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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
Well, yes. But I prefer a different analogy. He’s the antibiotic that was stopped before the full cure.
What does saying things that loses votes mean? Nowadays saying truth loses votes. DeSantis will be no more immune than Trump simply by avoiding Twitter yet still declaring similar truths. One can make a case that he’d be less immune and that he’d make less populist arguments than Trump.
Yes, I wondered this too. Trump, after 4 years of talking this way, got at least a good 10 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016.
He declared months ago that he wasn’t going to say anything about the Presidency until the FL legislature session finished. It finished last week. Gosh, we wouldn’t want him to have broken his promise, would we?
If my assumption is correct that MAGA/AF voters would vote for either Trump or DeSantis, I still don’t know how we get from here to there without mortally wounding the MAGA/AF interests during a primary where the primary distinctions are going to be personal, not policy, and where the personal is based largely on the caricature bought by the laundry list of all the things that have been done 2014-present. DeSantis isn’t even declared yet and it’s already getting personal.
If my assumption that MAGA/AF voters would vote for either Trump or DeSantis is incorrect, then it’s time to start taking more seriously the calls for third party or other ideas.
I don’t know how we do it either, Ed, but then too often, politics become personal. Positions, truth, accomplishments pale in comparison.
Skip over the stupid headline and tell me if this is the usual circular firing squad.
AWFUL. Following CNN-Trump Debate Team DeSantis Announces Support for Political Prosecutions by FBI-DOJ, Lawfare Against Trump, Jailing Innocent Trump Supporters for 2 Years without a Trial | The Gateway Pundit | by Jim Hoft
That’s worse than just sharp elbows to me. Go ahead and disagree over social security, Disney, Covid handling, spending, whatever. Giving in to or condoning the worst abuses of the past 10 years is not the way to my heart or mind.
I don’t get it. There are two parts to the post. The first goes after things Trump supposedly said he supported. Where are those statements from Trump? The other part is a list of things that Trump supposedly spoke about that had nothing to do with Presidency; not nice, but hardly personal attacks. They let the words speak for themselves (stupid stuff). I don’t like any of it, but I’m trying to decide if this matters? (and I’m not a Trump supporter)
You make several very good points. (Hence my lil “like” on the comment.)
But I am racking my brain trying to remember when the last time that Big Money or Corporate America gave a rat’s ass about the real America of the middle class.
You would probably have to go back to Henry Ford’s decision early in the 20th century to pay his workers a decent enough wage that they could go out and buy one of his Model A’s.
I really can’t think of another time when such a thing occurred. (If I am wrong, I’d love to be corrected. Optimism always helps my cynically dark soul.)
Nor do I. I never heard of “Never Back Down” or David Giglio. I don’t know if either speaks for Trump or DeSantis. Just trying to throw sand in the gears? No idea.
Of course, if the Dems cheated big in 2020, we would have to suspect that they cheated on a more mediocre level in 2016. So my thesis is we will never really know how many votes Trump got in 2016.
Why was Hillary so over the top pissed she lost? Was she pissed at herself for not projecting her being a more likeable candidate?
Or was she totally pissed that her Dem Party voting machinery needed to have only cheated a teenie tiny bit harder in PA, Michigan and a few other places, which would have then given her the electoral college.
Losing the electoral college by something like 45,000 votes overall had to have really bunched her panties.
Why do we want people to announce early? As long as someone announces before the Iowa State Fair, they are good to go. The campaign season is too long and a long season favors grifters (people that make a living from campaigning).
Position the governor of a major state as anti-woke, anti-mass immigration, anti-globalist … who is actually a stealth moderate corporatist … to fool the rubes into supporting the GOP-e against Trump
There is one flaw with that plan.
The GOPe is far too stupid to come up with anything that clever.
Speaking of Tim Scott, when was the last time we had a “confirmed bachelor” as a presidential nominee?
America has only elected two men who had never been married: James Buchanan, who was a bachelor for life, and Grover Cleveland, who got married while he was in office.
I don’t think we even know that there is that level of coordination by the GOPe anyway. They could pretty much just be operating independently serving their own specific interests.
I have heard DeSantis use the terms, particularly in his ads.
The Iowa Sate Fair? I didn’t know that was the authorized beginning of the Presidential election. It sure doesn’t appear too early for me to get texts from the DeSantis Pac asking for money.
Too stupid…maybe, but big enough liars…heck yes!
Never Back Down is a pro-DeSantis PAC.
That is not a lie. It is a broken promise. And as I pointed out, Trump broke the promise just as well, even worse because he actually signed a piece of paper to support the other candidates, after first refusing to do so in the public debate. So why does Trump get a pass for refusing to support the eventual nominee and then breaking his written promise to do so, but the others don’t?
Trump was the nominee. How did he break a written promise to support the nominee? Doesn’t matter, Trump bad. And around and around we go.
A broken promise is a lie. You say you’ll do something and then don’t. LIE.
The signing happened a month later and I don’t know the details, so I have no comment. He did say something about supporting the nominee if the process was fair, but I don’t remember more. However, Trump was the eventual nominee in 2016. Are you claiming he didn’t support himself. He had no option to support one of the others.
Why have this discussion? The word “support” is not defined in any way so nobody can judge if somebody actually supported someone or not.
Are you suggesting that Nikki Haley and Larry Elder are Establishment Republicans?
You already have a person in this thread saying that he will stay home if the republican nominee is someone other than Trump or DeSantis.
However, the anti-Trump vote got 15 million more. Besides, we had nearly 10 million more people eligible to vote in 2020 than we had in 2016.
Only Trump is allowed to break promises.
It only becomes personal when candidates make personal attacks. If a candidate doesn’t lower himself to that level, he doesn’t get mired in the mud.
I think it happens all the time, you just don’t hear about it. It is not news. One of the CEO’s that I painted a portrait of was the head of Lincoln Electric Company. They are famous for having instituted a profit sharing plan with their employees 90 years ago. They refuse to lay employees off in hard times and as of 2013 they had a streak of 65 years without a single layoff. It could be 75 years by now. One of my sister’s girlfriends worked there. At one time she considered quitting but then she got a huge Christmas bonus. She changed her mind.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/the-miracle-of-profit-sharing-year-65-and-still-no-layoffs