Can Ron DeSantis really beat Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican race?

The much anticipated face-off is finally here.

Ron DeSantis is launching his bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and is widely predicted to become Donald Trump's main rival.

Mr DeSantis is styling himself as a Trump-style conservative without the Trump baggage. But the Florida governor enters a race in which the former president remains the clear frontrunner and still the dominant force in the Republican Party.

The DeSantis pitch is that he has a record of achievement on conservative priorities and values that he can point to - a contrast to the four years of the Trump presidency that had few legislative victories.

During his time in office, he's enacted high-profile conservative laws to make it easier to own a gun, to restrict sex and gender identity education in schools, and to tighten voting rules and limit abortions.

His willingness to take on big corporations that he sees as advancing a liberal agenda suggests that he believes hot-button cultural issues are of greater concern to Republican voters than more traditional pro-business policies.

It's a gamble, illustrated most dramatically by his feud with the Disney Company. That year-long fight began when Disney criticised a Florida law restricting what teachers could discuss in classrooms about sexuality and gender identity, following protests about the law from Disney employees.

"He is Mr Culture Warrior in the extreme," says Myra Adams, a Florida based columnist and political strategist who worked on Republican presidential campaigns in 2004 and 2008. "He was always considered conservative, but this was a choice that he made because he thought this would get him Trump voters."

Mr DeSantis is also making the case that he is a winner, undefeated in races for Congress and governor.

"We must reject the culture of losing that has impacted our party in recent years," Mr DeSantis said during his Iowa visit two weeks ago. "The time for excuses is over."

That was a dig at the Mr Trump who still refuses to accept he lost the 2020 election - and who was blamed by many for Republicans' underwhelming results in last year's congressional elections.

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All in all, it makes Mr DeSantis a very formidable candidate - at least on paper.

But campaigns are not waged on paper, they're conducted in front of living voters and under the harsh glare of a national media spotlight. And after appearing to be an unstoppable force in the wake of his impressive re-election victory in November, the Florida governor has seemingly wilted.

Polls last year showed Mr DeSantis running neck-and-neck, or even leading, Mr Trump. They now have Mr Trump with more than 50% in many surveys of Republican voters, while Mr DeSantis trails by double digits. Even if Mr DeSantis consolidated all the non-Trump voters, he would still trail Mr Trump in the RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls.

His challenge, therefore, is to convince some less-enthusiastic Trump supporters that he is a better version of Trumpism than the original.

That could be a fine line to walk, given that there are several other candidates also trying to be the non-Trump choice. South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley attacked Mr DeSantis in a campaign video released on Wednesday, saying: "America deserves a choice not an echo."

A common theme among those choosing the former president over the current governor is that Mr DeSantis is too cold and unwilling to engage in personal politics. An international trip meant to show Mr DeSantis could hold his own on the global stage received lacklustre reviews. Some high-profile potential donors have been unimpressed.

"Trump without the charm," is how Nikki Haley's campaign manager described it in an internal memo leaked to Politico this week.

"So many donors that are so [annoyed] because they paid a lot of money to be in a room with DeSantis, and he didn't give them the time of day," Ms Adams says. "He's robotic, and he doesn't have an easy-going personality."

The on-paper juggernaut could be looking more like a paper tiger.

"He should be the next generation," Ms Adams continues. "He should be the younger, smarter, more nimble Trump. But the numbers just don't speak well for how he's going to overcome Trump."

Numbers can change, of course. There still is the possibility that circumstances could improve or the former president might stumble under the weight of accumulated legal issues.

And the Trump campaign clearly views the Florida governor as the former president's most pressing threat. It's unclear exactly how much money the independent groups supporting Mr Trump have raised, but they've been on television attacking Mr DeSantis in key states for months.

The Florida governor, however, does have lots of money of his own.

At the end of last month, he had $88m (£71m) in a fund, Friends of Ron DeSantis, that was raised for his Florida re-election campaign and can be transferred to his presidential bid. He also reportedly has around $30m controlled by an independent committee that his allies can use to support his campaign.

Mr Trump, by contrast, reported a combined $18.8m in fundraising over the first three months of 2023, with $13m in his main campaign account. Most other Republican presidential candidates have even less cash on hand.

The Florida governor has also been working to build a campaign ground game, courting local officials and power brokers in key early voting states in the Republican nomination contest. On that recent trip to Iowa, he announced endorsements from more than three dozen state legislators - greater than any other candidate by far.

The formal launch of his campaign on Wednesday is a chance to reset and start rebuilding momentum. His conversation with Elon Musk on Twitter and a later interview with Fox News will be followed by a blitz of early voting states in the weeks ahead.

Once the dust settles, Mr DeSantis could end up the Republican nominee - and find himself with a host of new challenges as he takes on Joe Biden and the Democrats.

While backing hardcore conservative social policies has won him support among Republicans, some positions, particularly on abortion, could hurt his ability to appeal to moderate voters.

That, however, is a next year problem. The Florida governor has plenty of challenges just in the months ahead.

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