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What's Driving Entrepreneurs This Presidential Election

Florida governor Ron DeSantis on Sunday dropped out of the race for the Republican Party nomination for president, less than two days before the pivotal New Hampshire primary in which former president Donald Trump remained the clear Republican frontrunner. Only former South Carolina governor and one-time United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley remains as a challenger to the former president.

From his dismal campaign launch on the Elon Musk-owned social media platform X, then known as Twitter, to his anemic showing in last week's Iowa caucuses, where he lost to Trump by more than 30 percentage points, DeSantis's performance as a candidate often fell short of expectations.

It's not altogether DeSantis's doing. As the BBC pointed out in a post-mortem piece Monday, Republican voters have embraced the age of Trump on a deep, abiding basis.

"He [Trump] has been their political identity, and maybe even personal identity, for the better part of a decade," New Hampshire-based Republican strategist Matthew Bartlett told the network.

The BBC also noted--more delicately than some other news outlets--that DeSantis suffered from "a perceived lack of charisma and his awkwardness with voters," although the political chattering continued to acknowledge that for Republican voters, it's still Trump's world, and other candidates just live in it.

DeSantis conceded as much when he announced he was dropping out and throwing his support behind the former president, saying, "A majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance."

An Associated Press analysis called the endorsement "a stunning tail-between-his-legs moment for DeSantis, whom Trump has mercilessly and relentlessly taunted in deeply personal terms for the better part of a year now."

Trump "officially retired" the nickname "Ron DeSanctimonious" and thanked his former rival for his political support.

For entrepreneurs and small business owners, there's not much daylight between Haley and Trump. As president, Trump passed the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), which conferred numerous tax perks, some of which will sunset in 2025. Since Biden's 2020 electoral victory, the current administration has taken pains to let many Trump policies expire or has worked to overturn them.

In her last debate against DeSantis, in which Trump declined to participate, Haley backed her biggest rival's approach, speaking favorably about extending the former president's tax cuts for small businesses.

Voters go to the polls in New Hampshire on Tuesday. Trump enjoys a commanding lead, and the latest survey of voters, taken before DeSantis quit the race, showed the former president with 52 percent of GOP voters' support, while Haley got 34 percent.

A refreshed look at leadership from the desk of CEO and chief content officer Stephanie Mehta