Today in the real, authentic new Republican economic populism

DeSantis donors are not funding a campaign with any chance of winning, but they are making sure that he can scoop pudding into his maw on a plane in the style to which he has become accustomed:

Ron DeSantis spent virtually as much as he raised over the past three months, a new campaign finance filing reveals — a burn rate he tried to reverse amid mounting skepticism about his operation.

The Florida governor, whose team implored political donors not to give to rival Nikki Haley during a summit last week, took in a little more than $11 million and spent just as much — with another $1 million in unpaid invoices, according to the third-quarter report filed Sunday.

Driving those costs was a steady stream of trips to Iowa and a proclivity to not take coach getting there. Travel expenses amounted to about $2 million of the total amount of money DeSantis’ campaign disbursed over the three-month period. While the campaign paid for commercial flights, it also doled out $1.5 million on private jets — a policy that has raised eyebrows for its high cost and reliance on people with business interests in Florida.

Ron DeSantis in one sentence: “it would be immoral to give poor people access to healthcare when that money could be used to pay for private jets to fly me to Dubuque for my humiliating presidential campaign.” And I must admit that almost anything else Republican donors would do with their money would be worse.