Ron DeSantis’s Dangerous Game

Ron DeSantis
Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Tina Nguyen
March 25, 2022

Earlier this month, during my trip to the annual CPAC cattle call in Orlando, it was becoming clear that the Republican Party was having a minor, but meaningful, identity crisis over Russia’s war in Ukraine. For more than four years, before and during Donald Trump’s presidency, Russia presented itself to the G.O.P. as an unlikely political ally, and the G.O.P. occasionally embraced Russia in return. Now, of course, things are more complicated.