The good news: Trump's star is fading. The bad news: That helps DeSantis.
So what could be worse than Donald Trump? The answer: Ron DeSantis. A Trump with lots of experience in government who knows what he is doing but with the same neo-fascist tendencies. That’s DeSantis in a nutshell.
The Sun-Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale, Florida published an editorial warning about Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Now, as the ex-president sees DeSantis emerge as his biggest rival, Trump must have buyer’s remorse. You can practically hear the dishware breaking at Mar-a-Lago.
The recent (and welcome news) that Trump’s grip is weakening with Republican voters also positions DeSantis as his strongest potential rival for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination. That’s bad news for the country.
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A University of New Hampshire poll found Trump and DeSantis statistically tied in that first-primary state. DeSantis continues to play coy, but his intentions are obvious. He’s raising money out in Utah this week. He recently hosted a select, very private gathering of other Republican governors in Fort Lauderdale, the sort of thing that would-be presidents do.
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“Just because DeSantis is smarter than Trump doesn’t mean that he is any less dangerous. In fact, he might be an even bigger threat for that very reason,” wrote columnist Max Boot in The Washington Post.
That’s right. Anyone who admires DeSantis from afar should come to Florida with eyes wide open. After winning by just 32,463 votes, he has governed with total contempt toward the 4 million people who didn’t vote for him.
He’s as authoritarian as Trump, just as disdainful of democracy, no less polarizing and openly hostile to scientific evidence that doesn’t conform to his narrow agenda.
Although DeSantis didn’t endorse Trump’s Big Lie of a stolen election, he is not willing to refute it and he still won’t say whether Biden was fairly elected. He has scorned the House committee’s brilliant investigation into Trump’s attempted coup.
DeSantis is a bully. No Florida governor has been as ruthless or effective in dominating his state, owning the legislature and trampling dissent.
The governor who boasts of empowering parents mocked school kids in his presence for wearing masks to protect themselves against the coronavirus, as their parents had told them. Calibrating his political appeal to voters who put selfishness over social responsibility, DeSantis appointed a quack physician to run the health department. The quack refused to order vaccines for children under age 5 and intends to deny gender dysphoria treatment to young people who depend on Medicaid.
DeSantis and his drones in the Legislature ruthlessly put down school boards and local governments that sought to save lives with masks, vaccines and social distancing requirements.
It’s terrifying to contemplate DeSantis in the Oval Office when the next pandemic inevitably comes along.
When Nazis picketed at Orlando, he was silent. Exploiting society’s vulnerability to cultural warfare, DeSantis has prohibited schools, colleges and even private businesses from dealing honestly with racism and its ugly history. His law labeled “don’t say gay” by critics openly caters to homophobia, chilling sex education in schools and putting students at risk of being outed to their parents.
For Disney World’s mild opposition, DeSantis got the Legislature to repeal its taxing district, putting the company at risk and threatening to bankrupt two counties that might inherit Disney’s debts. He carried his culture warfare into the selection of public school textbooks. A new civics training course for teachers maintains that the Founders did not intend to separate church and state, which is grossly false.
When the Legislature tried to honor the Fair Districts amendments to Florida’s Constitution, DeSantis demanded, and got, a ruthless Congressional gerrymander calculated to replace two Black Democrats with white Republicans.
He signed a 15-week abortion ban that openly flouts Florida’s constitutional right to privacy, secure in the belief that a Supreme Court turned flagrantly reactionary by his appointees will be just as contemptuous of the Constitution. He has boasted of packing the appellate bench with fellow ideologues from the Federalist Society.
He spends $120,000 a year of our tax dollars on a press secretary whose principal duty seems to be slandering his opponents. Anyone opposing his anti-gay bill, she said, was probably a “groomer” — a sexual predator.
Unless you’re a far-right homophobic theocrat, there’s little good to be said about Ron DeSantis.
The editorial ends with...
Voters in America’s 49 other states, take note.
DeSantis is running for re-election this year. If he is defeated, he’s probably out of the 2024 presidential race. So now is a good time to make sure that friends and family who live in Florida are registered to vote. If anybody has moved since the last election they need to register at their new address.
Remember that DeSantis barely won in 2018. Barack Obama carried Florida in both 2008 and 2012. So Florida’s reputation for being solidly Republican is overstated. Hard work and determination can oust DeSantis – provided that Democrats are not engaged in divisive internal feuding.
