Florida's DeSantis takes conservative populism to the Rust Belt

While it is always unsettling for a political movement when its party loses power, the reality is that the movement's coalition doesn’t necessarily collapse or disappear. Sometimes, it even gets stronger. Coalitions last beyond a candidate's or party's loss because the coalition is always more about the people who are in it than about any single person.

Coalitions are also often about a sense of place. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis understands this. His message in his visit to this Pennsylvania city, along with neighboring Youngstown, Ohio, shows he recognizes that attendees at his rallies are not just interested in him; they are interested in how well he "gets" this sense of place that is everything to conservative populists.

This explains why so many at his speech welcomed his message, even while many reporters, as usual, misunderstood it.

Tickets to DeSantis's Rust Belt events — all coordinated by Turning Point USA and all free — were gobbled up within moments of their release. His visit here was for the Republican nominee for governor, Doug Mastriano. In Youngstown, he appeared on behalf of Senate candidate J.D. Vance.