Nate Cohn says Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is not like former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and is in a much stronger position to win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination than Walker ever was in the 2015-2016 cycle. People like to compare the two because they’re both known for “owning the libs” rather for soaring oratory or personal charisma. But Cohn argues that DeSantis has already established a much stronger base of support, and compares him more to Ronald Reagan in 1976 or Barack Obama in 2008 than to Walker.

The polling data backs this up as DeSantis is currently backed by almost a third of Republican voters while Walker couldn’t break out of single digits. If I had to guess what’s really different, it really comes down to two factors. The first is that Walker’s biggest moment came when he defeated a 2012 effort to recall him. It was a giant thumb in the eye of the Democrats, but it also indicated that Walker was divisive and somewhat weak. Overall, the sentiment in Wisconsin was not favorable to Walker, but the voters didn’t think he’d done anything so egregious to merit overturning his reelection to a second term. They objected to the process just enough to let him survive, but that didn’t mean they supported his policies or performance. The bottom line is that he wasn’t a popular governor at home when he launched his presidential campaign.

By contrast, DeSantis was just reelected in an historic landslide in Florida that signaled that the Sunshine State may no longer be competitive at all for the Democrats. And this happened in what was otherwise a deeply disappointing midterm election cycle of the GOP. The Republicans also had a big night in New York State, but they still lost the gubernatorial race and their victories were restricted to House races (including the notorious George Santos) and other state and local elections. As a result, no personality emerged from New York to rival DeSantis as the face of Republican success.

It’s reasonable for Republican voters to look at DeSantis and think he must have something figured out. Who else has demonstrated recently that they can outperform expectations and deliver a huge beatdown to the Democrats? Walker never left that impression.

The second factor is that post-Trump Republican politics are just different. Walker’s combativeness warmed the hearts of activists and hard core conservatives, but that was true of many other post-Reagan candidates, starting with Pat Buchanan in 1992. In the end, candidates like Poppy Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney who seemed to have more crossover appeal always won the primaries in the end. The problem was that the appeal didn’t translate to victory (even Poppy lost reelection), and Trump was successful in large part because many Republican voters lost their belief in that strategy. Trump demonstrated that you could be completely dismissive of “the middle” and still win, so now the voters feel like they don’t need to compromise. They’re willing to even go in the other direction and support a candidate who they personally feel is too combative or personally flawed because they think it will drive up turnout and bring success.

So, when they looked at Walker, they worried he might not be a viable general election candidate. When they look at DeSantis, they think he’s the best option. Another way of putting it is that if Walker were running in today’s environment, he’d probably be doing a lot better. But he’d still lack the credential of being an outlier of political success.

If there’s a flaw in this thinking, it’s probably in overestimating the viability or meaning of Trump’s approach in 2016. Trump lost the popular vote and barely won the Electoral College, so even someone who could replicate his strategy would still need a lot of things to break their way. It’s still a lot easier to win by convincing the middle than to wage a turnout battle, and hugely partisan primary candidates will struggle to do that in a general election. Hillary Clinton was also a polarizing candidate (even within her own party), she was trying to break the “glass ceiling,” and she wasn’t an incumbent president. I believe she was easier to defeat than Biden will be in 2024.

If the analysis is that DeSantis is in a good position to win the nomination, then I agree. But if the analysis is that he’s the best choice for the Republicans if they want to win, I am not convinced of that.