Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Politics, Religion, Science, Culture and Humanities => Politics & Religion => Topic started by: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2021, 07:19:25 AM

Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2021, 07:19:25 AM
Gov. DeSantis had a whole hour on Mark Levine last night.  Added quite a bit to the already strong impression I had of him.

Apparently he came in second to Trump in the CPAC straw poll.

So, starting this thread on him.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on March 01, 2021, 08:54:53 AM
and why is Fried , another member of the temple of the DNC

who is somehow head of department of Agriculture
doing making a stink about corona vaccines?

she sends it up to rabid racist partisan Clyburn
who is some sore of vaccine "czar"

and then to all the DNC media outlets to bash DeSantis the day after CPAC

DNC - jornolister
tricks
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis will be the nominee
Post by: DougMacG on March 08, 2021, 06:42:11 AM
I like Kristi Noem but the Governor of a big swing state has faced greater testing than a small state Governor.

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/541589-it-will-be-vice-or-president-harris-against-gov-desantis-in-2024-bet-on
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 14, 2021, 06:25:35 AM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/all-red-states-must-join-gov-desantis-to-restrain-big-tech_3732292.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&email=craftydog@earthlink.net&utm_campaign=mb-2021-03-14
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis: Don't trust the elites
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 19, 2021, 02:29:32 PM
Ron DeSantis on the Pandemic Year: Don’t Trust the Elites
Influential people in public health, government and the media failed to rise to the moment

Spring-break crowds on the beach in Ft. Lauderdale last Sunday.
PHOTO: MEDIAPUNCH/ASSOCIATED PRESS
By Ron DeSantis
March 18, 2021 2:55 pm ET


The Covid-19 pandemic represented a test of elites in the U.S., from public-health experts to the corporate media. The results have been disappointing. Policy makers who bucked the elites and challenged the narrative have been proven right to do so.

To begin with, highly publicized epidemiological models were as consequential as they were wrong. The model produced by Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London—which forecast millions of Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. without mitigation efforts—sparked panic among public-health elites and served as the pretext for lockdowns throughout the U.S. and Great Britain. The lockdowns failed to stop the virus but did a great deal of societal damage along the way—damage that a more targeted approach, seeking to reduce total harms, would have been able to avoid (and did, in places like Sweden and Florida).

Similarly, models predicting massive shortages of hospital beds helped to precipitate the disastrous policy—enacted by states like New York, New Jersey and Michigan—to send contagious, Covid-positive hospital patients back to nursing homes. States like Florida that rejected the models and adopted policies to protect nursing-home residents had comparatively lower nursing-home mortality rates as a result.

The reliance on faulty models was matched by poor public messaging. Elites sent conflicting messages about the efficacy of cloth masks, the uniformity of risk across age brackets, the danger of outdoor transmission and the practical benefit of taking a Covid vaccine.

Perhaps most damaging to public trust was the public-health campaign urging “15 Days to Slow the Spread.” This short-term mitigation, we were told, was necessary to buy time to prepare hospitals for any patient surges. But that reasonable aim was soon transformed into a lockdown-until-eradication approach that left no end in sight for most Americans. Going from “save the hospitals” to “zero Covid” represents one of the greatest instances in history of moving the goal post.

Lockdowns proved a huge boon to America’s corporate media, which primed its captive audience with fear and partisanship. Everything the corporate press did regarding Covid coverage was inseparable from its yearslong obsession with attacking Donald Trump. Weaponizing Covid in an election year superseded any obligation to present the facts with needed context and perspective.

Florida cut against the grain of elite opinion and bucked the media narrative.
While it was abundantly clear by May that schools represented low-risk environments for the spread of Covid and that the consequences of prolonged school closures were potentially catastrophic, the corporate media did its best to obscure the data and stoke fear and panic among parents and teachers. After all, the media had to take the position opposite Donald Trump.


Had the media presented the data on schools in a rational fashion with proper context and perspective, it is quite possible that the extended school closures we’ve seen in lockdown states would have been untenable and millions of students would be in markedly better shape academically and socially.

For months we were told to “trust the experts,” but far too often over the past year those who were most influential in our society—in public health, government and media—proved incapable of rising to the moment.

Florida cut against the grain of elite opinion and bucked the media narrative. The result is open schools, comparatively low unemployment and per capita Covid mortality below the national average. We cannot simply undo the harm caused by flawed policies advocated by our elites, but we can resolve that we never let this happen to our country again.

—Mr. DeSantis is the governor of Florida.
Title: DeSantis against vaccine passports
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 30, 2021, 03:33:30 AM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/gov-desantis-to-take-executive-emergency-action-against-vaccine-passports_3753968.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-03-30&mktids=d985aaf6c3ccbedb451ac7adffb4b918
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 31, 2021, 07:04:39 AM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/desantis-points-the-way-to-a-new-federalism_3755208.html?utm_source=morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-03-31&mktids=fe49f386b7eb9e9cb345af51b7d738f6
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 05, 2021, 08:57:57 AM
DeSantis was quite impressive on Mark Levin this week.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on April 05, 2021, 09:50:51 AM
DeSantis was quite impressive on Mark Levin this week.

Good.  He might be our last best hope.
--------------------
From media thread, DeSantis on 60 Minutes
https://www.dailywire.com/news/cbs-deceptively-edits-reporters-interaction-with-fl-governor-ron-desantis-heres-what-he-really-said
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on April 05, 2021, 10:18:06 AM
he must be doing something right

the best indicator is the LEFT is full on attacking him all over the media cabal

notice the silence on CUOMO

remember the leader of NY State Dem controlled legislator stated if there is one more allegation
against Mario's boy they will move to impeach him

up to to 7 and counting I think -

of course we hear silence
"let the investigation "

continue
while Cuomo has his mob lawyers out in fall force behind the scenes playing every tactic they can get away with  - just next to the lines without touching

of course if they do touch - oops sorry
no malicious intent etc blah blah blah


Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: G M on April 05, 2021, 06:30:29 PM
For winning a national election? Really?


DeSantis was quite impressive on Mark Levin this week.

Good.  He might be our last best hope.
--------------------
From media thread, DeSantis on 60 Minutes
https://www.dailywire.com/news/cbs-deceptively-edits-reporters-interaction-with-fl-governor-ron-desantis-heres-what-he-really-said
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 06, 2021, 06:30:11 AM
I'm seeing him quite a bit on FOX.  Consistently excellent.  To my ear, he makes the right points in ways that will appeal to moderates; he has proven executive chops; proven ability to back the prog media up--  a lot to like hear.

Wonder what kind of cases he handled when he was a JAG?
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 08, 2021, 05:27:39 AM
One of the things we admired most about Trump was his balls in taking on the Pravdas.

Looks like DeSantis has the same balls and one fukk of a lot more finesse.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/apr/7/ron-desantis-florida-governor-turns-tables-60-minu/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=MgW5wJhTSPHKhsZoCOvn8cbEu3Q%2FZIMQeGRkjjKUgHzuTxITtUMqCZrtzHbLwvDd&bt_user_id&bt_ts=1617858921948
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on April 08, 2021, 06:31:49 AM
I've noticed other Republicans now coming out with fighting words
 and actions

like McConnell ,  Governor Kemp etc , even never Trumpist National Reviewers seem to be waking up.

Finally they see the writing on the wall

There is no  compromise

it is a fight to the finish

only the DC sewer rats like Krystal STeele etc pretend Republicans
  etc.
 
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on April 08, 2021, 12:23:14 PM
Crafty wrote: 
"One of the things we admired most about Trump was his balls in taking on the Pravdas.
Looks like DeSantis has the same balls and one fukk of a lot more finesse."



Thumbs up on that.

For decades we pondered who will be the next Reagan?  Never found one.  No one asks who will be the next Trump, but the next leader must have two of his traits, ability to advance the agenda and be someone who can stand up to all these forces stacked against us.  60 Minutes is typical of the forces against us, perceived as professional mainstream, but horribly biased and ruthlessly malicious. 

No one can stand up to the journalistic standards of 60 Minutes...  Whooops, what happened to Super-anchorman Dan Rather and CBS News producer Mary Mapes?  Fired for getting caught. 

"60 Minutes is Toast"  - Powerline, Sept 9, 2004.
"Fake but Accurate."   - NY times, Sept 9, 2004
[More on the Media thread.]
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 03, 2021, 07:17:46 PM
https://www.wctv.tv/2021/05/03/gov-desantis-invalidates-all-local-covid-19-emergency-orders/
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 07, 2021, 09:01:06 AM
I'm liking him even more:

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/07/florida-passes-law-banning-private-funding-of-election-procedures/
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis signs bill to protect against Big Tech censorship
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 25, 2021, 04:47:30 AM
https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/24/gov-desantis-signs-bill-to-protect-floridians-from-big-tech-censorship/
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis shows chops against pravda cheap shot
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 26, 2021, 12:34:13 PM
https://notthebee.com/article/watch-reporter-tries-to-dunk-on-desantis-he-wrecks-her-and-gets-a-standing-ovation
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis takes on the Chi Coms
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 08, 2021, 06:00:10 AM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/enough-is-enough-desantis-signs-bills-to-confront-nefarious-chinese-influence_3848384.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-06-08&mktids=29447cd0d129990641a23091bca96e03&est=YPqzi4bsklLi32LGXgusVKvMts%2Fzw2DwFVds9azI03sPZbG3vUjcHdnyXdr2TbUikeL1
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis: FL to send officers to TX and AZ
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 17, 2021, 07:11:51 AM
https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/17/florida-to-send-officers-to-texas-and-arizona-to-assist-with-border-crisis/

Title: President DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on June 17, 2021, 07:33:42 AM
I just wanted to see how it sounds.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/17/florida-to-send-officers-to-texas-and-arizona-to-assist-with-border-crisis/
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis sends help to border states
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 19, 2021, 02:46:01 PM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/floridas-cavalry-helps-secure-the-border-youve-got-a-storm-and-were-coming-to-help-you_3864553.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-06-19&mktids=039af16e1b036edcdfda3bac9f3b78d2&est=GLPYnMx6SHbKyvsWdk7qKuLwApFAZ7ir31xMXMXIJXfMkUduedYeeFvwdHa4UG8T82YC
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on June 20, 2021, 06:22:05 AM
"President DeSantis"

"I just wanted to see how it sounds"

Well he could pull the Italian vote away from Cuomo.

 :-D

Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 20, 2021, 08:09:14 AM
Didn't Mayor DiBlasio take down the Columbus Circle statute of Columbus down?
Title: I think it is still there - for now
Post by: ccp on June 20, 2021, 08:57:43 AM
no mention of it under wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Monument_(New_York_City)

speaking of statues :

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/06/19/juneteenth-george-floyd-harriet-tubman-statues-unveiled-us-cities/7754673002/

 :roll:
Title: straw poll : DeSantis tops Trump
Post by: ccp on June 21, 2021, 04:58:35 AM
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/ron-desantis-straw-poll-conservative-summit/2021/06/20/id/1025748/
Title: Re: straw poll : DeSantis tops Trump
Post by: DougMacG on June 21, 2021, 10:32:49 AM
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/ron-desantis-straw-poll-conservative-summit/2021/06/20/id/1025748/

I hope that what he has going now is lasting.
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis signs bill requiring students to learn the evils of communism
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 23, 2021, 12:09:34 PM
https://dailycaller.com/2021/06/22/desantis-bill-students-learn-evil-communism/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2360&tpcc%3D=newsletter&pnespid=kvkw8v5RGgeNQ6URGayMs9Cl2l.aEgAMmwtGnsXZ
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 23, 2021, 09:29:54 PM
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/jun/23/how-rockstar-gov-ron-desantis-positioned-himself-t/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=evening&utm_term=evening&utm_content=evening&bt_ee=a%2F%2B%2F0g1yexi1o4CuqPggYnVxSWsWRB2a0evbbdAlj8pm5mdRZY0u4fRQStYUeG6N&bt_ts=1624479917795
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis signs bill requiring students to learn the evils of communism
Post by: G M on June 24, 2021, 11:04:05 AM
https://dailycaller.com/2021/06/22/desantis-bill-students-learn-evil-communism/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2360&tpcc%3D=newsletter&pnespid=kvkw8v5RGgeNQ6URGayMs9Cl2l.aEgAMmwtGnsXZ

http://ace.mu.nu/archives/394429.php

https://twitter.com/RyanGirdusky/status/1407495156056694784?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1407495156056694784%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Face.mu.nu%2Farchives%2F394429.php
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 28, 2021, 07:35:29 AM
“Ronald Dion DeSantis was born on September 14, 1978, in Jacksonville, Florida, the son of Karen (née Rogers) and Ronald DeSantis.[1] He is of Italian descent.[2] His family moved to Orlando, Florida, before relocating to Dunedin, Florida, when he was six years old.[3] In 1991, he was a member of the Little League team from Dunedin National that made it to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.[4][5]

