You got to hand it to Joe Biden. With only 28% of Americans wanting him to run again, including 48% of Democrats, he dared reporters to name a better first-year president. I’m sure Fox News would name Ronald Reagan, and CNN would name Bill Clinton. By 2024, don’t be surprised if voters say “Ron DeSantis” as they leave the polls.
By most measures, Florida is America’s vanguard of good conservative government, in no small part due to Governor DeSantis. CNN and the New York Times may beg to differ, but he’s managed Florida better than Biden’s managed America. Of the large states (CA, FL, NY, TX), USNews ranks Florida #1 in economic expansion, education and fiscal responsibility – without taxing personal incomes. And, unlike Biden, he’s rising in the polls (despite a hostile press).
DeSantis is only 43 years old, but has already served three terms in the US House of Representatives and three years as Florida’s governor. He graduated from Yale with a BA magna cum laude in History and from Harvard Law School with a JD cum laude. He was honorably discharged from the US Navy with a Bronze Star, Iraqi Campaign Medal, and Navy Commendation Medal. In a battle of wits or character, DeSantis is a heavy favorite – despite how the press spins it.
DeSantis has overcome the media’s character double standard, beginning in 2018 in his gubernatorial race against Tallahassee’s black mayor, Democrat Andrew Gillum. He didn’t flinch when liberal reporters claimed the phrase “don’t monkey this up” was a racist dog whistle and did Florida a favor by winning because, two years later, Gillum was linked to a drug overdose and retired from politics (source: Politico). As much judging of character as it does, the press sure likes bad character to win.
Perhaps nowhere has Mr. DeSantis taken more criticism from liberal media than in his opposition to Critical Race Theory lesson plans and federal COVID mandates. I recall these guardians of truth and justice fawning over governors McAuliffe and Cuomo, until one Democrat’s anti-racist campaign failed against a Black-Latino-White GOP ticket and the other was forced to resign after being outed as a sexual predator. Thus, DeSantis rightly treats today’s media as Democrat allies.
DeSantis Put Employees, Parents and Students Before Bureaucrats
Last month, DeSantis banned the atomic bomb of identity politics, critical race theory; announcing the Stop WOKE (Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees) Act. The law will stop public schools and colleges from hiring CRT-inspired consultants, protect employees from forced CRT-training, and provide employees, parents and students a private right to action (lawsuit). He’s probably got the politics right, because no “theory” should be forced on citizens without their consent.
Critical Race Theory hatched at Harvard Law in 1981, where DeSantis studied and the theory of the case is understood by all. To explain, the defense “theory of the case” for Ted Kennedy was he tried unsuccessfully to save his passenger, and the Mueller “theory off the case” against Donald Trump was Putin totally feared Clinton. Facts and theories are not the same. Faunal succession is a fact: evolution is a theory. The fact is chattel slavery: the theory is white fragility.
After Democrats and media attacked him as a “white supremacy” advocate, DeSantis hit back: “Nobody wants this crap, OK? This is being driven by bureaucratic elites in universities and corporate America, and they’re trying to shove it down the throats of the American people. You’re not doing that in the state of Florida.” And they are not doing “that” in Virginia because GOOD PARENTS voted against “this crap” in November. In short, DeSantis has a winning “drain the swamp” issue.
DeSantis Saw a Bigger Picture in the Pandemic
When COVID hit Florida in March 2020, DeSantis reacted like every other state – everybody out of the pool! But he kept an eye on his state’s economy, and saw a “state of emergency” inflicting pain and suffering as widespread as the pandemic. It was BS to call DeSantis “blind” or “indifferent” after he chased spring-breakers out and stopped New York cars at the Georgia border. It is now BS to fault his “vision” that invited a pivot one month later, after he’d seen April’s reality.
Turns out DeSantis read the “open up” case by Dr. Joseph Ladapo in USA Today right as the consequences of Florida’s shut-down hit him between the eyes, starting with less tourist revenue and sales taxes, and working moms stuck at home due to school closures. When he re-opened Florida in June, a trickle of Americans fleeing to “safe” second homes became a torrent. He opened schools that fall and parents went back to work. A year later, DeSantis named Ladapo Florida’s surgeon general.
Dr. Ladapo was a professor at UCLA’s medical school and clinician on California’s Covid frontline. He’s no anti-vaxxer, but he is a Nigerian immigrant who values freedom. If he has an open-up bias, so what? Florida hospitalizations and deaths from COVID are no worse than California or New York – and it’s not just conservatives saying this. Get a load of liberal pundit Bill Maher two days ago:
“So, New York and New Jersey did worse than Florida, home to all the old people in America. I’ve been there since this started. The atmosphere is just different. I’m not promoting Florida – just saying AOC went to Florida and had a good time without a mask on. They stayed open and went on with life and didn’t do a helluva lot worse and maybe did better.”
America Will Hunger for a Chief Executive in 2024
My pet peeve are chief executives trapped in linear thinking; decisions are made, institutionalized, and defended against new information. It’s a sure way to break a company, hurt a citizen, or lose a war. A close second are reporters blind to the value of “outside the box” thinking (which invented their iPhone, cured polio, and stopped real fascists). The great “threat to our democracy” are one-way leaders and party-line press – not Ron “I Did It My Way” DeSantis.
Biden was the “nice guy” elected to walk America back from the excesses of Trump, but he’s all the proof voters need to look beyond a personality or single issue in 2024. The press dissed conservatives Churchill and Reagan, but one stopped the spread of fascism and the other the spread of communism. The GOP can do much worse than nominate Florida’s pugnacious governor for US president – and here’s why.
Florida became crimson under DeSantis. GOP voter registrations topped Democrats by 6,035 in November 2021, when the Democratic Governors Association warned Florida Democrats not to expect “significant financial help” to beat DeSantis in 2022 (source: Politico). Because, with 331,000 more registered Democrats in 2016, Trump won Florida by 113,000 votes – and when the gap shrank to 97,000 in 2020, Trump won by 372,000. I live here: MAGA signs are everywhere.
If the grass is greener in the other guy’s yard, Republicans outside Florida see Ron DeSantis lying in a bed of clover: a Latino vote that leans GOP, large bloc of retired voters who fear cancel culture, and 221,000 population jump in 2021 because of the Sunshine State’s low taxes and economic expansion. In other words, DeSantis has a vision advantage that gives him a message advantage. Put another way, don’t go to sleep on Florida’s governor.