Candidate Romney 2012 was in certain important ways worse than Bush from a left-of-center standpoint; this doesn't reflect Mitt Romney more broadly because the big-picture, top-level Mitt Romney is shockingly malleable ideologically for someone who appears to have a fair amount of integrity in his personal dealings. Ron DeSantis was and is straightforwardly and obviously even worse than Trump; this isn't reflected in conventional wisdom among the types of voters who get called "resist libs" and similar because a lot of those people's hatred of Trump is aesthetic. McCain 2008 is the only real exception to the rule that since 2000 the Republican Party has been running, or flirting with running, Presidential candidates and Presidential campaigns that are more and more repugnant every time, and that's seven cycles now.
That is if you view being a social conservative as more disqualifying then someone who has shown open contempt of the rule of law or someone who wants to destroy alliances like NATO and move America into an isolationist age.
Its obvious many on Atlas view going back to just late 2015 and 2016 on LGBT issues as worse then that which is why many hated DeSantis more than Trump(and that is yes the most you can say he would take the nation back too).
The man ran a campaign that used literal and unhyperbolic neo-Nazi imagery. Until he did that I agreed with you on this.