After graduating from Dunedin High School in 1997, DeSantis attended Yale University. He was captain of Yale's varsity baseball team and joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity.[5][6] On the Yale baseball team, DeSantis was an outfielder; as a senior in 2001, he had the team's best batting average at .336.[7][8][9][10]

He graduated from Yale in 2001 with a B.A. magna cum laude in history.[11] He then spent a year as a history teacher at the Darlington School.[12] DeSantis then attended Harvard Law School, graduating in 2005 with a Juris Doctor cum laude.[13][14]

DeSantis received his Reserve Naval officer's commission and assignment to the Judge Advocate General's Corps (JAG) in 2004 at the U.S. Naval Reserve Center in Dallas, Texas, while still a student at Harvard Law School. He completed Naval Justice School in 2005. Later that year, he received orders to the JAG Trial Service Office Command South East at Naval Station Mayport, Florida, as a prosecutor. In 2006, he was promoted from lieutenant, junior grade to lieutenant. He worked for the commander of Joint Task Force-Guantanamo (JTF-GTMO), working directly with detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Joint Detention Facility.[15][16][17]

In 2007, DeSantis reported to the Naval Special Warfare Command Group in Coronado, California, where he was assigned to SEAL Team One and deployed to Iraq[18] with the troop surge as the Legal Advisor to the SEAL Commander, Special Operations Task Force-West in Fallujah.[15][16][17]
DeSantis returned to the U.S. in April 2008, at which time he was reassigned to the Naval Region Southeast Legal Service. The U.S. Department of Justice appointed him to serve as an Assistant U.S. Attorney[18] at the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Middle District of Florida. DeSantis was assigned as a trial defense counsel until his honorable discharge from active duty in February 2010. He concurrently accepted a reserve commission as a lieutenant in the Judge Advocate General's Corps of the US Navy Reserve.[19] He was awarded the Bronze Star Medal, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Iraq Campaign Medal.[15][16][17” #DeSantis #leadership
Title: Well played
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 04, 2021, 09:01:29 AM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/florida-gov-desantis-to-miss-trump-rally-in-sarasota_3885729.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-07-04&mktids=0ecc5213d1bdf8f0029d75afd5d003e8&est=Hc6dWg9aUMqE7LuHx5WRUzj8rYCWn3y%2F%2FuegsAUitNtcc7%2FoLhJcbu6u7E6SJqMhDh7M
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 18, 2021, 08:30:46 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bp3yQGAgJI8&t=20s
Title: Crist creeping up on DeSantis uggh!!!!
Post by: ccp on August 04, 2021, 07:43:55 AM
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/566218-florida-poll-desantis-falls-behind-crist-as-covid-19-cases-surge

amazing how creeps like crist / Beto / kasich etc and others will just not leave us alone

Title: Re: Crist creeping up on DeSantis uggh!!!!
Post by: DougMacG on August 04, 2021, 09:14:02 AM
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/566218-florida-poll-desantis-falls-behind-crist-as-covid-19-cases-surge

amazing how creeps like crist / Beto / kasich etc and others will just not leave us alone

And political polling, one year out, is so accurate.

Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis hits Magoo over the head with a 2x4
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2021, 02:41:38 PM
https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/04/desantis-scorches-biden-until-you-do-your-job-and-secure-the-border-i-dont-want-to-hear-a-blip-about-covid/
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis vs. Magoo
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 06, 2021, 05:15:21 PM
https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/06/desantis-hits-back-at-biden-what-else-has-he-forgotten/
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis calls for end of resettling illegals in Florida
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 30, 2021, 04:40:06 PM
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/desantis-biden-administration-resettling-illegal-immigrants-florida?fbclid=IwAR2AqAV1S3heQQXLwpIv-9Ad_O-7K9suOUopiAJMhq-OEePJOz4S-ldNH6A
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis calls for end of resettling illegals in Florida
Post by: G M on August 31, 2021, 08:46:36 AM
Governors aren't allowed to protect their citizens, that's racist!

Besides, how are we going to create more Covid cases if he is allowed to do that?


https://www.foxnews.com/politics/desantis-biden-administration-resettling-illegal-immigrants-florida?fbclid=IwAR2AqAV1S3heQQXLwpIv-9Ad_O-7K9suOUopiAJMhq-OEePJOz4S-ldNH6A
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 25, 2021, 01:41:48 AM
https://townhall.com/columnists/humbertofontova/2021/09/25/desantis-awards-floridas-medal-of-freedom-to-che-guevara-captor-felix-rodriguez-n2596454

https://notthebee.com/article/ron-desantis-sticks-it-to-the-feds-gets-life-saving-covid-treatment-for-florida-after-biden-admin-restricted-supply?utm_source=jeeng
Modify message
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis on Australia lockdown
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 28, 2021, 02:46:00 PM
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1117802/desantis-on-australian-police-state
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis FL agencies to enforce immigration laws
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 29, 2021, 12:30:56 PM
https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/29/ron-desantis-issues-order-for-state-agencies-to-enforce-immigration-laws-when-federal-authorities-wont/
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 20, 2021, 04:43:24 PM
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1162413/florida-still-legitimate-state-government-desantis-showing-leadership-again
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 21, 2021, 08:03:22 PM
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1200051/florida-stands-strong
Title: Quality trolling from Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 18, 2021, 12:51:41 PM
https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/18/desantis-trolls-biden-by-holding-signing-ceremony-for-anti-vaccine-mandate-bills-in-brandon-florida/
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis begins to spread his foreign policy wings
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 25, 2021, 01:50:33 PM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_breakingnews/floridas-desantis-warns-against-removing-communist-rebels-from-terrorist-list-a-serious-mistake_4124214.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-11-25-2&mktids=63e9c7bff2058f2ec39b1faaa91cce76&est=Ps4LV%2B%2BDBK71HYxvWt3h1ydg0Yf92SWR1aFdJNhzK5AqL5UkYHFQ2QpODv%2BbmGOgI2kH

Title: Let's see what Gov. Ron DeSantis does with this
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 03, 2021, 02:57:22 AM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/florida-prison-system-in-crisis-state-senator-says_4131481.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-12-03&mktids=84b38f09c23bc8ab1db62497fa4b93f8&est=x8MWsRaCRhrAaDwow0bTrcGK3HhN2PY1jA3i8JgxKJ2L4wP1dCP0QBIfy7Dm%2B7ie4MGR
Title: This is how Gov. Ron DeSantis becomes a president
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2021, 04:16:37 PM
https://michaelyon.locals.com/upost/1410406/desantis-this-is-how-a-governor-becomes-a-president
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 14, 2021, 05:33:16 AM
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/12/10/desantis-issue-emergency-order-barring-state-licenses-florida-facilities-house-illegal-alien-children/?fbclid=IwAR1pGsb4VnXONsgcxzPvv1adIAovzRVnKR_GzM93U0Z1ZPbX__9g5tT5xBk
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis: Let's send illegals to Delaware and Martha's Vineyard
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 15, 2021, 02:12:04 AM
https://rumble.com/vqs10c-gov.-desantis-lets-send-illegals-to-delaware-and-marthas-vineyard.html?mref=22lbp&mc=56yab&fbclid=IwAR0UOaONlvIm4zt8pUVTS8K-lOG4v47urD2AY2RZ5YzzQSJNL72erxHV8kM
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis: Let's send illegals to Delaware and Martha's Vineyard
Post by: DougMacG on December 15, 2021, 06:39:09 AM
Perfect.  And keep sending them until the rich liberals tell us how many is too many, and why.  Overrunning resources, they don't care.  MS13 gangs, they don't care.  In their front and back yard and on their streets and sidewalks and half of them voting Republican, now they care. They might demand the border be closed and put a work requirement on welfare.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 19, 2021, 04:05:57 PM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/desantis-took-on-washington-in-2021_4138361.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_campaign=breaking-2021-12-19-4&utm_medium=email&est=mWMVcKhJZS9SXrSuJ99OCnTC9Y5vZok0JRrCvNmZ723JSds4SgEhK%2BQhJqSGHrfN1MoF
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis moves to pull FL pension funds out of China
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 22, 2021, 03:51:30 AM
DeSantis aims to pull all state pension funds out of China

Investors accused of ties

BY JAMES VARNEY THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and some of his administration’s top officials moved Monday to take control of the state’s huge pension portfolio from private asset managers that invest heavily in communist China.

At a meeting of the State Board of Administration, Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis and Attorney General Ashley Moody joined Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, in a motion to “revoke all proxy voting authority that has been given to outside fund managers.”

The state officials said they need to ensure that fund managers “act solely in the financial interest of the state’s funds.”

The measure also orders a survey of the Florida Retirement System’s investments “to determine how many assets the state has in Chinese companies.”

The state took action after Consumers’ Research, a conservative watchdog group, launched a campaign accusing BlackRock, the world’s largest investment company by assets under management, of close and growing ties with Beijing.

The bond between BlackRock CEO Larry Fink

and China’s communist leaders also has drawn criticism from left-wing billionaire George Soros.

In addition to investing clients’ money in Chinese companies, BlackRock was awarded a contract to sell mutual funds in China. The venture has raked in some $1 billion, according to published reports.

“I would like the SBA to survey the investments that are currently being done,” Mr. DeSantis said in a statement. “When the Legislature comes back, they can make statutory changes to say that the Communist Party of China is not a vehicle that we want to be entangled with. I think that that would be something that would be very, very prudent.”

Figures for BlackRock’s investments in China are difficult to pinpoint, but they represent a small portion of the more than $9.6 trillion in assets that the firm manages.

BlackRock’s China A Opportunities Fund, which has returned more than 32% since its 2018 inception, has more than $47.4 million, according to its most recent report.

“BlackRock has been using their proxy votes to hamper American companies, leading to higher burdens on Americans when we can least afford it,” Consumers’ Research Executive Director Will Hild said. “They have used American investment dollars to cozy up to the Chinese Communist Party in a betrayal of our nation that puts American pension dollars at risk.”

BlackRock declined a request for comment.

Although Mr. Fink is an ardent supporter of green initiatives and BlackRock has tried to force American companies to follow an environmental agenda, China is the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases.

China also has been accused of numerous human rights violations, including forcing Muslimminority Uyghurs into labor camps, stifling Hong Kong’s traditional democracy, and silencing and coercing tennis star Peng Shuai over rape charges against a high government official.

National security officials have raised concerns about investments in Chinese companies that operate with the permission of the communist leadership and, in some cases, work closely with the military.

Published reports show Black-Rock has invested in at least two Chinese companies, iFlytek and Hikvision, that have been added to the U.S. “entity list” as national security and foreign policy threats.

It is not illegal to invest in such companies, although they are forbidden from trading with U.S. corporations.

Florida’s announcement is the latest in a string of state initiatives to signal that companies should focus on business and profits for shareholders rather than a political agenda.

Last month, West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore led a coalition of 15 states that threatened to pull funds if bankers tried to stifle oil and gas companies to appease environmentalists.

Mr. Moore called the warning a “pushback against woke capitalism.”

Some top Florida officials supported Mr. DeSantis’ concern Monday.

“As Americans got our cheap goods, the Chinese government wasn’t playing by the rules when it came to intellectual property or trade,” Mr. Patronis said.

“I take my fiduciary responsibilities seriously, and I think the SBA needs to start asking harder questions when it comes to whether investing any more in China is a good idea. It seems limiting our exposure to China is not only good for our country, but it is the financially prudent thing to do for our state,” he said.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and other federal agencies have cautioned that Chinese investments can be subject to the whims of communist leaders and are outside the influence of U.S. or other regulators.

