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Take the example of Mr. DeSantis. He became a star on the right as an aggressive culture warrior fighting liberals on race and gender issues. He has no deep foreign policy experience, and if anyone from the blob is advising him on foreign policy, he certainly isnt advertising it. He mostly stayed mum on the Ukraine issue until this year, when he responded to a candidate questionnaire from Tucker Carlsons now-canceled show, which had become a major way to shape what the Republican base thinks about policy. Mr. DeSantis minimized the war as a territorial dispute, aligning himself with the isolationist argument that the United States has little interest in the conflict and should limit its involvement. Its probably relevant that support for U.S. aid to Ukraine, while high among the general public, has steadily decreased among Republican voters in opinion polls. Pew polling showed that in March of last year, only 9 percent of Republican respondents thought the United States was too involved; this year, that number had grown to 40 percent.

What caused the shift in opinion among Republican voters, apart from simple impatience with the war and dissatisfaction with the Biden administration? Those factors certainly play a role. But alongside this is a structural shift: The influence cycle now runs in a never-ending loop between politicians and their voter base a loop that now excludes the NATO-loving wonks of the former establishment and instead flows through powerful nodes in the conservative media ecosystem, like the former Fox News star Mr. Carlson and the current one Laura Ingraham.

Mr. Trump has a talent for the populist art of reflecting supporters instincts, feeding off them and intensifying them. Its not as though he invented the isolationist strain in Republican foreign policy thinking; Mr. Trumps views echo the old-school pre-World War II anti-internationalism kept alive by more marginal figures like Patrick Buchanan and Ron Paul. But he did intuit its potentially broad appeal to voters who distrust elite decision making. Mr. DeSantis, instead of intuiting this potential, merely mirrored a position to an audience already primed to accept it.

Mr. Trump, with his bloodhounds nose for potential weakness in his competition, dismissed Mr. DeSantis as a copycat who is merely following him. Whatever I want, he wants, Mr. Trump said in March after Mr. DeSantiss initial statement on Ukraine. Ms. Haley, Mr. Trumps former ambassador to the United Nations, who is running for president this cycle, also accused Mr. DeSantis of copying Mr. Trump. Voters deserve a choice, not an echo, she said. Other former establishment hawks were predictably upset, including Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham. The blob has its own allies like Ms. Haley and Mike Pompeo, a former secretary of state who traveled to Ukraine recently to meet President Volodymyr Zelensky and argued that arming the country saves the United States money in the long run.

Amid the backlash, Mr. DeSantis retreated somewhat. In an appearance on Piers Morgans show in March, he said that his territorial dispute remark had been mischaracterized and he was simply referring to contested areas in eastern Ukraine and that he believed Vladimir Putin is a war criminal.

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Opinion | How Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson Upended the ... - The New York Times