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Notes -
Desantis we could probably argue over. I counted him as outside of full MAGA, but I might be exaggerating the differences between him and Trump after the primary. Trump hasn't, to my knowledge, been grooming him as an insider in his campaign. But you're right, they're probably closer together than I thought at first.
The number of Trump henchmen who wind up indicted is somewhat startling, and might deter some people. But electoral politics, contra Nate Silver, selects for risk takers.
DeSantis' problem is that he assumed that Trump had self-destructed on Jan 6th 2021 and was planning to succeed him, not to replace him. Had Trump not run, I think this would have worked and DeSantis would have been the nominee with broad MAGA support. But (at least from the perspective of Republican primary voters) Trump hadn't self-destructed and DeSantis acting as if he had was seen as disloyalty. In Q4 2023 DeSantis is very clearly floundering because he doesn't know whether he is doing a Vivek-style understudy run to position himself if Trump has a stroke before the election, or if he is running to beat Trump.
In other words, MAGA rejected DeSantis, not the other way round.
My model for DeSantis is that he was preparing into March or April of 2024 at least competitive, and hoping to consolidate the other non-Trump candidates as they started to drop out. His initial model had been MAGA-y but-competent, intending to pivot to slamming Trump once some big enough scandal hit to kinda force that, preferably something that let him emphasis the competent bit without having to step too specifically against conservative or MAGA positions.
And the first big scandal that hit in that time frame was the Bragg Indictment.
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