In September, the SEC warned of risks associated with variable interest entities, which are listed on U.S. stock markets but are essentially shell companies with no control over the Chinese entities.
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis and Constitutional Carry
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 24, 2021, 06:27:01 PM
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/12/24/florida-is-set-to-join-a-coveted-second-amendment-club-n2600987
Title: DeSantis leads in decoupling from China
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 29, 2021, 02:36:43 AM
https://www.westernjournal.com/desantis-makes-big-move-combat-woke-corporate-ideology-chinese-influence/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=westernjournalism&utm_content=2021-12-28&utm_campaign=manualpost&fbclid=IwAR3TDrDLUrtth3HVYjYDqMBRp8fCzOqPD1VdgfENKUm2fh6ImfK1xfinxag
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis leads the way on illegals
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 01, 2022, 05:59:26 PM
12/15/21

https://www.immigrationreform.com/2021/12/15/fl-governor-leads-way-on-enforcement-immigrationreform-com/?fbclid=IwAR1E8UIDMLm5wMniScR3Jinm8fUNN_DTN-SDG7oj1hZoWtGl_MjcHgDz9B0
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 03, 2022, 07:12:08 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzzZ2PUitvg&t=127s
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis on Jan. 6
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 07, 2022, 07:44:39 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpaQOv6h4m0
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis proposes special police agency to monitor elections
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 18, 2022, 10:16:20 AM
Sounds great to me!!!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/01/18/florida-governor-proposes-special-police-agency-monitor-elections/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F35ca445%2F61e6f9229d2fda14d7f965dc%2F61cdf026ae7e8a4ac205b2b3%2F11%2F72%2F61e6f9229d2fda14d7f965dc

Florida governor proposes special police agency to monitor elections
No state has such a force, which Gov. Ron DeSantis wants empowered to arrest voters and others who allegedly violate election laws
DeSantis proposes special police agency to monitor elections
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) during his State of the State address on Jan. 11 said he would establish a special “election integrity unit” to monitor elections. (The Florida Channel)
By Lori Rozsa and Beth Reinhard
Today at 6:30 a.m. EST



WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A plan by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would establish a special police force to oversee state elections — the first of its kind in the nation — and while his fellow Republicans have reacted tepidly, voting rights advocates fear that it will become law and be used to intimidate voters.

The proposed Office of Election Crimes and Security would be part of the Department of State, which answers to the governor. DeSantis is asking the GOP-controlled legislature to allocate nearly $6 million to hire 52 people to “investigate, detect, apprehend, and arrest anyone for an alleged violation” of election laws. They would be stationed at unspecified “field offices throughout the state” and act on tips from “government officials or any other person.”

DeSantis highlighted his plan as legislators opened their annual 60-day session last week.



“To ensure that elections are conducted in accordance with the rule of law, I propose an election integrity unit whose sole focus will be the enforcement of Florida’s election laws,” he said during his State of the State address. “This will facilitate the faithful enforcement of election laws and will provide Floridians with the confidence that their vote will matter.”

Voting rights experts say that no state has such an agency, one dedicated to patrolling elections and empowered to arrest suspected violators. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) announced the formation of a “2021 Texas Election Integrity Unit” in October, but that office is more limited in scope, has fewer than 10 employees and isn’t under the governor’s authority.

“There’s a reason that there’s no office of this size with this kind of unlimited investigative authority in any other state in the country, and it’s because election crimes and voter fraud are just not a problem of that magnitude,” said Jonathan Diaz, a voting rights lawyer at the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center. “My number one concern is that this is going to be used as a tool to harass or intimidate civic-engagement organizations and voters.”


Florida’s congressional Democrats expressed similar worries when they asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate “a disturbing rise in partisan efforts at voter suppression” in the state. They took aim specifically at DeSantis’s call for election police.

“Harmful proposals to create new partisan bodies to oversee our voting process are exactly the kind of action that demand oversight as we work to ensure that our voting process is unquestionably trustworthy,” they wrote Thursday in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.


Florida voters line up outside the Hialeah John F. Kennedy Library on Nov. 3, 2020 to cast their ballots in the general election. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
Unlike many past elections, the 2020 general election in Florida had few problems. The governor touted it as “the gold standard.”

“The way Florida did it, I think, inspired confidence,” DeSantis said on Nov. 4, 2020, hours after the results showed that President Donald Trump had won the state by more than three percentage points. “I think that’s how elections should be run.”


But in the wake of Trump’s ultimate defeat, as he and his supporters spread falsehoods about election fraud nationwide and demanded audits in numerous states, many Republicans in Florida pressed DeSantis to do the same.

Though he resisted an audit, DeSantis signed a controversial bill last year curtailing some voting options that had helped to expand participation. The law — which is being challenged in court, with a trial set to begin Jan. 30 — limits the use of ballot drop boxes, adds requirements to request mail ballots, and bans groups or individuals from gathering absentee ballots on other voters’ behalf.

No legislators have signed on to sponsor DeSantis’s new proposal. House Speaker Chris Sprowls (R) said DeSantis is concerned that existing law enforcement agencies don’t have the expertise necessary to find and prosecute election crimes. Yet he hasn’t embraced the governor’s approach. “We’re going to look at it, we’ll evaluate it and see what happens,” Sprowls said last week.


As with all committees in the Capitol in Tallahassee, Republicans are in the majority on the House Public Integrity & Elections Committee. Neither the committee chairman nor vice chairman returned calls for comment. The panel has not scheduled a hearing on the DeSantis proposal.

Last month, Secretary of State Laurel Lee spoke to a meeting of the Florida Supervisors of Elections association to explain the governor’s plan. Some of the officials who run elections in each of Florida’s 67 counties were alarmed by what they heard. They fear overreach from the executive branch, especially in a year when DeSantis is running for reelection.

Broward County Supervisor of Elections Joe Scott said he’s concerned that the new unit would be “applied in a very partisan way” and certain that his heavily Democratic county would be a target.

“It seems as if this is going to focus on a lot of grass-roots organizations that are out there trying to get people registered to vote, as well as people out there doing petition drives,” Scott said. “I think this is going to lead to people being intimidated if they’re civically involved. I don’t want people to be scared away from doing those kinds of things.”


An election worker sorts vote-by-mail ballots at the Miami-Dade County Board of Elections in Doral, Fla., ahead of the 2020 general election. Months later, the legislature passed measures making it harder for residents to vote by mail. (Lynne Sladky/AP)
State Rep. Geraldine Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the House Public Integrity & Elections Committee, thinks the new agency would be a waste of money. In addition to its funding, DeSantis wants $1.1 million for eight new positions in other departments — to address what he describes as a growing caseload of election crimes. The Department of State received 262 election-fraud complaint forms in 2020 and referred 75 to law enforcement or prosecutors. About 11 million Floridians cast ballots for president that November.


“The governor and other officials in Florida said the 2020 election was the most secure and efficiently run election that we ever had,” Thompson said. “So I see absolutely no reason for this elections commission to be established, particularly at the cost that he is proposing.”

Voter fraud is rare, and critics note that state attorneys and local police are already in place to investigate alleged election crimes. The state’s 67 elections supervisors are also trained to look for fraud.

“The bottom line is there is no widespread election fraud in Florida,” said Hillsborough State Attorney Andrew Warren, a Democrat. “It’s a microscopic amount. Elections today are the most secure that they have ever been. This is not a serious policy proposal. This is a door prize for a QAnon pep rally.”

Hans von Spakovsky, an election law expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, supports Desantis’s plan and hopes it becomes a “model” for other states. Investigating election fraud requires special training and commitment that are lacking in many law enforcement agencies, he said. The foundation’s database of election fraud cases nationwide shows only three convictions in Florida in the last three years.


Support for the governor’s proposal should be bipartisan, according to DeSantis press secretary Christina Pushaw.

“Ensuring that every legal vote counts, as Governor DeSantis strives to do, is the opposite of ‘voter suppression,’ ” Pushaw said via email. “We do not understand why any politician, Democrat or Republican, would be opposed to allocating sufficient resources to ensure our election laws are enforced.”

Cecile Scoon, a lawyer who is president of the League of Women Voters Florida, called an elections security force controlled by a governor an alarming concept.

“So to have your own elections SWAT team, that would be under the direction of the secretary of state, who is under the direction of the governor, is not a comfortable feeling,” Scoon said. “Having governmental officials like this, traveling about overlooking elections just to see if there’s something going on, is very chilling, very scary and very reminiscent of past governmental interference that was directed to Black voters.”
Title: Roger Stone Trump surrogate
Post by: ccp on January 18, 2022, 11:15:12 AM
http://republicbrief.com/roger-stone-attacks-desantis-hes-not-honest-and-not-going-to-be-president/

"DeSantis is not honest" [unlike Donald Trump -  :roll:]
Title: Re: Roger Stone Trump surrogate
Post by: G M on January 18, 2022, 11:19:31 AM
http://republicbrief.com/roger-stone-attacks-desantis-hes-not-honest-and-not-going-to-be-president/

"DeSantis is not honest" [unlike Donald Trump -  :roll:]

After all this, don't be surprised if DeSantis ends up on the ticket.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on January 18, 2022, 11:39:32 AM
"After all this, don't be surprised if DeSantis ends up on the ticket"

the only way I would be happy with that is if DeSantis is Prez and Trump VP

(I know not possible)
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2022, 03:59:12 AM
https://rumble.com/vt9j7m-desantis-mocks-joe-biden-in-hilarious-exchange-with-reporter.html?mref=22lbp&mc=56yab&fbclid=IwAR0pRn5jIL5CrqU9_rmlumbsp7oSNEMYVWdzkNBkrpx34PcWsF3JDMiIRF4
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis vs. Disney
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 12, 2022, 02:12:00 AM
https://www.westernjournal.com/desantis-makes-woke-disney-pay-ceo-speaks-controversial-parental-rights-bill/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=westernjournalism&utm_content=2022-03-11&utm_campaign=manualpost&fbclid=IwAR2D32nVsOUWlSv9chK5EcoqHo0Re2H7gexSqYdXr95ysot-PxIYg53qHY8
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 23, 2022, 02:11:11 AM
https://whnt.com/news/gov-desantis-declares-sarasota-swimmer-champ-over-transgender-athlete/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=socialflow&fbclid=IwAR1Hm19y_YW-iO5YkVVaMpZJWKXmhA1XzSNXWiU4pEMp68MfR9WT1-mZQG4
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis calls out Disney
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 30, 2022, 05:32:07 AM
https://dailycaller.com/2022/03/29/lining-pockets-gov-desantis-calls-out-disney-sexualizing-kindergarteners/?utm_medium=email&pnespid=rqs5UC0bNL1B3.DPqDirDcuQ4hLzWZZsKrLlwOBq9kZmJERkfj2wfgHO1eLzRJLUuFZQxZFM
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis bitch slaps House of Mouse
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 31, 2022, 09:13:22 AM
DeSantis puts Disney in bad light in ‘don’t say gay’ fight

Hits back with China ties, California culture

BY VALERIE RICHARDSON THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The Walt Disney Co. may have placated the left by vowing to fight Gov. Ron DeSantis’ newly signed parental bill of rights, but it turns out the Florida Republican knows how to return a punch.

Disney found itself with a public relations debacle on its hands Wednesday as Mr. DeSantis took a sledgehammer to the House of Mouse, using the spotlight to skewer its record on China and framing the skirmish as a battle between Florida and California values. “For them to say that [they], as a Californiabased company, are going to work to take those California values and overturn a law that was duly enacted and, as you said, supported by a strong majority of Floridians, they don’t run this state,” the governor said during an appearance Tuesday on Fox’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

“They will never run this state as long as I’m governor,” he added.

Providing a timely assist was Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo, who released video clips from a virtual meeting of Disney executives touting the company’s decision to eliminate “gendered greetings” and advance LGBTQ narratives in its entertainment programming.

Those in the video included Vivian Ware, Disney diversity and inclusion manager, who said the company last year eliminated its “ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls” voiceover ahead of its Magic Kingdom fireworks show and replaced it with “dreamers of all ages.”

“We don’t want to just assume that because someone might be, in our interpretation, may be presenting as female that they may not want to be called princess,” Ms. Ware said. “So let’s think differently about how do we really engage with our guests in a meaningful and inclusive way that makes it magical and memorable for everyone.”

Conservatives quickly pointed out the irony of Disney squelching terms such as “boys and girls” while tarring the Florida legislation as the “don’t say gay” bill.

“It’s amazing that Disney executives were falsely accusing Ron DeSantis of ‘Don’t Say Gay’ while they were requiring theme park employees to eliminate the words ‘ladies,’ ‘gentlemen,’ ‘boys,’ and ‘girls,’” Mr. Rufo tweeted.

