Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is terrorizing Democrats for several good reasons.
First, while DeSantis has not formally announced his 2024 candidacy, tactician Donald Trump has already bombastically announced that DeSantis is running and what a lousy commander in chief he would make. But DeSantis made Florida the a destination state for many disillusioned blue-state liberals, saying“the woke agenda has caused millions to leave [blue-state] jurisdictions for greener pastures. For many of them, Florida was the promised land.”
Second, DeSantis is showing leadership skills, and his results put such Democratic presidential candidates (Gavin Newson, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Gretchen Whitmer, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders) to shame. Everyone knows, but they don’t want to comment yet Joe really understands what’s going on from day to day. DeSantis has already become a familiar and vital presence after campaigning for JD Vance and senator in Ohio. Tickets for DeSantis’ Rust Belt rally were snapped up within minutes of their release.
Third, although many conservatives still admire Donald Trump and will likely support a recent term for him; he had never seen a fight he wasn’t willing to fight. This personal militancy developed through years of contact with New York politicians, government officials, and labor unions – if you don’t fight, you can’t win. In January of this year, Trump jabbed at Governor DeSantis with his left hand during his first major campaign in New Hampshire and South Carolina, crediting himself with helping to raise DeSantis’ profile during his 2018 campaign: “Ron wouldn’t have become governor if it wasn’t for me. He omitted the fact that in 2018, DeSantis narrowly defeated Andrew Gillum, who had ethics problems and was later elected found with two other men in a Miami hotel room with methamphetamine and smoking accessories.
Fourth, even though Republicans had a nearly 300,000 voter advantage in Florida, DeSantis won his last gubernatorial election by over 1.5 million votes! Latinos are an vital and devoted constituency where he won by double digits in Dade County (Miami), which is 69 percent Latino, mostly Cuban and Puerto Rican, and also fulfilled those hopes by winning the largely Latino counties north of Miami no Republican candidate for governor or president has won in a generation.
Fifth, despite his many positive achievements, DeSantis has been a repeated target of derision from many left-wing newspapers in Florida – venerable habits die tough. Much of it recently resulted from the governor’s recruitment decisions Citi Journal Christopher Rufo to track the waking learning (DEI) that permeates Florida’s state university system (SUS). As a professor emeritus at the University of South Florida, I have seen exactly how leftist SUS universities have become. By the time students enrolled in my upper-division courses, they were already filled with Marxist ideas derived from the prevailing faculty ideology at USF.
When DeSantis recharges City Journal Christopher Rufo to diagnose an emerging cancer that had metastasized throughout Florida State University, Rufo’s first stop was New College in Sarasota. Rufo hit homeexplaining DeSantis’ difference from other Republicans in the 2022 election: “I believe the answer is that he has created a recent model of ‘culture war’ as public policy that combines popular media fighting with competent, effective management and a keen eye for… fueling the culture war. He doesn’t engage in controversy for its own sake; his strategy is calculated and disciplined, proceeding only when he can achieve his goals… to achieve vital political goals and protect his constituents from the abuses of woke ideologies.
Rufo first targeted New College in Sarasota. Criticism of Roger Brown in Sarasota Herald Tribune begins: “Every day there is a gap in Florida and it continues to noticeably widen. This gap separates what Gov. Ron DeSantis does largely to advance his personal aspirations from what he does to truly improve the lives of all Floridians.” Brown implies that his failing newspaper is the fault of a conservative governor who discovered the dominant woke ideology in the SUS, not the fact that Tribune leftist news reports are not what their home audiences want. That so many residents of other states, especially northern and midwestern blue states, are moving to Florida is prima facie evidence that they are disgusted with the effects of their local politics and media, desiring this kind of Florida as home and the offer of its governor .
Sixth, DeSantis also wrote a best-selling book for Amazon, The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Plan for America’s Rebirth. He may not have built a real estate empire, but he’s willing to share his template for success with the world. While Trump is well known for his inflammatory rhetoric against all people, DeSantis is precise in his oratory. How – Victor Davis Hanson guesses“DeSantis’s meticulous attacks on Disney or Martha’s Vineyard are laser focused, devoid of childish put-downs, extraneous dead-end tweets and narcissistic fixation on past regrets and hurts…. stopping him [Trump] reactive and self-obsessed, while DeSantis appears to be a president far from mudslinging.”
Unlike Trump, DeSantis knows both national and local politics. He represented Florida’s 6th Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives from 2013 to 2018, after graduating with honors from Harvard Law School. While at Harvard, he commissioned in the United States Navy as a JAG officer and was deployed to Iraq as an advisor to the U.S. Navy SEAL Commander in support of the SEAL mission in Fallujah, Ramadi, and the rest of Al Anbar Province. His military decorations include the Bronze Meritorious Service Star and the Iraq Campaign Medal. How many presidential candidates have such legal and outstanding achievements to their credit? Unlike DeSantis, neither Trump nor Biden has ever served in the military. We can assume it was probably Joe chasing Corn Pop and Romans through his omnipresent world of fantasy.
Perhaps DeSantis will face Joe Biden in 2024, but surprisingly, Biden is recreating the steps Florida State Universities took before DeSantis. New Executive Order 13985, like many Democrat-initiated initiatives, is sinister and parodic. The order is titled “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities through the Federal Government.” directing heads of federal departments and agencies to create Agency equity teams within 30 days. National Reviews Rich Lowry argues that this presidential decree empowers ideological shock troops to destroy federal policy in all areas. Woke teams will “coordinate the implementation of equity initiatives and ensure that their respective agencies deliver equitable outcomes to the American people.”
The contrast between Trump and DeSantis is palpable, as Donald is his diametric opposite. Trump becomes pompous, picks fights because he can, and has been doing so for 50 or more years. It’s damaged and can’t be put back together because it has no recent tricks for it to learn. Today’s political odds are decidedly against him.
On January 6, 2023, Ron DeSantis spoke out now renowned comment which shocked liberals and their media activists: “We accepted freedom. We maintained law and order. We protected parents’ rights. We respect our taxpayers and reject woke ideology. We are fighting the woke in the legislature. We fight against the woke in schools. We are fighting against the woke in corporations. We will never, ever give in to the woke mob. Florida is where the woke die.
Ron DeSantis is our future.
