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Which View of DeSantis Is Correct?
There are basically two perspectives on Governor Ron DeSantis: (1) committed anti-woke warrior who would pursue an America First-style agenda without the character flaws of President Trump, or (2) a Trump-killer politician being propped up by the GOPe to restore the Republican wing of the uniparty to power in the White House.
The former perspective reflects a lot of negative press by progressive media and favorable press by conservative media. The latter view has been long held by Sundance at the Conservative Tree House and is gaining adherents by former fans of the Governor. One example is Roger L. Simon writing for The Epoch Times:
But I didn’t know … how [the attack on Disney] was all something of a charade. As I started to learn this, not just from the outsider candidate, but elsewhere too, I began to revise my opinion of the Florida governor….
What we need now more than ever is real, not faux, transparency.
For a while, Trump has been telling us everything good that was done by DeSantis was copied from him. I used to think that was unfair. Now, I wonder.
What is causing (accelerating) this change of heart? Well, it turns out while talking a strong game against Disney, DeSantis has actually been preserving some perks for it. Per Simon, Vivek Ramaswamy has pointed out some things:
- DeSantis signed a political anti-discrimination statute that penalized companies for engaging in viewpoint-based censorship on the internet. This was a signature piece of legislation in his anti-woke crusade, but the law specifically exempts companies in Florida that own a theme park larger than 25 acres. Disney’s internet properties and streaming services were exempted from a statute that was designed to stem corporate ‘wokeness’ in Florida.”
- Current Florida tech legislation has new loopholes for Disney.
A DeSantis-supported 2023 bill to safeguard technology companies from harvesting Floridians’ personal information is written in a way that would include traditional technology companies that own and operate internet properties − but not Disney − by applying to companies only if their online advertising accounts for 50% of the company’s revenue, despite Disney’s advanced online advertisement business.This is part of a broader pattern of behavior for DeSantis, a bait-and-switch headline strategy with respect to supposedly woke companies that he goes out of his way to protect.
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DeSantis’ supposed reining in of BlackRock’s ESG (environmental, social, and governance) investment in Florida is also eyewash. “DeSantis purported to take BlackRock to task by prominently announcing that Florida’s treasury would yank $2 billion in assets from the financial services company. .. [T]he move was just a PR stunt. The money Florida pulled wasn’t even causing the real ESG-related trouble. Florida claimed it pulled the money because it didn’t want to “fund BlackRock’s social engineering project.” But BlackRock pursues its environmental, social and governance investing strategy mainly via its clients’ stock holdings, where BlackRock leverages its position as the largest “shareholder” in American companies to push environmental and social goals. Florida’s $2 billion was largely in cash and bonds, not stocks, and it represented a fraction of the $13 billion total Florida had invested in BlackRock funds.”
Simon stills finds lot to love about Gov. DeSantis. As do I. But we have now had decades of Republicans taking stands against progressivism to generate campaign contributions, electoral support and enthusiasm amongst the conservative punditry, only to sit back and enjoy the scrimmage over the 50-yard line rather than moving the ball down the field as progressives do.
GOPe support for DeSantis is a red flag of sorts. Whether you personally like President Trump or not, the policies he pursued –by and large–were good for America and consistent with our constitutional system (unlike the current and predecessor regimes). He was stabbed in the back by GOPe whenever they felt free to do so, and thus attenuated what should have been a remarkable assault on progressivism. And they seem to do this consistently.
So the question is: which view of DeSantis is correct: anti-woke warrior or GOPe operative? Or is there a third option?
Published in General
If the base for DeSantis is neither Trump’s base nor people who wouldn’t want to be connected too closely to the GOPe, who is left?
While I liked the Trump policies, especially his successful teams around economics and energy, I fear he may not be able to cobble together enough real support to overcome the margin of 2024 cheating.
While I like DeSantis’ policies generally as reported being enacted in Florida, I recall that he has a GOP-led legislature to ease giving him a lot of what he seeks. How would he do facing the media and congressional and judicial jackals that were constantly gnarling at President Trump’s heels?
I also remember a very popular and successful governor named Scott Walker, who’d done wonders in his state but collapsed in no time when he tried to go national.
OTOH, I cannot imagine voting for any Democrat for the White House, and I imagine I am not the only one. It’s just that there may be some independents who will simply stay out of the polling place if Trump is the nominee.
‘Tis a puzzlement. (h/t King of Siam).
Remember Mississippi?
My favourite answer to the same question asked years ago was, “Check Haley Barbour’s Rolodex.”
If you don’t get the reference, that’s OK.
Nowadays, to update, “Check Mitch McConnell’s contact list.”
That’s interesting. It sounds like you assume that if people don’t support Trump that they must be part of the GOPe. I’m not. I think we may find a lot of people who don’t want to vote for Trump but want to vote for an agressive, sane and productive Republican. I also think they may have become disillusioned both with Trump and the GOPe. Maybe we’re forming a whole new Republican base with independents who don’t want Trump or the Left.
This makes sense. Someone who can be effective promoting American traditional values while keeping the party and allied independents unified behind more sensible policies than those pushed by this radical administration and its allies.
Maybe his campaign will need to find a way to stress this benefit to voting for him!
No I’m assuming overlap between Trump and Desantis and those who’d vote for either. I’m assuming overlap in who would be opposed by each group. I think they’re largely the same group up to now.
Whoever said he was allying with the GOP Establishment?
The same reasons anybody would ally with DeSantis. He promotes and enacts a more conservative agenda without the ridiculous tweets and narcissism.