Disney had no comment Wednesday on the DeSantis criticism or the video clips, which helped

fuel Wednesday’s conservative backlash over the company’s opposition to House Bill 1557.

“I think this is an American realization that Disney is not the Disney of our childhood,” former Rep. Sean Duffy, Wisconsin Republican, said on Fox’s “The Faulkner Focus.” “They’ve gone very progressive, very woke, and the fact that they want to sexualize our children and our children’s childhoods for their own political agenda is incredibly disturbing.”

Democratic strategist Brad Woodhouse blamed the uproar on the Republican “outrage machine.” He said it was calculated to stoke the base in an election year.

Mr. DeSantis is leading in the polls on his November reelection bid. The first-term governor is also seen as a top prospect for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

“First of all, the outrage here is not about Disney, and this whole issue is not about Disney,” Mr. Woodhouse said. “God bless the outrage machine. Nobody does it better. This is about Ron DeSantis and a Republican legislature that is dividing people and demeaning people simply for the purpose of dividing and demeaning people. It’s a political strategy.”

The bill bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in grades K-3 and “instruction that is not age appropriate for students,” the governor’s office said.

The measure also requires “school districts to adopt procedures for notifying parents if there is a change in services from the school regarding a child’s mental, emotional or physical health or well-being,” including changes adopted at school to the child’s name or gender identity.

“This [bill] is so uncontroversial, polling has shown even a majority of Florida Democrat voters support it,” said Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project. “However, woke leftists at Disney and elsewhere are so invested in their project to initiate young children into their sexual ideology that they cannot help but oppose this legislation.”

Whether the brouhaha ultimately will benefit Mr. DeSantis or Disney is subject to debate.

Mr. Schilling said that “DeSantis and Florida Republicans were incredibly smart to pick this battle, and as we are soon likely to see, it will not end well for Disney’s woke leaders and their Democrat proxies.”

The anti-Trump Lincoln Project disagreed. It tweeted that “Ron DeSantis is not only attacking LGBTQ+ communities and their families, he also thinks it’s a good idea to attack Florida’s biggest tourist attraction and the hard-working Floridians that work there.”

Shortly after Mr. DeSantis signed the bill Monday, Disney released a statement saying the legislation “should never have been passed and should never have been signed into law.”

“Our goal as a company is for this law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down in the courts, and we remain committed to supporting the national and state organizations working to achieve that,” Disney said. “We are dedicated to standing up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and across the country.”

Mr. DeSantis accused Disney of showing no interest in the bill while it moved through the Legislature, but reacting only under pressure from “the woke mob.”

Disney CEO Bob Chapek this month sent a memo to employees apologizing for not speaking out against the bill and promising to donate to LGBTQ groups, including the Human Rights Campaign. He also said he would “pause” political donations in Florida.

“Speaking to you, reading your messages, and meeting with you have helped me better understand how painful our silence was,” Mr. Chapek said in the memo reprinted March 11 in The Hollywood Reporter. “It is clear that this is not just an issue about a bill in Florida, but instead yet another challenge to basic human rights. You needed me to be a stronger ally in the fight for equal rights and I let you down. I am sorry.”

That wasn’t enough for some Disney employees, who staged a March 22 walkout against the bill in Burbank, California, and demanded in an open letter that the company cease donations to the bill’s legislative supporters.

“The recent statements by The Walt Disney Company (TWDC) leadership regarding the Florida legislature’s recent ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill have utterly failed to match the magnitude of the threat to LGBTQIA+ safety represented by this legislation,” the letter said.

Mr. DeSantis has pointed out that the word “gay” does not appear in the bill.

“So they say it’s banning a word that literally isn’t even in the legislation,” he said. “It’s not even like they’re misrepresenting the way the word is used. It’s not even used in the bill. It’s a fake narrative. It’s a lie.”

Those weighing in on the fracas include prominent gay conservatives such as former Trump administration official Ric Grenell, columnist Tammy Bruce and Fox News pundit and radio host Guy Benson.

Mr. Grenell tweeted that Disney “never helped in any way” on the Trump administration’s campaign to decriminalize homosexuality in countries where the practice is still illegal. Ms. Bruce blasted “the narcissism of projecting our adult issues onto kids.”

Mr. Benson tweeted: “1) Is Disney opposed to the part that bars sexual/gender identity instruction for K-3 students? Or another part of the bill? 2) Has Disney put out a statement this forceful on the genocide in China, where they eagerly do business? Trying to pinpoint their ‘corporate values.’” Mr. DeSantis also rebooted the criticism over Disney’s 2020 live-action movie “Mulan,” parts of which were filmed in Xinjiang, where more than 1 million members of the mostly Muslim Uyghur minority are thought to have been held in internment camps.

“People asked me kind of about their posture on the bill, and I said, you know what? If we would have put in the bill that you were not allowed to have curriculum that discussed the oppression of the Uyghurs in China, Disney would have endorsed that in a second,” Mr. DeSantis said at a Tuesday press conference.

Disney Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy said in September 2020 that the film was shot mostly in New Zealand and that it was common practice in the film industry to credit the nations where the movie was shot, according to Deadline.

As far as Mr. DeSantis is concerned, however, Disney should be more concerned with its own human rights record.

“They’re fine lining their pockets from the [Chinese Communist Party] and all the atrocities that go on there,” he said. “But it’s those kindergartners in Florida that they really want to have transgenderism as part of their core curriculum in school.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis bitch slaps House of Mouse
Post by: DougMacG on March 31, 2022, 11:53:21 AM
Strange situation all the way around, a company like Disney being so anti-children, and a Governor fighting with such a (should be) important constituent company.

State of Minnesota used to fight with 3M (MN Mining & Manufacturing Co.) over taxes and laws.  The State said screw you and 3M kept hiring and expanding... outside of MN. Disney world is not as mobile and DeSantis has plenty of new employers coming in, faster than they can find room.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis yard sign
Post by: DougMacG on April 29, 2022, 12:52:28 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS72sya2AiQ

15 seconds.  Best ad ever.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 29, 2022, 03:34:15 PM
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/apr/29/florida-restores-9-woke-math-k-12-textbooks-after-/?utm_source=Boomtrain&utm_medium=subscriber&utm_campaign=newsalert&utm_content=newsalert&utm_term=newsalert&bt_ee=nzwizDqBKIB%2B%2FnK6FfnKpDfGijuNbOXE0nPdgJYIwNAMp250UZo8iNZKmhj7AsdP&bt_ts=1651266792065
Title: Another fine move from Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 10, 2022, 09:19:38 AM
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/desantis-signs-bill-requiring-education-on-communist-regimes-in-public-schools/?fbclid=IwAR3o_nEo69HtXVpmYC4EMkZT3nix2JAS2gPtIV-q7S3cFmqi5FEa9CtQVXg
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 12, 2022, 05:18:04 AM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/federal-judge-dismisses-reedy-creek-lawsuit-against-desantis_4458790.html?utm_source=Morningbrief-ai&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2022-05-12-ai&est=3%2BOkPRd%2FqNBe2DwWU0Yz2xpJkXenRodxIMsMzbXxXtFvkfAyKiANH8zXua4nAyJCmLHl
Title: NR gets a nice DeSantis article in Pravda on the Hudson
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 12, 2022, 07:47:07 PM
Republicans Need a New Leader. They’re Looking to Florida.
May 12, 2022, 4:55 p.m. ET

Credit...Damon Winter/The New York Times

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By Rich Lowry

Mr. Lowry is the editor of National Review.

Two weeks ago, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida appeared with the Fox News host Laura Ingraham for a town hall that lasted the full hour of her prime-time show. That kind of airtime tends to be reserved only for Donald Trump, but Mr. DeSantis has had a meteoric rise. He’s far and away the most popular potential 2024 presidential candidate among Republicans after Mr. Trump.

Even if you would never consider voting for him, it’s important to understand the sources of his appeal and the direction of his politics, because one way or the other — whether he ever runs for president or not — Ron DeSantis is the new Republican Party.

Governor DeSantis’s combativeness on hot-button social issues reflects Mr. Trump’s influence, but he’s gone even further and used government power as an instrument in the culture war — something Mr. Trump talked about but never really did. If any of Mr. DeSantis’s Republican admirers are hoping he will chart a path back to the pre-2016 party, they’ll probably be disappointed. Instead, the governor is a leader in a new, Trump-inflected party, but without the character flaws and baggage of the former president.

Mr. DeSantis became a Republican hero for his response to Covid-19. When many states were instituting far-reaching lockdowns and mask requirements, he took a different path. Under his leadership, Florida did what it reasonably could to protect its nursing homes, while minimizing lockdowns and other restrictions because of their economic and social downsides. When I talked to the governor in May 2020 for an article about his Covid strategy, I found him — contrary to the crude image of him as a reckless ignoramus — well versed on the research and thoughtful about the lessons from other countries. The broad parameters of his strategy — recognize there’s a balance between mitigation and its social and economic costs; keep the schools open; don’t force students to wear masks — have now become widely accepted.

Thanks to his Covid response, Mr. DeSantis attained a status that is invaluable in Republican politics — that of a lightning rod. His legend grew with every attack on him, especially the ones that were inaccurate or unfair. In April 2021, the CBS program “60 Minutes” ran a flagrantly flawed and misleading report alleging corruption in the distribution of Florida’s vaccines. The news media was also much too quick to amplify claims by a former state health department employee that Florida was hiding a huge number of Covid deaths. Clips of Mr. DeSantis in confrontations with reporters spread on social media, and he repeated his mantra of defending “freedom over Faucism.”

In general, there is no controversy that Mr. DeSantis doesn’t address. In two weeks in April alone, Mr. DeSantis signed a 15-week abortion ban, revoked the special tax status of Disney for its opposition to his “Don’t Say Gay” bill, threatened legal action against Twitter if it didn’t agree to sell to Elon Musk (Florida’s retirement pension fund is an investor) and signed a bill creating a task force to investigate election fraud. Meanwhile, his department of health issued guidance pushing back against the Biden administration’s recommendations for treating youth with gender dysphoria.

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For all the talk of how Trumpy Mr. DeSantis is, though, there is much about him that recalls the party’s pre-Trump era. He was elected to Congress as a Tea Party conservative in 2012, and he is fond of boasting that Florida’s budget is roughly half the size of New York’s even though his state is more populous. He’s proud and protective of Florida’s status as a low-tax state.

He’s been a highly committed advocate of expanding charter schools and scholarship programs to help families send their children to private schools. He’s firmly anti-regulation. We haven’t heard from him in a significant way on trade or foreign policy — two of the key issues on which Trump populists have diverged from past Republican orthodoxy. He hasn’t endorsed industrial policy, a priority of a segment of the populist right.

Indeed, any movement conservative sealed in a time capsule circa 1984 and emerging today would recognize Mr. DeSantis as a more or less standard Sunbelt Republican — a fiscal conservative wooing people and businesses to his state based on a favorable economic climate who is also anti-elitist, socially conservative and eager to reform public schools.

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None of this is new. What stands out as a true departure is Mr. DeSantis’s willingness to use government power in the culture war.

Sometimes this has involved areas, like public education, where the government has every right to set the rules. One such example is the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, more properly known as the Parental Rights in Education bill, which prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade. Another is the “Individual Freedom” bill, which, among other things, prohibits promotion of the concept that a person “must feel guilt, anguish or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the individual played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, sex or national origin.”

Other times, Florida has pursued a laudable goal in a dubious manner. Its “Big Tech” bill seeks to keep social media companies from removing political candidates and other users from their platforms, but it has serious First Amendment conflicts and has been enjoined by a federal judge.

Then there’s the fight with Disney. The revocation of its special tax status is a frankly retaliatory act that also presents free-speech issues and could prove a legal and policy morass. That said, Disney got a truly extraordinary deal from the state that allowed it, in effect, to run its own city. The company never would have been granted this arrangement 55 years ago if its executives had told the state’s leaders, “And, by the way, eventually, the Walt Disney Company will adopt cutting edge left-wing causes as its own.”

The broader point of making an example of Disney is to send a message to other corporations that there could be downsides to letting themselves be pushed by progressive employees into making their institutions weapons in the culture wars, and conclude it’s best to stick to flying planes, selling soda, and so on.

How can a limited-government Tea Party Republican like Mr. DeSantis have become comfortable with this use of government? For that matter, how is it that so many Tea Party types moved so easily toward Trumpist populism?

