Ron DeSantis’s Extremism is Setting Up His Presidential Run

Ifyou want a sneak preview of how the GOP will use the culture wars to establish minority rule for their radicalized and weaponized base then you need to pay attention to Florida under the leadership of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The Ivy-league educated elitist governor of the sunshine state has already amassed a war chest of more than $100 million dollars for his next election thanks to mega right-wing donors and grassroots MAGA acolytes who see him as the future leader of the GOP and their march for white Christian nationalism. If Donald Trump is the current mob boss and head of the Republican empire, then DeSantis is an ambitious capo, impatiently waiting in the wings for the boss to get his wings clipped or to permanently sleep with the fishes.

DeSantis, like Governor Abbott of Texas, has realized that in order to win the fealty of Republican voters he doesn’t need to address or provide any tangible solutions for the numerous pressing problems facing his constituents. Through his recent actions, DeSantis has realized that in order to become the next King of MAGA, he just has to feed the base red meat for their unending culture war and follow the script handed down by Fox News and its Valkyries of white nationalism, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham.

The easiest way to achieve this perverse goal is to attack women, people of color and marginalized communities while pretending to protect the safety and security of children. Manufactured villains like CRT and QAnon conspiracy theories go a long way to further terrify parents that liberals are trying to “groom” their kids into becoming self-hating, gay Marxists who hate America.

Who needs facts when you have triggering emotional porn? Not Republican leaders like DeSantis.

Instead, Republicans cosplay as warriors for freedoms and liberties, which is why DeSantis tweeted in praise of an unqualified, right-wing federal judge in Florida who just overturned the federal mask mandate on airplanes. However, that freedom is only limited to choices that Republicans like, which explains why DeSantis also accosted kids who chose to wear masks at a recent public media event. He has used his power to attack both schools and private companies that tried to implement mask mandates during a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic that has killed an obscene amount of people in his state. For Republicans it’s freedom of choice as long as your choice aligns with theirs.

However, all is fair when it comes to protecting the kids, which is why Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Lapado, who has consistently opposed most safety measures, said he would not recommend that children be vaccinated against the coronavirus. What better way to save kids from a virus than reject both vaccines and masks?

But, don’t worry, Republicans want to remind you they are in fact very much “pro life,” which is why they are systematically chipping away at Roe v. Wade to deprive women the right to control their own bodies. Last week, Florida became the latest red state to attack women’s rights after DeSantis signed a new law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The cruelty is punctuated by the bill’s zero exceptions for rape and incest. Republicans care about the baby as long as it’s in the womb, but as soon as it’s out, then it has to pull itself from its baby bootstraps and stop depending on welfare programs, such as the child tax credit that Republicans opposed which briefly lifted millions of children out of poverty.

After saving the baby, Republicans must protect these kids from indoctrination in schools. Just yesterday Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez appeared on Fox and Friends to proudly announce that her state rejected 54 math textbooks because they allegedly included critical race theory. She offered no examples or specifics. DeSantis has introduced the ridiculously named “Stop WOKE Act” that will greatly restrict how schools and private companies discuss diversity, equity and inclusion. Not to be outdone, Gov. DeSantis has essentially banned holding classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity with the intentionally vague and overbroad “Don’t Say Gay” bill. In Florida, books talking about gay people and diversity are apparently more dangerous to children than Covid. “Gay” is now Voldemort, and if you simply don’t say it, you can pretend it doesn’t exist — just like climate change and mass shootings.

Even if you disagree with their cultural views, Republicans will tell you that they are still the pro-business party that champions the free market, that is of course until companies like Disney run afoul of their hateful laws. After Disney pushed back against the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, DeSantis responded by threatening to rescind the corporate behemoth’s 5-decade-old provision that allows it to operate as an independent government around its theme park in Orlando. If the GOP is willing to steamroll Mickey Mouse for their culture war, then what hope do Black people have?

When DeSantis has right-wing judges willing to rubber-stamp his death march, then there’s no need to follow Florida’s voter-approved constitutional amendment that gives minority communities a chance to “elect representatives of their choice.” Last week, DeSantis proposed redrawing the state’s congressional boundaries that will dilute Black votes and help Republicans pick up four seats in the House in the upcoming election. Cheating is perfectly fine for the party of “family values” that believes and promotes the Big Lie.

Ultimately, it’s about winning at all costs, owning the libs, and being aggressively racist at the same time. Republicans in Florida at the last second recently rejected a bill to name a Tallahassee federal courthouse after Justice Joseph W. Hatchett, the first Black man to serve on the Florida Supreme Court. After all, why be subtle?

If you weren’t paying attention, here’s a recap of the GOP under the leadership of Governor DeSantis: they are against a woman’s right to choose, against gay people, against vaccines and masks, against books, against Black people voting, against gun control, against combatting climate change, and they went out of their way to reject a bill to honor the first Black man to serve in its state’s Supreme Court.

This is the blueprint for the modern GOP, which has transformed into a radicalized and weaponized force seeking to achieve power for conservative white Christians by any means necessary. It would be foolish to dismiss Gov. DeSantis as an extremist outlier. Judging from his track record so far, and MAGA’s full-throated embrace of his regressive policies, he’s concocting a successful political recipe that can easily take him and the GOP’s hateful vision back to the White House.

The only person standing in his way is his mob boss, Donald Trump, who is alive and well and currently eating his hamburgers and cannolis in Mar-a-Lago surrounded by adoring fishes and a few Ivy-league educated sharks.