I think it is one of those derogatory terms that gets bandied about for convenience. I doubt if any two Republicans share the same definition of the word other than to describe other Republicans that they don’t like or with whom they disagree. And politicians who reside within the “GOP establishment” are certainly not all alike in their anti-republican values. It’s a lot easier to vent your anger at a single nefarious group than to have to explain specific issues with which you disagree.
There are too many individual voters with individual reasons for their votes. You can’t just automatically lump everybody into two simple camps.
I don’t think the author clarified any definitions of the GOPe. He mostly just talked about how he doesn’t like non-MAGA republicans. In the fourth link he even says that Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura INgraham, and the entire Salem Media Network supported the “GOPe” objectives on an immigration bill in 2014. That seems to muddy the waters even further.
In other words, 95% of Republican Party officeholders and party officials. It would be a much shorter list to name the elected Republicans who are not GOPe.
The GOPe are the people who run the Republican Party, and their selected candidates and officeholders.
There are characteristics that set the GOP-e apart from grassroots Republicans.
1. They have inherited intergenerational wealth, social status, and political connections. Mitt Romney’s niece … the current Chairwoman of the RNC … is the epitome of GOPe.
2. Their wealth, status, and connections insulate them from the negative impacts of open borders, globalism, and cultural decay.
3. They are proud of their friendships and connections with the other side, and share more in common with the Democrat Party elites (wealth, privilege, insulation from bad policy) than with the Republican base. Think of James Carville and Mary Matalin. And they agree broadly with Democratic elites with marginal disagreements about tax rates (perhaps) and whether the Federal Government should be merely enormous or absolutely gigantic.
4. They do not have friends in the working class, although they are usually polite to their servants.
5. Minus their membership in the Lucky Sperm Club, they are stunningly mediocre people. George W and Jeb might have been moderately successful insurance salesmen, had they been born in more humble circumstances.
6. Their primary interest is protecting their wealth, privilege, and status. They don’t really give a damn about policy except as a marketing concept for the people they reluctantly have to appeal to in order to have political power.
I’m afraid you’ve just described Donald Trump.
I am OK with DeSantis running. He is probably the better shot at getting a MAGA president. If DeSantis runs, we’ll have a primary process to determine the best candidate.
Laughable. The people VTK described rejected Donald Trump as not one of them.
Maybe he’s manipulated them.
I haven’t seen enough to have a sense of things, but I remind myself that DeSantis is a politician, so I expect to be disappointed.
This describes me fairly well.
Trump shared some characteristics with the GOPe as far as wealth and connections but he was not one of them.
Laughable? Let’s go over the points.
Trump is the de facto head of the Republican Party for the last six years and has a huge list of people in the Congress and Senate whom he personally endorsed. He even talked some candidates into running.
These are indisputable. Trump was one of the richest and most popular men in America with tons of political connections going all the way up to Presidents.
Trump certainly is insulated from all of that.
Trump was huge friends with the Clintons, Oprah Winfrey, Barbara Walters, Hollywood celebrities galore, he was a donor to countless top democrats. Trump does not agree with democrats about the tax rates, so that’s one point in his favor. However, he believes in enormous government and raised the Federal Spending to absolutely gigantic heights never before attained.
I am not aware that Trump has working class friends, any more than any other politicians.
“Mediocre” is an opinion, and he didn’t even specify “mediocre at what?” so this is not a useful criterion to describe GOPe or anybody.
Trump has thrown countless loyal supporters under the bus and denounced them to protect himself. I used to think that he genuinely loved the American people, but he has demonstrated that he would destroy the party in order to keep himself in power. Just look at the silly denouncements of DeSantis that he rails about, making stuff up out of thin air that even his supporters don’t believe. Is this helping the conservative cause?
I suspect he is merely pro-DeSantis.
And he was not one of them for his entire life as a rich, prominent New Yorker. The rich New Yorker is what causes most of the conflict within many of those who otherwise support his approach to governing America. And that is the likely source for his not being able, as yet, to get his hands around some major concepts of much of flyover America such as small government.
Of course we will, not saying otherwise. What I’m suggesting is that that primary process isn’t clean and pretty, and it’s unlikely to leave either candidate undamaged, especially if we start seeing comments like the one I quoted about sexual assault.
This.
DeSantis is an executive. He doesn’t rule by decree. The Legislature writes and passes bills.
Regarding The Establishment. There is always an establishment. It isn’t always a bad thing. Depends on the establishment. The Republican establishment has not been good, and it hasn’t been good for a variety of reasons, with the participation of a variety of people with different shortcomings.
Trump shares some characteristics with the GOPe, but it’s the differences that matter.
And the Bush-Republicans and Disney Conservatives who actually run the party undermined Trump’s preferred candidates at every turn; willing to sacrifice house seats, governorships, senate seats, and even the control of state legislatures to keep ‘Trumpism’ (America First ideology) from having power in the party.
Just for awareness, I am not a Trump supporter. Just a realist.
I believe my name is appearing over someone else’s comments.
I am fairly pro-Trump, though I’ll vote for the best candidate regardless.
I don’t. However, of course we can group people based on who or what they support. You call it lumping, I call it grouping.
I believe there is an identifiable grouping going by various names. MAGA, America First, Tea Party, whatever. I believe both Trump and DeSantis speak best to this grouping.
I believe there are other groupings which don’t like what AF or MAGA are about. These people probably don’t favor either Trump or DeSantis much.
Then there is another group which just doesn’t like Trump. Never has, never will. Their primary drive is getting rid of Trump. Whatever weapon is at hand will do.DeSantis might do that? Cool then DeSantis it is.
The OP was asking if the establishment was propping him up in order to serve as a Trump killer. If thats who his donors are, then its a possibility although not a certainty.