The key, I think, is that for many people on the right, a libertarian-oriented politics was largely a way to register opposition to the mandarins who have an outsized influence on our public life. And it turns out that populism is an even more pungent way to register this opposition. Progressive domination of elite culture has now grown to include formerly neutral institutions like corporations and sports leagues. More conservatives are beginning to believe that the only countervailing institutional force is democratic political power as reflected in governor’s mansions, state legislatures and — likely beginning next year — Congress.

“The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society,” Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York once wrote. “The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”

Given the state of play, conservatives have been learning to appreciate Moynihan’s liberal truth. If Florida’s culture-war initiatives succeed, the education establishment in the state will not mindlessly absorb the latest left-wing fad. Corporations will be warier of wading into hot-button social fights. In other words, the culture of these institutions will have changed for the better.

Even if Mr. DeSantis is willing to avail himself of this use of government power, it doesn’t mean that he’s abandoning his limited-government orientation. The libertarian Cato Institute ranks Florida the second-most free state in the country (after New Hampshire), and Mr. DeSantis has shown no inclination to change the tax, spending and regulatory policies that contribute to that status. On Covid, he has consistently emphasized the importance of individual autonomy.

Mr. DeSantis’s detractors are fond of saying that he’s worse than or more dangerous than Mr. Trump. If, by this, they mean that a President DeSantis would be more focused and disciplined in pursuing a conservative agenda than Mr. Trump was, they’re probably right. Otherwise, it is completely wrongheaded. Mr. DeSantis doesn’t have Mr. Trump’s failings. He’s sharp in his rejoinders to reporters, but never gratuitously insulting. He cares about facts and takes time to master them.

Mr. DeSantis is the hottest thing in national Republican politics right now and he is doing everything to lay the groundwork, assuming he wins re-election this year, to run for president. It’s impossible to know how that will go — he could get blocked by Mr. Trump or not live up to the hype. What’s clear is that his synthesis of the old and new, and the resonance it has had with the rank-and-file, points to the Republican future.

Rich Lowry is the editor of National Review.
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis signs bill banning picket at homes
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 17, 2022, 02:25:50 PM
DeSantis Bans ‘Picketing and Protesting’ Outside Homes in Florida
By Katabella Roberts May 17, 2022 Updated: May 17, 2022biggersmaller Print
Individuals who protest outside private residences in the state of Florida will now face a fine or prison time under a new bill signed on Monday by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The Republican governor signed the bill, known as HB 1571, shortly after protests erupted outside the homes of Supreme Court justices in the wake of the leaked majority draft opinion indicating that the Roe v. Wade decision would be struck down.

“Sending unruly mobs to private residences, like we have seen with the angry crowds in front of the homes of Supreme Court justices, is inappropriate,” said DeSantis in a statement. “This bill will provide protection to those living in residential communities and I am glad to sign it into law.”

Specifically, the newly-signed bill will allow law enforcement officials to issue a warning to any individual found “picketing or protesting outside of a dwelling” with “specified intent.”

Individuals who do not disperse from the residence after the warning has been issued may be arrested. The bill also makes residential picketing punishable as a second-degree misdemeanor.

Second-degree misdemeanors are punishable by up to 60 days in jail and/or six months probation and a $500 fine.

The law will take effect Oct. 1.

Florida’s new law comes just a week after the Senate last week unanimously passed a bill, known as the “Supreme Court Police Parity Act,” that would allow the Supreme Court to provide 24-hour security protection to the families of Supreme Court justices.

Lawmakers voted on the move after the 67-page opinion of the Supreme Court was published on May 2 by Politico suggesting that the justices would overturn the decision that legalized abortion across the entire United States.

The leak prompted protests to break out across the country, including at the homes of Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), one of the lawmakers who introduced the bill last week alongside Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), said last week that the bill was necessary because both the justices and their family members had experienced threats to their physical safety following the leaked opinion.

“Threats to the physical safety of Supreme Court justices and their families are disgraceful, and attempts to intimidate and influence the independence of our judiciary cannot be tolerated,”  said Cornyn in a statement. “I’m glad the Senate quickly approved this measure to extend Supreme Court police protection to family members, and the House must take up and pass it immediately.”

The Supreme Court Police Parity Act would amend title 40 of the United States Code to grant the Supreme Court security-related authorities “equivalent to the legislative and executive branches for the immediate families of the nine justices and any other officers of the court” if the marshal determines such protection is necessary.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said last week that the Biden administration “strongly believes in the constitutional right to protest” but called on protesters to remain peaceful, noting that such demonstrations should never include violence or threats.

============================

Pravda on the Potomac:

Why Florida’s new protest law doesn’t fit the DeSantis narrative
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Analysis by Aaron Blake
Staff writer
May 17, 2022 at 4:24 p.m. EDT

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in February. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

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This one was teed up for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Back in March, long before the conservative furor over protests at Supreme Court justices’ homes, Florida’s legislature passed a ban on protesting at residential homes with the “intent to harass or disturb.”

DeSantis (R) signed the bill Monday, drawing support from conservative critics of the Supreme Court protests and derision from some on the left who argued the move violated First Amendment rights.

And you could forgive the latter group for jumping on that narrative, since another bill DeSantis signed last year cracking down on protests that turn violent — after a summer of racial justice demonstrations — was halted by a judge who indeed said it violated the First Amendment. DeSantis also pushed to remove Disney’s special tax status after it opposed him on a bill limiting discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in schools. Those actions by DeSantis clearly raise important and valid questions about his stance toward free speech and the politicization thereof.

But in this newest instance at least, DeSantis appears to be on the side of most Democrats in Florida’s state Senate — and of established law.

The bill passed the state Senate in March by a resounding 28-to-3 margin, earning the votes of 10 Democrats. (The earlier vote in the state House was more partisan.)

Florida is hardly alone. While most states don’t have such a law, some blue-leaning states do — including Arizona, Colorado, Illinois and Minnesota, according to legal analyst Eugene Volokh. And many municipalities have similar laws. That includes Montgomery County, Md., whose law was at issue when protesters showed up at a justice’s home this month. That law bars stationary protests at a home but allows one to march in residential areas.

Much like that law, Florida’s appears carefully tailored to meet established requirements. The text of the law itself cites perhaps the most significant precedent, 1988′s Frisby v. Schultz, while applying a similar standard and even narrowing its scope.


The text of Florida’s law states:

“It is unlawful for a person to picket or protest before or about the dwelling of any person with the intent to harass or disturb that person in his or her dwelling.”
The first part aligns with the standard set in Frisby. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that it is constitutional to ban protests at residences as long as the ban is content-neutral — i.e. it applies to all types of protests and not specific causes. The court also stated that a ban must allow people to still demonstrate in those neighborhoods, including by marching on residential streets in ways that don’t target a specific home.

Florida’s ban is actually somewhat narrower than the one in that case. The local law in Brookfield, Wis., forbade “any person to engage in picketing before or about the residence or dwelling of any individual.” Florida’s law contains the same “before or about” language — deliberately — but it also requires that such protests be intended “to harass or disturb” to be illegal. The law is also more reserved in that it requires a law enforcement officer to warn protesters to peaceably disperse before making any arrests.


Just because a law is constitutional and exists elsewhere, of course, doesn’t mean that it can’t be objected to; indeed, complying with the Constitution is a pretty low bar.

But in addition to echoing existing laws, this particular law doesn’t go nearly as far as the “anti-riot” law DeSantis made his focal point early last year. The law he signed made “willfully participating in a violent public disturbance” a crime. (It also granted civil immunity to drivers who hit protesters with their vehicles, if they said the protests made them fear for their well-being at the time.) Civil rights and free-speech groups objected, saying that it would chill participation in protests because protesters could be held liable for violence they didn’t perpetrate. A judge ruled that the law’s vagueness “consumes vast swaths of core First Amendment speech.”

DeSantis’s move to strip Disney of its special tax status rubbed even some conservatives the wrong way. Despite DeSantis’s assurance that he wasn’t retaliating against Disney for speech he didn’t like, the timing very much pointed in that direction.


If there’s a narrative building here, it’s that DeSantis isn’t exactly erring on the side of free speech — and is even targeting speech by people he doesn’t like, in rather novel ways. DeSantis is very much in line with Republicans embracing the usefulness of big government in cracking down on Big Tech, critical race theory and businesses that enact their own coronavirus restrictions.

It’s just that the law he signed Monday on residential protests is far from the best evidence of that. But in his long-running and successful quest to build his political career on owning the libs, it’s certainly useful.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 23, 2022, 05:11:19 PM
https://rumble.com/v15bml5-it-shows-you-have-no-idea-what-youre-talking-about-desantis-fires-back-at-c.html?mref=22lbp&mc=56yab&fbclid=IwAR1xLR7fC7_aaVgOoHdEHqGAUsPao9eOaf3YXM-W4yAmqQadaKk3rOYfXEg
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis: FL may restrict medicaid coverage for trans drugs/surgery
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 05, 2022, 02:16:29 AM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/florida-to-potentially-restrict-medicaid-coverage-for-transgender-drugs-surgery-for-youth_4511839.html?utm_source=Morningbrief-ai&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2022-06-05-ai&est=UtmVnBcgLvXLRPyQkvFiYN3ScL35EcouGeHodlQD25dBWzfHKI2WVYEyUQUmgDqaGlGr
Title: WSJ: Desantis vs. TB Rays
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 06, 2022, 08:44:55 PM
DeSantis Harpoons the Tampa Bay Rays
Vetoing sports subsidies is good policy, but emulating woke cancelers is a mistake.
By The Editorial BoardFollow
June 6, 2022 6:56 pm ET


Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has picked another fight with progressive corporate America, this time the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team. When he signed the state budget last week, Mr. DeSantis zeroed out $35 million to help build a new site for the Rays’ spring training. “I don’t support giving taxpayer dollars to professional sports stadiums, period,” he said Friday.


This is a good policy that too few states emulate, and Florida taxpayers can be grateful that their Governor has a line-item veto and is willing to use it. He vetoed $3 billion in earmarks and pet legislative projects. But Mr. DeSantis also muddied his message by citing another reason to defund the Rays. “It’s also inappropriate to subsidize political activism of a private corporation,” he said.

After recent mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas, the Rays pledged to donate $50,000 to Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that wants to ban “assault weapons” and prohibit open carry. The team’s Twitter account, “in lieu of game coverage,” offered “facts about the impacts of gun violence.”

Why sports teams want to risk alienating half of their fans by taking sides in political debates is a mystery. People turn on ESPN as a break from politics, and the shrinking of apolitical spaces makes social comity harder.


As a matter of political realism, corporations that directly punch state leaders can hardly be surprised if they get socked in return. After Florida passed its mislabeled “Don’t Say Gay” law, Disney’s CEO called it a “challenge to basic human rights.” The Legislature reacted by passing a bill to phase out Disney World’s special tax district.

Richard Edelman, CEO of the giant public relations firm, recently warned executives at Davos that “we better be careful here because there’s starting to be a pushback against wokeness.” He’s right, and Mr. Edelman also offered the good advice that CEOs can take political stands in their personal capacity and donations to politicians, but that their public positions are best focused on policy issues that affect business.

But Mr. DeSantis is also in danger of abusing his power if he uses it to punish business for political speech he doesn’t like. Not wanting to subsidize professional sports is a compelling reason to veto the spending provision. Framing the veto as an act of censure is no better than the woke left demanding that corporate executives conform to their agenda. Politicians who behave like bullies invariably get a comeuppance when they overreach.

If Rays fans are put off by political lecturing from a ball club, they know how to quit buying tickets. And if Florida gets a reputation for petty retaliation against business, companies know how to go elsewhere
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 23, 2022, 11:15:52 PM
TTT
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on June 24, 2022, 04:52:28 AM
TTT

I saw that DeSantis leads Trump in a NH first primary poll (but not nationwide, yet).
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis needs to be very careful
Post by: G M on June 24, 2022, 08:18:17 AM
From Matt Bracken:


PREDICTABLE MILESTONES ON AMERICA'S FINAL TRANSFORMATION INTO A BANANA REPUBLIC:

1. Trump will be indicted and/or arrested, the purpose being to render him unable to run for office again.

2. DeSantis may die in an "accident" that is highly suspicious. A plane crash is a typical method.

Our enemies are not playing bean bag. They are so worried about losing power that they are playing nuclear chicken with Russia over Kaliningrad. They would prefer nuclear war to losing power, being exposed, and potentially being imprisoned for their crimes, such as pushing the covid vaxx poison for mega profits, currently pushing the poison even down to babies.

