Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is now officially a candidate for president of the United States. He filed paperwork earlier today, and he will be making his campaign launch announcement in a fairly unconventional way (perhaps even as we write this) on Twitter (with Elon Musk). His entry into the race is not at all unexpected, and will have come as a surprise to precisely no one. He's essentially already been running since at least last year. But by announcing, DeSantis has now made it official -- the race for the Republican nomination is now a two-man race.

Of all the GOP candidates who are taking on Donald Trump, DeSantis is the only one who has gotten any actual GOP voters to pay much attention. The rest of the Republican pack has never caught on in the polling -- each and every announced and unannounced GOP contender is pulling anywhere from five percent to zero percent right now, according to the RealClearPolitics average of the polls. Only three of them (Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Vivek Ramaswamy) are polling above two percent. Or to put it another way: no other candidate in the race to dethrone Trump has garnered anywhere near the support which would be necessary to pull off such a feat. DeSantis has, but even he has only managed this in a limited way.

Early on, DeSantis was somehow anointed (by the political media, by big GOP donors, and by the voting public) as the best chance to defeat Donald Trump in the Republican primaries. DeSantis was going to be the Great Florida Hope, who would give the voters all the meanness and hate of Trumpism, but without the flamboyance and with instead the competence to actually get laws passed and policies enacted. A Trump who could achieve things, rather than just bellow about them at a political rally. And -- crucially -- a Republican who could get enough votes to actually win the general election.

Earlier this year, it seemed to be paying off. DeSantis was polling at around 30 percent, while Trump was in the mid-40s. DeSantis would occasionally even best Trump in an individual poll, although most of these were state-level polls (often in early-voting states) rather than national polls.

But in the spring, the wrath of Trump was turned fully on DeSantis, and he has been slumping in the polls ever since. This was conventional politics for Trump, who has largely refrained from attacking any of the other candidates in the race. Why should Trump bother attacking Mike Pence or Tim Scott, after all, when neither of them is threatening Trump's standings in any appreciable way? Trump can afford to ignore them as gadflies, and ignore them he has (well, except for a few potshots at Pence, since Trump will never forgive him for not somehow magically handing the presidency to Trump after he lost the 2020 election). But DeSantis is an actual viable challenger. He could even be a threat to Trump.

So Trump has been training all his ire on DeSantis, in his usual nonstop firehose fashion. This has been somewhat successful, at least in the polling. DeSantis sunk down to 20 percent in the polls, while Trump rose to the mid-50s. Trump has basically co-opted a third of DeSantis's support, and built an almost insurmountable lead by doing so. Trump won the nomination in 2016 by corralling only about a third of the GOP base, while splitting the opposition against him so successfully that nobody ever really came uncomfortably close to Trump. And that was with only about 35 percent. With Trump's polling at 55 percent and above, he is currently the odds-on favorite to walk away with the GOP nomination once again.

But, of course, it is still early days. We're still eight months away from the first primaries. The first GOP candidate debate won't take place until August -- and there are rumors that Trump may even skip the first few debates, as a sign of strength (after all, why should he bother to debate when he's running away with the contest?). There is still plenty of time for not just DeSantis but indeed any Republican candidate to catch fire with the voters and begin to challenge Trump's dominance of the field. Trump himself could implode in any number of ways, either self-inflicted or from external forces (such as his many legal woes). So nothing is written in stone.

Ron DeSantis has to be taken seriously as a possible GOP contender. He has already raised a boatload of money (over $100 million, from most reports). He is already executing a ground game. He sees the path to his victory running through the earliest states, where if he actually does beat Trump he could build enough support to eventually win the nomination.

But to beat Trump, DeSantis is going to have to actually run against Trump. this is the conundrum facing every Republican challenger to Donald Trump -- how to draw a contrast with Trump without alienating (or, more likely, enraging) Trump's MAGA army of supporters. DeSantis, up to this point, has been remarkably timid about taking on Trump. He's going to have to do a better job now that he's an official candidate, but it's an open question of whether he's up to it or not.

DeSantis hasn't even taken a clear position on whether Trump lost in 2020 or not. This would seem to be central to the argument that DeSantis is making -- that he is far more electable than Trump. That argument is a lot simpler when it begins with: "Trump lost the last time around -- do you want to lose again?" Buying into or even giving lip service to Trump's Big Lie (that the 2020 election was somehow stolen from him) takes all the wind out of the sails of the electability argument.

Meanwhile, Trump is unloading on DeSantis every chance he gets. Trump is not afraid of viciously attacking DeSantis, and if DeSantis does manage a post-announcement bump in the polls, we should all expect that Trump's attacks will get even more vicious. DeSantis, up until now, virtually refuses to even say Trump's name. That is not going to be a good enough defense -- DeSantis at some point is going to have to counterattack.

Trump has a much more charismatic personality than DeSantis, as well, which is going to be a big hurdle for DeSantis to overcome. Trump thrives on the raw emotion from his rally crowds, and is a master at manipulating that emotional wave from the stage. Nobody would say anything remotely similar about DeSantis, at least not currently. DeSantis is not a big glad-handling type of politician, but the voters will require at least a certain degree of that -- especially in Iowa and New Hampshire.

[Editor's Note: At this point, I tried to listen in to the DeSantis-Musk announcement party, but massive technical issues seem to be happening and I could never hear more than about 10 or 15 seconds of audio before it cut out completely. Perhaps firing 80 percent of the workforce at Twitter wasn't the greatest idea in the world? In any case, I will try to find and listen to audio of the event later, but can't report on it in today's column, sorry, because it just crashed and burned.]

Or perhaps this is a good point to close on. Ron DeSantis is running for president on a platform of competence. He is the guy who will get things done. And his presidential announcement just crashed and burned. The hashtag "#DeSaster" is currently trending on Twitter. It is a shame that the late-night comedy shows are currently showing re-runs (due to the writers' strike), since they would have had an absolute field day heaping ridicule on this spectacular meltdown. As it is, the Trump campaign is stepping into the breach, framing the entire fiasco as: "Failing to launch." It really doesn't matter what DeSantis says, at this point. The story is going to be the meltdown itself, not anything DeSantis has to say about anything.

The Republican nomination contest is a two-man race now, with Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis the only ones with any appreciable support from Republican voters. DeSantis, however, has yet to show the fire in the belly necessary to take on his rival. Trump, on the other hand, has plenty of fire in the belly to spare and has not been shy about venting it on DeSantis in any way that pops into his head.

Traditionally, making an official campaign announcement would give any candidate a boost in the polls. Sometimes this is only a temporary bump and sometimes it is the start of a bigger climb. But after witnessing the absolute fiasco of the DeSantis Twitter launch, I have to doubt whether he'll even see a temporary bounce. I seriously doubt he'll get back up to where he was in the spring (30 percent support). And I think his weaknesses are only going to become more and more apparent with increased media attention.

I think DeSantis peaked far too early and will never regain the early momentum he had. If anyone manages to seriously challenge Trump, it's probably going to be someone that hasn't yet made a major splash in the GOP race. I think when the dust settles on the 2024 GOP primary race, we're going to remember Ron DeSantis as this cycle's Jeb Bush -- another Florida Republican governor who earned the wrath of Trump and who never lived up to his early hype.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant