was a student at Harvard Law School and Mitt Romney was running for governor of Massachusetts.
I know -- stupid right? Who cares? The whole thing is silly, but ABC News made every effort to make this a bigger story than it really is. "DeSantis says Romney 'never fought for us.' An unearthed yearbook photo shows he once campaigned for him,” reads their headline.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday took aim at fellow Republican Mitt Romney, painting the outgoing senator as a member of the "surrender caucus of Republicans" who "never fought for us in the beginning."
"I don't really know Mitt Romney," DeSantis said in response to a question about a Romney-backed gathering of presidential candidates last month.
But a black-and-white photograph from DeSantis' Harvard Law School yearbook unearthed by ABC News indicates that at one point, DeSantis campaigned on Romney's behalf.
ABC News thinks that because DeSantis, who managed to graduate from Harvard Law School and remain a conservative, campaigned for the Republican gubernatorial nominee in Massachusetts as a student he is somehow being dishonest when he said he doesn't know Mitt Romney.
In 2002, when I was still living in Massachusetts, I campaigned for Mitt Romney, too. I was active with the Massachusetts Republican Party and did what I could to help. I even met Mitt Romney a number of times back then, but I don't "know" Mitt Romney.
That ABC News thought this was a big deal or even newsworthy is laughable. Romney was, at the time, a beacon of hope for Massachusetts Republicans. How good of a Republican was Mitt Romney back then? Well, did we really even know? Romney had yet to hold public office at that point, having only previously made an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate against Ted Kennedy in 1994. He had no record in public office to judge.
Romney's candidacy essentially forced the incumbent Republican governor Jane Swift to withdraw from the race—making him the only Republican candidate in the GOP primary. If you were a Republican living in Massachusetts, as DeSantis and I both were at the time, you could have supported either Mitt Romney, the Democrat candidate, or someone else who had no chance of winning.
I don’t regret voting for Romney in that election, nor do I regret voting for Romney in 2012 when he ran against Barack Obama. The alternatives in both elections were much worse.
And, to this day, I believe Romney did an okay job as governor. While many will point to “RomneyCare” as a stain on his record (as do I, and I publicly opposed it at the time), I also know that he worked really hard to help build the Massachusetts Republican Party by recruiting candidates to run for the state legislature. Those efforts didn't pan out, but he tried. I know because I was involved in those efforts.
I can’t explain what happened to him after that. But he went on to disappoint me. Severely. After his weak-kneed campaign against Barack Obama and his appeasement of Democrats as a U.S. senator from Utah, I have no more use for him—and you can look up my past articles for proof.
Still, that doesn’t mean I regret campaigning for him for governor twenty years ago. Neither should Ron DeSantis, or anyone else.
As for the Trump supporters who think this is some gotcha moment for DeSantis, I really don't think they want to play this game.