"Taking out" potential leading rivals is a proven tactic for staying in power when the electorate is turning away from a political clique. With the corrupted DOJ firmly in their pockets, they will have nothing to fear from sham investigations.

Some history to review for perspective:

RWANDA: On the evening of 6 April 1994, the aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundian president Cyprien Ntaryamira, both Hutu, was shot down with surface-to-air missiles as their jet prepared to land in Kigali, Rwanda. The assassination set the Rwandan genocide in motion, one of the bloodiest events of the late 20th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Juv%C3%A9nal_Habyarimana_and_Cyprien_Ntaryamira

LEBANON: On 14 September 1982, President Bachir Gemayel was addressing fellow Phalangists at their headquarters in Achrafieh for the last time as their leader and for the last time as commander of the Lebanese Forces. At 4:10 PM, a bomb was detonated, killing Gemayel and 26 other Phalange politicians. His assassination lead to the Sabra and Shatila Massacre. Between 762 and 3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites were massacred by members of the Phalange in retaliation for the assassination of Gemayel.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachir_Gemayel
Title: Joe Rogan is for Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 29, 2022, 03:48:06 PM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/joe-rogan-reveals-likely-choice-for-president-in-2024_4567037.html?utm_source=Goodevening&utm_campaign=gv-2022-06-29&utm_medium=email&est=FNB%2FdcSkCQt9Y%2FJrXXmgTyVOHJb6U2SuyJGWiRuXn%2BBaFj5Ih8rXAdVRmpzlTOwGCHWl
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on June 29, 2022, 03:53:01 PM
not nicki halley?
Title: If DeSantis challenges Trump...
Post by: DougMacG on July 15, 2022, 12:17:57 PM
If DeSantis challenges Trump...

Trump will call him names.  What names?

DeSantis will be asked what he thinks about that.  If I advised him, the answer is:
"If Trump is the nominee, I will vote for him.  Now you ask Mr. Trump, "if I am the nominee, will he vote for me?"

"Untested"?  Yes and no.  Actually he has been quite thoroughly tested, and passed with flying colors.  No one is fully tested at this level before they get there. 

Don't know his foreign policy?  Every indication is that it will be just fine, and better than the Dem alternatives.  Best foreign policy is simple, strengthen America first.  Previously suggested, name Mike Pompeo as his VP or Sec State.  If Pompeo runs against him, name him anyway. "That's who I would like as my top foreign policy adviser.  )
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 15, 2022, 01:16:23 PM
I just signed up for some Pompeo thing on FB so now I regularly get missives (mostly asking for money) asking about his campaign.

I don't think he has a prayer of the nomination, let alone the presidency (though I do think he would make a truly fine president) but I do like the idea of keeping him in/near the spotlight for future consideration (e.g. Sec State)
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 24, 2022, 11:24:31 PM
From my FB page
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis suspends Soros funded DA
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2022, 12:37:41 PM


https://www.foxnews.com/politics/florida-gov-ron-desantis-suspends-liberal-state-attorney-andrew-warren
Title: NRO: Gov. Ron DeSantis is right on Duty to Enforce the Law
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2022, 04:56:16 PM
Ron DeSantis Is Right on the Executive Duty to Enforce the Law

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pauses as he speaks on stage at the Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in Tampa, Fla., July 22, 2022. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
By DAN MCLAUGHLIN
August 4, 2022 2:13 PM

The Florida governor may look like he’s engaging in a power grab, but as the executive, he’s standing up for a core rule-of-law value.
The rule of law is vital to the American system of government. Our system is designed, in the words of John Adams, “to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.” That core value imposes a variety of different obligations on different actors in the system. Today’s big announcement by Ron DeSantis, suspending a county attorney who refused as a matter of policy to enforce Florida laws he disliked, highlights one of those obligations: the duty of the executive to enforce the laws written by the legislature.

The people choose the government and retain the power to remove its officials: That makes us a democracy. Nobody has an inherited role or a privileged status above the law: That makes us a republic. The rules are written down: That makes our system constitutional. The rule of law binds these strands together. Once the constitution and the laws are written down, there are only two choices: Challenge the laws in court as conflicting with the written constitution, or change the constitution or the laws through the democratic process. In the meantime, there are only two outcomes: Either the rules are binding as written on everyone, or the people are no longer in charge of the government.

Adams used the phrase “a government of laws and not of men” in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 to justify the rigorous separation of powers: Only the legislature writes laws, only the executive enforces them, and only the judiciary interprets them. John Marshall used the same phrase in Marbury v. Madison to emphasize a related but distinct point: Judges have not just the power to declare laws invalid if they violate the Constitution, but a duty to do so in order to restrain the legislature: “To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished. . . .”

Marshall’s point is an important one: The rule of written law is a restraint on action, but it is also a command to act. If actors in the system do not carry out their assigned roles, others will be able to escape their restraints. The rule of law is always a two-way street. The two-way value is tested in controversies such as whether to prosecute Donald Trump. On the one hand, the rule of law is degraded if Trump’s status as an ex-president is grounds to never charge him with a crime; on the other hand, the rule of law is also degraded if he is charged under a novel and creatively expansive theory of the law just because of who he is. The same goes for prosecuting cops.

The rule of law matters within the executive branch, and it runs both ways there as well. Because the president and the administrative agencies are not empowered to make the laws — and neither is the typical governor, mayor, or district attorney — executive power may not be expanded into the area of lawmaking by executive orders or administrative agency rules. But it is just as much a violation of the rule of law, and just as much an assault on the democratic and constitutional nature of our system, for executive officials simply to nullify laws by a blanket refusal to enforce them.

Of course, executive officials — presidents, governors, prosecutors, cops — have always had discretion in individual cases, and even in some classes of similarly situated factual situations, in deciding when a law will not be blindly enforced to the letter where the evidence is dubious or application of the law would work some clear injustice not intended by the legislature. Indeed, laws are typically written with a baseline faith in the common sense of the authorities enforcing them. But that is quite different from declaring to the citizenry that whole categories of offenses will not be enforced.


Likewise, there are some situations in which an executive’s oath to the federal and/or state constitutions require or permit the executive to determine that a particular law is unconstitutional and decline to enforce or defend it. The scope of that power or duty, however, has been a hotly contested one, and it is subordinate to the final say of the courts. It should never be used to simply nullify a law so that the courts do not even get the opportunity to decide the law’s validity in an adversarial proceeding in which the people are represented by someone committed to defending the law they made.

Each of these components of our rule-of-law system is anathema to progressives. Under the progressive idea of supervised democracy, the power of the people to make laws is subject to supervision and review by a variety of elite checks, including elected and unelected executives deciding which laws not to enforce and which offenders to treat with mass amnesty, a “Deep State” or “experts” and bureaucrats in areas such as national security and public health deciding which presidential and gubernatorial policies they will not follow, and judges declaring some topics off-limits to democratic self-government based on an “evolving” rule nowhere written in our constitutions.

The fad for progressive district attorneys deciding that they will not enforce whole swaths of law has been one of the distinguishing features of this regime. Many of those DAs are elected officials, but they are still local officials charged not only with enforcing written laws, but often written statewide laws that are supposed to be binding on them. So it is with Hillsborough County state attorney Andrew Warren.

Warren, a Democrat, holds an elected position equivalent to a district attorney in other states, covering Tampa and St. Petersburg. He signed a public letter refusing to enforce Florida’s 15-week abortion ban or its partial-birth abortion ban. While that could arguably be defended on the theory that the 15-week law is unconstitutional under Florida law (a matter sure to be decided in the near future by the Florida Supreme Court), this was a joint statement with prosecutors across the country, and not targeted to an argument under Florida law. Instead, in the sections cited in the order issued by DeSantis, Warren joined other prosecutors in declaring himself above his own state’s laws and committed to a campaign of massive resistance to those laws:

We [the undersigned prosecutors] decline to use our offices’ resources to criminalize reproductive health decisions and commit to exercise our well-settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who . . . provide, or support abortions. . . . Our legislatures may decide to criminalize personal healthcare decisions, but we remain obligated to prosecute only those cases that serve the interests of justice and the people. (Emphasis added).

Warren was the only county attorney in Florida to sign the letter. This is hardly the only example; another joint letter Warren signed with many prosecutors inside and outside Florida pledged “to use our discretion and not promote the criminalization of gender-affirming healthcare or transgender people.” DeSantis cited additional policies such as “presumptive non-enforcement for certain criminal violations, including trespassing at a business location, disorderly conduct, disorderly intoxication, and prostitution” and “against prosecuting crimes where the initial encounter between law enforcement and the defendant results from a non-criminal violation in connection with riding a bicycle or a pedestrian violation.”

As DeSantis emphasized at his press conference, “Our government is a government of laws, not a government of men. . . . We are not going to allow this pathogen of ignoring the law get a foothold here in the state of Florida. We are going to make sure our laws are enforced and that no individual prosecutor puts themselves above the law.” The governor continued: “To take the position that you have veto power over the laws of this state is untenable.” DeSantis argued that a prosecutor may not use his discretion “to effectively nullify what the legislature has done.” He had Warren escorted out of his office.

As a matter of core democratic rule-of-law principles, DeSantis is absolutely right on this. This is not the first time that DeSantis has used this power: He suspended Broward County sheriff Scott Israel after Parkland, Palm Beach supervisor of elections Susan Bucher for the failure of Broward and Palm Beach counties to meet ballot-counting deadlines in 2018, and the superintendent of Okaloosa County Schools over a grand-jury report of abuse of special-needs kids in her district. This is a more confrontational approach than taken by Rick Scott, who simply removed capital cases out of the hands of a county attorney who refused to use the death penalty.

Whether the Florida courts back DeSantis’s authority to suspend Warren under Florida law remains to be seen, but Warren will have an uphill battle. Article IV, Section 7(a) of the Florida Constitution explicitly empowers this sort of action:

By executive order stating the grounds and filed with the custodian of state records, the governor may suspend from office…any county officer, for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony, and may fill the office by appointment for the period of suspension.

Moreover, the power to review DeSantis’s decision rests primarily with Florida’s Republican-controlled senate, which is likely to back him up, rather than with the courts. Section 7(b) of the Florida Constitution empowers the Florida Senate to “reinstate the suspended official [in a] special session by its president or by a majority of its membership.” As the Florida Supreme Court reiterated in 2019 when it upheld DeSantis’s suspension of Israel, the state’s longstanding rule is that judicial review is limited to deciding whether the facts recited by the governor amount to a legally sufficient case for suspension. So, if Warren wants to argue that he is not actually guilty of neglect of duty, he has to present his case to the Florida Senate, not to the courts.

Can Warren convince the courts that the refusal to enforce whole categories of law is not what “neglect of duty” means under Florida law? That is likewise dubious. In Israel’s case, the Florida Supreme Court read “duty” broadly to encompass not just non-discretionary duties commanded by statute, but also such matters as Israel’s failure to provide proper training and protocols for mass-shooting situations. In State ex rel. Hardee v. Allen (1937), cited by DeSantis in his order, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the governor’s removal of Tampa’s prosecutor on the basis of an order alleging that gambling was widespread in the county and citing the near-total absence of gambling prosecutions. The court concluded that “to knowingly permit gambling and prefer no charges therefor was a neglect of duty,” and would not consider the question in further depth: “The character, sufficiency, weight, and all things pertaining to the evidence were questions for the Senate, with which the Court has no concern.”

Once again, DeSantis has picked a battle where his powers of office appear to be firmly arrayed behind him, his chosen fight intersects between conservative cultural causes and a broader law-and-order value, and he is speaking simultaneously to state and local voters concerned about irresponsible progressive district attorneys and national voters looking for someone to tame the administrative state. In that sense, this is politically shrewd. It is also a welcome stand for democratic, republican, constitutional government under a rule of written law.
Title: Re: NRO: Gov. Ron DeSantis is right on Duty to Enforce the Law
Post by: G M on August 04, 2022, 08:20:00 PM
Trump: Mean tweets

DeSantis: Actual wins.


