Does he, though? Or is he just a conservative politician?
If he's done a "poor job of recreating that strategy" could it be because he's not actually trying to do so?
He was certainly trying to do so, and it backfired. Let me preface this by saying that I'm definitely not a Trump supporter.
Trump at least has some personality. DeSantis has the personality of a warm corpse. He can't sell anything.
He was late to announce his run for President. Trump was already out there verbally abusing him, and DeSantis had to play catch up.
A few things he did to pander to the far right (or at least the right wingers that are beyond moderate)...
He passed a very restrictive abortion ban in Florida. He didn't realize it alienated a lot of conservative women voters. He lost some major donors over this as well. He publicly endorsed it to try to secure religious voters in Iowa.
He spoke in favor of cutting Medicare, Social Security, and raising the retirement age. Which, of course, pissed off senior conservative voters. Trump took advantage and bashed him for it.
He declared a "War on Woke". Whatever that means. Which is funny, because the woke culture is born out of black culture and the black experience in America. So essentially DeSantis declared war on black culture. He doesn't know any better, of course, because he's pandering to a certain crowd.
He declared war on Disney over their rights to free speech. He then used his power as governor to punish them over it. He accused them of the typical far right allegations of child grooming, etc.
Speaking of using government power...DeSantis has also taken control of the state’s environmental protection agency. He's deployed our state’s police force out of state. He's bussed and flown immigrants to other states. He created a law enforcement team to monitor voting. He removed democratically elected local prosecutors. He staged the takeover of a liberal arts college.
All of those actions just seem to scream for attention from the far right, or right of center, conservatives
