A Higher Class Donald Trump
“There's talk on the street it sounds so familiar
Great expectations everybody's watching you
People you meet they all seem to know you
Even your old friends treat you like you're something new…” The Eagles, “New Kid in Town”
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the new face of the Republican Party. The next big thing. The “It Guy.” The “man with the plan.” The “fashionista extraordinaire.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
That’s right. DeSantis has been anointed by the press as the successor to Donald Trump and the next President of the United States. Now that the highly touted “Red Wave” turned out to be a “Crimson Dribble,” the media is setting its sights on Florida, which gerrymandered itself into becoming a fully Red State with not a single Democrat in power anywhere in sight.
DeSantis is no Donald Trump they tell us. And he dresses better.
Kristen Welker of NBC News asked President Joe Biden at his recent press conference, “Who do you think will be a tougher competitor in 2024 Ron DeSantis or Donald Trump?”
Biden, rightly, just laughed at her.
Never mind the fact that none of these men have announced their intention to run in 2024 yet, the media is already pitting them against each other.
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.
The New York Times declares that with DeSantis’s decisive win in the election, his campaign for President is now “supercharged” and the presidency is his for the taking.
“The [Republican] party’s smashing success in Florida — among its brightest spots in a national midterm election with decidedly mixed outcomes — was a result of its relentless voter registration and turnout efforts there, Mr. DeSantis’s commanding campaign and Democrats’ utter collapse in a state in which they failed to effectively compete at all, leaving it to turn solidly red,” The Times tells us.
Once again the paper fails to see the forest for the trees. The party’s success is due to the state being heavily gerrymandered in favor of Republicans. That and his opponent, Former Governor Charlie Crist, is a terrible campaigner and a recovering Republican. Crist switched parties to run as a Democrat in the state. There’s nothing Republicans hate more than a Republican that leaves the party to run as a Democrat.
The Times article was written by the paper’s Miami Bureau Chief Patricia Mazzei, who lets us know that everyone considers DeSantis the “hero of the Republican Party.”
She apparently has been talking to delusional people. Like Republican Strategist Brett Doster, who noted: “What Ron DeSantis is thinking right now is, ‘OK, I’ve got to get back to governing immediately’.”
Seriously Brett? That’s what DeSantis is thinking? Not “How can I own the libs today?” or “How can I make life a living hell for minorities today?” Or, maybe, “From which state can I steal immigrants and ship them off to a Blue State in the dead of night?”
He’d have us believe DeSantis is worried about governing Florida and making life better for its residents. Tell that to the nearly 83,000 people who died from Covid-19 under his watch Brett.
Over at The Guardian, columnist Cas Mudde takes a more sober approach to DeSantis. The mainstream media could take a lesson from him.
“There is no doubt that DeSantis had a great night. He won his own race convincingly, while delivering three new House seats to the Republican party, courtesy of his blatantly partisan gerrymandering. At the same time, DeSantis did less than 2% better than Marco Rubio in the Senate race, putting some doubt on his particular appeal,” Mudde writes.
Mudde also points out, correctly, that DeSantis has been working since he was elected as Florida’s governor to suppress the vote in favor of Republicans.
“Moreover, as too few media noted, Florida Republicans undoubtedly profited from DeSantis’s years-long campaign of voter intimidation, which entailed unleashing a newly created ‘vote-fraud squad’ on mostly innocent voters; against the broader national trend, Democratic turnout seemed significantly down in Florida.”
Maybe DeSantis should title his memoir “How to Win Votes and Intimidate People.”
If you believe The Times, DeSantis is the Republican Party heir apparent because he’s a higher class Trump. The Republicans can look past how evil DeSantis is and justify his cruelty because he’s not as crude a Trump. DeSantis may be evil, but he attracts a smartly dressed crowd (his white go go boots in a hurricane stunt not withstanding).
It’s all about the style, according to The Times.
“In his victory speech at the Tampa Convention Center, which was packed with stylishly dressed Republicans who looked more like the political establishment than the MAGA warriors at rallies, Mr. DeSantis promised to pursue more of the muscular culture war policies that have proven popular among Republican and some independent voters,” Mazzei is sure to tell us.
This is the same New York Times that fell all over themselves to tell us about Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s “eclectic” fashion style.
With The New York Times, its literally style over substance.
There are even some Democrats in Florida who have drunk the Kool-Aid.
The Times introduces us to Jared E. Moskowitz, a Democrat who served as Mr. DeSantis’s emergency management chief until last year.
“Ron DeSantis started to really become the figure he is today because of Covid,” Moskowitz notes. “Democrats have sold a narrative that he did a terrible job. Well, you don’t win by 19 points because you did a terrible job.”
Apparently killing 83,000 of your citizens is not a negative in the Republican Party.
Mr. Moskowitz won an open seat in Congress in this past election, according to The Times. He ran as a Democrat. Which is OK in Florida because he won’t have any power to do anything anyway with the state being lousy with Republicans and all.
“People are buying what he is selling,” Mr. Moskowitz noted about Gov. DeSantis.
Hey Jared, I think you mean people are buying what he’s shoveling.
Particularly the press.