Ron DeSantis Is Right on the Executive Duty to Enforce the Law

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pauses as he speaks on stage at the Turning Point USA’s Student Action Summit in Tampa, Fla., July 22, 2022. (Marco Bello/Reuters)
By DAN MCLAUGHLIN
August 4, 2022 2:13 PM

The Florida governor may look like he’s engaging in a power grab, but as the executive, he’s standing up for a core rule-of-law value.
The rule of law is vital to the American system of government. Our system is designed, in the words of John Adams, “to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.” That core value imposes a variety of different obligations on different actors in the system. Today’s big announcement by Ron DeSantis, suspending a county attorney who refused as a matter of policy to enforce Florida laws he disliked, highlights one of those obligations: the duty of the executive to enforce the laws written by the legislature.

The people choose the government and retain the power to remove its officials: That makes us a democracy. Nobody has an inherited role or a privileged status above the law: That makes us a republic. The rules are written down: That makes our system constitutional. The rule of law binds these strands together. Once the constitution and the laws are written down, there are only two choices: Challenge the laws in court as conflicting with the written constitution, or change the constitution or the laws through the democratic process. In the meantime, there are only two outcomes: Either the rules are binding as written on everyone, or the people are no longer in charge of the government.

Adams used the phrase “a government of laws and not of men” in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 to justify the rigorous separation of powers: Only the legislature writes laws, only the executive enforces them, and only the judiciary interprets them. John Marshall used the same phrase in Marbury v. Madison to emphasize a related but distinct point: Judges have not just the power to declare laws invalid if they violate the Constitution, but a duty to do so in order to restrain the legislature: “To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers is abolished. . . .”

Marshall’s point is an important one: The rule of written law is a restraint on action, but it is also a command to act. If actors in the system do not carry out their assigned roles, others will be able to escape their restraints. The rule of law is always a two-way street. The two-way value is tested in controversies such as whether to prosecute Donald Trump. On the one hand, the rule of law is degraded if Trump’s status as an ex-president is grounds to never charge him with a crime; on the other hand, the rule of law is also degraded if he is charged under a novel and creatively expansive theory of the law just because of who he is. The same goes for prosecuting cops.

The rule of law matters within the executive branch, and it runs both ways there as well. Because the president and the administrative agencies are not empowered to make the laws — and neither is the typical governor, mayor, or district attorney — executive power may not be expanded into the area of lawmaking by executive orders or administrative agency rules. But it is just as much a violation of the rule of law, and just as much an assault on the democratic and constitutional nature of our system, for executive officials simply to nullify laws by a blanket refusal to enforce them.

Of course, executive officials — presidents, governors, prosecutors, cops — have always had discretion in individual cases, and even in some classes of similarly situated factual situations, in deciding when a law will not be blindly enforced to the letter where the evidence is dubious or application of the law would work some clear injustice not intended by the legislature. Indeed, laws are typically written with a baseline faith in the common sense of the authorities enforcing them. But that is quite different from declaring to the citizenry that whole categories of offenses will not be enforced.


Likewise, there are some situations in which an executive’s oath to the federal and/or state constitutions require or permit the executive to determine that a particular law is unconstitutional and decline to enforce or defend it. The scope of that power or duty, however, has been a hotly contested one, and it is subordinate to the final say of the courts. It should never be used to simply nullify a law so that the courts do not even get the opportunity to decide the law’s validity in an adversarial proceeding in which the people are represented by someone committed to defending the law they made.

Each of these components of our rule-of-law system is anathema to progressives. Under the progressive idea of supervised democracy, the power of the people to make laws is subject to supervision and review by a variety of elite checks, including elected and unelected executives deciding which laws not to enforce and which offenders to treat with mass amnesty, a “Deep State” or “experts” and bureaucrats in areas such as national security and public health deciding which presidential and gubernatorial policies they will not follow, and judges declaring some topics off-limits to democratic self-government based on an “evolving” rule nowhere written in our constitutions.

The fad for progressive district attorneys deciding that they will not enforce whole swaths of law has been one of the distinguishing features of this regime. Many of those DAs are elected officials, but they are still local officials charged not only with enforcing written laws, but often written statewide laws that are supposed to be binding on them. So it is with Hillsborough County state attorney Andrew Warren.

Warren, a Democrat, holds an elected position equivalent to a district attorney in other states, covering Tampa and St. Petersburg. He signed a public letter refusing to enforce Florida’s 15-week abortion ban or its partial-birth abortion ban. While that could arguably be defended on the theory that the 15-week law is unconstitutional under Florida law (a matter sure to be decided in the near future by the Florida Supreme Court), this was a joint statement with prosecutors across the country, and not targeted to an argument under Florida law. Instead, in the sections cited in the order issued by DeSantis, Warren joined other prosecutors in declaring himself above his own state’s laws and committed to a campaign of massive resistance to those laws:

We [the undersigned prosecutors] decline to use our offices’ resources to criminalize reproductive health decisions and commit to exercise our well-settled discretion and refrain from prosecuting those who . . . provide, or support abortions. . . . Our legislatures may decide to criminalize personal healthcare decisions, but we remain obligated to prosecute only those cases that serve the interests of justice and the people. (Emphasis added).

Warren was the only county attorney in Florida to sign the letter. This is hardly the only example; another joint letter Warren signed with many prosecutors inside and outside Florida pledged “to use our discretion and not promote the criminalization of gender-affirming healthcare or transgender people.” DeSantis cited additional policies such as “presumptive non-enforcement for certain criminal violations, including trespassing at a business location, disorderly conduct, disorderly intoxication, and prostitution” and “against prosecuting crimes where the initial encounter between law enforcement and the defendant results from a non-criminal violation in connection with riding a bicycle or a pedestrian violation.”

As DeSantis emphasized at his press conference, “Our government is a government of laws, not a government of men. . . . We are not going to allow this pathogen of ignoring the law get a foothold here in the state of Florida. We are going to make sure our laws are enforced and that no individual prosecutor puts themselves above the law.” The governor continued: “To take the position that you have veto power over the laws of this state is untenable.” DeSantis argued that a prosecutor may not use his discretion “to effectively nullify what the legislature has done.” He had Warren escorted out of his office.

As a matter of core democratic rule-of-law principles, DeSantis is absolutely right on this. This is not the first time that DeSantis has used this power: He suspended Broward County sheriff Scott Israel after Parkland, Palm Beach supervisor of elections Susan Bucher for the failure of Broward and Palm Beach counties to meet ballot-counting deadlines in 2018, and the superintendent of Okaloosa County Schools over a grand-jury report of abuse of special-needs kids in her district. This is a more confrontational approach than taken by Rick Scott, who simply removed capital cases out of the hands of a county attorney who refused to use the death penalty.

Whether the Florida courts back DeSantis’s authority to suspend Warren under Florida law remains to be seen, but Warren will have an uphill battle. Article IV, Section 7(a) of the Florida Constitution explicitly empowers this sort of action:

By executive order stating the grounds and filed with the custodian of state records, the governor may suspend from office…any county officer, for malfeasance, misfeasance, neglect of duty, drunkenness, incompetence, permanent inability to perform official duties, or commission of a felony, and may fill the office by appointment for the period of suspension.

Moreover, the power to review DeSantis’s decision rests primarily with Florida’s Republican-controlled senate, which is likely to back him up, rather than with the courts. Section 7(b) of the Florida Constitution empowers the Florida Senate to “reinstate the suspended official [in a] special session by its president or by a majority of its membership.” As the Florida Supreme Court reiterated in 2019 when it upheld DeSantis’s suspension of Israel, the state’s longstanding rule is that judicial review is limited to deciding whether the facts recited by the governor amount to a legally sufficient case for suspension. So, if Warren wants to argue that he is not actually guilty of neglect of duty, he has to present his case to the Florida Senate, not to the courts.

Can Warren convince the courts that the refusal to enforce whole categories of law is not what “neglect of duty” means under Florida law? That is likewise dubious. In Israel’s case, the Florida Supreme Court read “duty” broadly to encompass not just non-discretionary duties commanded by statute, but also such matters as Israel’s failure to provide proper training and protocols for mass-shooting situations. In State ex rel. Hardee v. Allen (1937), cited by DeSantis in his order, the Florida Supreme Court upheld the governor’s removal of Tampa’s prosecutor on the basis of an order alleging that gambling was widespread in the county and citing the near-total absence of gambling prosecutions. The court concluded that “to knowingly permit gambling and prefer no charges therefor was a neglect of duty,” and would not consider the question in further depth: “The character, sufficiency, weight, and all things pertaining to the evidence were questions for the Senate, with which the Court has no concern.”

Once again, DeSantis has picked a battle where his powers of office appear to be firmly arrayed behind him, his chosen fight intersects between conservative cultural causes and a broader law-and-order value, and he is speaking simultaneously to state and local voters concerned about irresponsible progressive district attorneys and national voters looking for someone to tame the administrative state. In that sense, this is politically shrewd. It is also a welcome stand for democratic, republican, constitutional government under a rule of written law.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 05, 2022, 03:12:16 PM
"Trump: Mean tweets

"DeSantis: Actual wins."

Which is a big reason why if I had to choose between the two today, I would choose DeSantis.

That said, we have much to learn about DeS's views on geopolitics.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: G M on August 05, 2022, 08:38:34 PM
"Trump: Mean tweets

"DeSantis: Actual wins."

Which is a big reason why if I had to choose between the two today, I would choose DeSantis.

That said, we have much to learn about DeS's views on geopolitics.

In Trump's defense, the Deep State was waging war on him before he was even sworn in. He was only nominally president before the coup.

DeSantis is much more of a threat to the Deep State, which is why he is much more at risk for the Dealey Plaza option from the DS.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on August 05, 2022, 08:52:11 PM
"Trump: Mean tweets

"DeSantis: Actual wins."

Which is a big reason why if I had to choose between the two today, I would choose DeSantis.

That said, we have much to learn about DeS's views on geopolitics.

"Commonsense DeSantis."
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on August 06, 2022, 06:16:37 AM
"DeSantis is much more of a threat to the Deep State, which is why he is much more at risk for the Dealey Plaza option from the DS"

I hope Gov Ron has really good loyal security !

Interesting that Gov of California (governor Loathsome) is going after the Gov of Florida (Gov Ron) at the start of his own  '24 presidential run.
.

to please the Democrat mega donors and start the buzz about him in the left wing media.

Title: Florida prosecutor typical Democrat lawyer to fight DeSantis
Post by: ccp on August 08, 2022, 08:38:19 AM
https://www.yahoo.com/news/florida-prosecutor-vows-fight-gov-172639296.html

of course
and now he will guest on every MSM talk show and we will have to see every leftist legal analyst bore us with their take on this for many months.....

always to make a point that DeSantis is a terrible unjust fascist undemocratic tyrant......

Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis: FL arrests 20 over voter fraud
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 19, 2022, 03:02:11 PM
https://www.oann.com/fla-arresting-20-individuals-over-voter-fraud/
Title: NRO
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 23, 2022, 01:18:15 PM
The #Resistance Playbook Fails Democrats in Florida

On the menu today: Those outside Florida may shrug at today’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, but the expected victory of Charlie Crist over Nikki Fried is likely to offer a key lesson to those willing to pay attention. The #Resistance playbook that worked for Democrats in 2018 and 2020 — furiously demonizing Donald Trump as a threat to all that is good — isn’t working against incumbent governor Ron DeSantis. Never mind Floridians as a whole; that approach can’t even close the deal among Florida’s Democrats. In other news, it’s publication day.

The Dems’ Plan to Beat DeSantis Flames Out

Today, Florida holds its primaries, along with New York and Oklahoma. Besides the surprisingly personal demolition derby in Manhattan discussed yesterday, perhaps the most intriguing primary will be in Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, where former governor and current representative Charlie Crist and state agriculture commissioner Nikki Fried are competing for the right to lose to Ron DeSantis.

Florida Democrats will scream that that sentence is incorrect, and that the general election hasn’t been resolved yet. But in polling, DeSantis consistently leads Crist and Fried, and neither one is particularly close; in the RealClearPolitics average, Crist is trailing by 6.2 percentage points, and Fried is trailing by 9.6 percentage points.

There are good reasons to think that the governor’s race ended before it started. Four years ago, the Democrats had near-ideal political winds, with a broad national backlash to President Trump, and yet DeSantis still hung on to win by four-tenths of a percentage point over Andrew Gillum who, it turns out, was nowhere near ready for prime-time. DeSantis outperformed his final polling average by about four percentage points in 2018. The incumbent has more than $130 million to spend. The Democratic Governors Association is deprioritizing the state.

So why does today’s Florida primary matter? Because Fried entered the governor’s race attempting to run the “#Resistance” playbook against Ron DeSantis the way most Democrats ran it against Donald Trump in 2018 and 2020. (Trump fans may not want to acknowledge this, but the attacks largely worked, as Democrats gained control of the House, the Senate, the presidency, and a lot of governor’s mansions in those cycles.) Both as state agriculture commissioner and as a gubernatorial candidate, Fried channeled the progressive id, denouncing DeSantis as heartless, an authoritarian dictator, and a threat to the rights of women and minorities, accusing him of launching a “war on education” and “courting violent, white-supremacist insurrectionists.”

And . . . it appears that this approach is getting her nowhere. Never mind not giving Fried the lead against DeSantis. The angry #Resistance tone isn’t even getting her any traction against Crist, who’s not exactly a whirling dervish of raw political charisma.

The most recent poll has Crist ahead of Fried by nearly 30 percentage points; while one or two surveys point to a closer race, most have him leading handily. If Crist wins by the expected margin, it will be a case of a young progressive touted as the state party’s “new hope” crashing and burning when put before the electorate in the big stage — and falling flat when up against one of the most tired and well-worn retreads in the state. And perhaps the most interesting aspect of her defeat will be how Democratic interest groups turned their noses up at her.

Emily’s List endorsed Crist, even though he used to be pro-life. The state teachers’ unions are endorsing Crist, as are the state AFL-CIO, the state’s largest gay-rights group, and the state Sierra Club and Florida Conservation Voters. A few days ago, the Progressive Club of the Islands rescinded its endorsement of Fried and endorsed Crist, concluding that Fried had been too cozy with big industry during her term as agriculture commissioner.

She must be one of the very few Jewish political candidates to ever earn a rebuke from the Anti-Defamation League for comparing DeSantis to Hitler: “While public officials may have disagreements over policies, comparisons to the Holocaust and Nazism are inappropriate, offensive, and trivialize this unique tragedy in human history.”

Fried pitched herself as as a young rising star, the next great progressive hope. Yet she hasn’t actually won over progressive interest groups, which raises the question of where her actual base of support is.

At the beginning of the year, our Charlie Cooke contended that she was a wildly overrated candidate — in fact, he said she was:

The most inadequate, embarrassing, and downright befuddling political candidate the great state of Florida has seen in a long while. . . . In the last month alone, Fried has compared sitting governor Ron DeSantis to Adolf Hitler and a Communist dictator; she has implied that the northern part of the state is an extended trailer park, of the sort that will be easily swayed by suggestive selfies; and she has rewritten the story of the 2018 gubernatorial election to make herself its hero. Were he to have proffered Fried some professional advice, Walter Mitty himself might have urged her to calm down.

In the past eight months, Fried hasn’t done much to prove Charlie wrong.

If you think the media-hype-to-performance ratio of young progressive candidates is all out of whack, Nikki Fried is about to become your Exhibit A. And while it’s unlikely that many will heed the lesson of her loss, she’s vivid counterevidence to Democrats’ favorite explanation that they lose because they’re too nice and just aren’t tough or aggressive enough. Fried’s attacks on DeSantis have been more than nasty enough; judging from the reaction of Democratic interest groups, none of them have much faith that her I’m-running-against-Florida’s-Hitler approach is going to work. They took a long look at her and concluded, “Nah, we’ll go with the guy who lost his last two statewide campaigns.”

As for the likely Democratic nominee, Crist is an odd duck. A long time ago, Crist called Ronald Reagan his role model. He not-so-subtly auditioned to be John McCain’s running mate in 2008. Then Crist shifted to run as an independent once Marco Rubio was running a successful primary challenge in the 2010 Senate race, and then after Crist lost that race, he switched to the Democratic Party. (Along the way, he taped some truly cringe-inducing commercials for a personal-injury-law firm: “Its website includes auto accidents, cruise ship injuries and dog bites.”)

Eight years ago, I wrote about how Crist had nearly completed a political transformation, imagining a scenario in which the Charlie Crist of 2010 traveled forward in time to campaign against the gubernatorial bid of the Charlie Crist of 2014. I ended the piece, “Amid flashes of light and intense wind, a second time portal opened, and the Charlie Crist of 2018 appeared, denouncing Crist 2014 for being ‘too centrist’ and ‘insufficiently progressive.’” Looking at the once-unthinkably far-left agenda Crist has today, I was off by four years. Apparently, Crist’s lone unbreakable principle is his firm belief that he should be governor.

Today’s Florida is not the almost-evenly divided swing state of 2000 legends; the purple state has turned redder and redder, and Democratic statewide wins are growing increasingly few and far between. Democrats literally haven’t won a governor’s race in Florida since the last century, in 1994. They haven’t won a Senate race since 2012. (You would think Republicans from coast to coast would want to study why that’s the case and try to see what lessons they could apply to their own states.)

As recently as 2017, Florida had 4.8 million registered Democrats, outnumbering the 4.5 million registered Republicans. As of last month, Florida now has 4.9 million registered Democrats and almost 5.2 million registered Republicans. That big shift toward Republicans in the Latino vote? That’s happening in Florida.

What particularly stings Florida Democrats is that, not that long ago, they thought the state’s shifting demographics were about the lead them to permanent victory conditions. People forget that in 2012, Barack Obama almost evenly split the Cuban-American vote in the state, 47 percent to Mitt Romney’s 50 percent. Obama won the state of Florida in both 2008 and 2012, and not getting walloped among the state’s Cuban-American community was a key factor in those wins. Many Florida Democrats convinced themselves that Cuban Americans were starting to vote like more Democratic-leaning groups of Latino Americans.

As Charlie Cooke summarized:

Through its insistence upon perpetual masking, its preference for neologisms such as “Latinx,” its relentless attempts to push radicalism on children, and its indifference to the South American communists whom many Floridians have fled, the contemporary Democratic Party may finally have done the impossible: For now, at least, it may have made Florida a safely red state.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 05, 2022, 11:14:11 AM
DeSantis has a tricky hand to play right now.   

Presumably he does not want to get in a food fight with Trump, yet he needs to preserve his own brand.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/desantis-criticizes-bidens-campaign-speech-as-disgusting_4709725.html?utm_source=China&utm_campaign=uschina-2022-09-05&utm_medium=email&est=j79eFVASvXgD0HW9zLo16BM9KWVBnjOjcrvomFHZXPj2wEOlfQ9zUuaE9VpNl%2FhLOeVV
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis to take out FL CAIR
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 08, 2022, 03:55:54 PM
https://www.meforum.org/63538/desantis-accuses-cair-of-deception-ousts-it-from?utm_source=sendinblue&utm_campaign=Extremist%20Roundup%202022-09-08&utm_medium=email
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on September 08, 2022, 04:45:04 PM
if Trump

asks DeSantis to run as VP

I would suggest he says NO

just wait till '28 if needed .

does not look at this time he could run against Trump
though long way off.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 09, 2022, 02:01:13 AM
First choice:

DeSantis.

Second choice:  DeSantis runs as Trump's VP.


Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis activates National Guard at State Prisons
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 12, 2022, 04:35:43 PM
ET
Gov. DeSantis Activates National Guard at Florida State Prisons
By Jack Phillips September 12, 2022



Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has activated the state National Guard in a bid to aid corrections officers amid staffing issues at prisons.

The Department of Corrections “is authorized to employ over 20,000 correctional and correctional probation officers, almost a quarter of all state employees,” the governor’s order states, noting that there’s currently a “severe shortage” of officers that “threatens the safety” of inmates, officers, and the public.

The state’s corrections agency said that National Guard members will be deployed as a supplemental measure to security posts at some institutions. They will be supervised by respective prison wardens or similar staff, the agency said.

“We think, as we continue to hire and reduce the stress on the compounds, the existing officers are going to want to stay because they’re not going to work that amount of overtime they’re currently working,” Department of Corrections Chief Financial Officer Mark Tallent told WPTV. “They’re going to have a better family life, be able to get out of the institution more. We definitely think we’re trending in the right direction.”

The Guard members won’t be expected to directly supervise inmates, according to DeSantis’s order.

“Members of the Guard have the training and capability to assist Florida’s correctional officers with certain duties, such as manning guard towers, perimeter patrols, and control stations, which will allow the correctional officers to concentrate on directly supervising and caring for inmates,” the Republican governor’s order reads.

Financial Incentives
Earlier this year, DeSantis approved a pay increase to recruit and retrain current corrections officers.

Florida National Guard Lt. Col. Peter Jennison told the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper that he expects all the Guard members who are assigned would volunteer for the prison assignments.

Tallent said that as many as 300 National Guard members would be deployed.

“We think we’ll be able to right-size ourselves by the end of the fiscal year,” he said.

Democrats in the state Legislature expressed concerns about DeSantis’s order. A leader within the Florida Democratic caucus said the Legislature has ignored funding of the Department of Corrections for years.

“Florida has ignored this agency and ignored this problem, and underfunded this agency for years,” Democrat House Minority Leader-designate Rep. Fentrice Driskell said on Sept. 9. “Now, it looks like the governor wants to activate the Florida National Guard, which will take people away from their homes, their families, and their jobs.”

Nonetheless, members of the Joint Legislative Budget Commission voted on Sept. 9 to approve sending Florida National Guard members to the prisons. The GOP and most Democrats supported the plan, with Sen. Audrey Gibson and Rep. Ramon Alexander opposing it.

Shortly after the vote, DeSantis activated the Guard via executive order, local media reported.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis activates National Guard at State Prisons
Post by: G M on September 12, 2022, 09:28:49 PM
Funny how after villifying law enforcement, now we can't fill positions.



ET
Gov. DeSantis Activates National Guard at Florida State Prisons
By Jack Phillips September 12, 2022



Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has activated the state National Guard in a bid to aid corrections officers amid staffing issues at prisons.

The Department of Corrections “is authorized to employ over 20,000 correctional and correctional probation officers, almost a quarter of all state employees,” the governor’s order states, noting that there’s currently a “severe shortage” of officers that “threatens the safety” of inmates, officers, and the public.

The state’s corrections agency said that National Guard members will be deployed as a supplemental measure to security posts at some institutions. They will be supervised by respective prison wardens or similar staff, the agency said.

“We think, as we continue to hire and reduce the stress on the compounds, the existing officers are going to want to stay because they’re not going to work that amount of overtime they’re currently working,” Department of Corrections Chief Financial Officer Mark Tallent told WPTV. “They’re going to have a better family life, be able to get out of the institution more. We definitely think we’re trending in the right direction.”

The Guard members won’t be expected to directly supervise inmates, according to DeSantis’s order.

“Members of the Guard have the training and capability to assist Florida’s correctional officers with certain duties, such as manning guard towers, perimeter patrols, and control stations, which will allow the correctional officers to concentrate on directly supervising and caring for inmates,” the Republican governor’s order reads.

Financial Incentives
Earlier this year, DeSantis approved a pay increase to recruit and retrain current corrections officers.

Florida National Guard Lt. Col. Peter Jennison told the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper that he expects all the Guard members who are assigned would volunteer for the prison assignments.

Tallent said that as many as 300 National Guard members would be deployed.

“We think we’ll be able to right-size ourselves by the end of the fiscal year,” he said.

Democrats in the state Legislature expressed concerns about DeSantis’s order. A leader within the Florida Democratic caucus said the Legislature has ignored funding of the Department of Corrections for years.

“Florida has ignored this agency and ignored this problem, and underfunded this agency for years,” Democrat House Minority Leader-designate Rep. Fentrice Driskell said on Sept. 9. “Now, it looks like the governor wants to activate the Florida National Guard, which will take people away from their homes, their families, and their jobs.”

Nonetheless, members of the Joint Legislative Budget Commission voted on Sept. 9 to approve sending Florida National Guard members to the prisons. The GOP and most Democrats supported the plan, with Sen. Audrey Gibson and Rep. Ramon Alexander opposing it.

Shortly after the vote, DeSantis activated the Guard via executive order, local media reported.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 13, 2022, 03:05:10 PM
Once again, DeSantis shows his real world executive chops.

Crisp call him "DeSatan" btw , , ,
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis sends illegals to Martha's Vineyard
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 15, 2022, 06:26:09 AM
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62911630?fbclid=IwAR1HrZSrhmWUAN4Tjrqh5OHTJ8c5y5GI7fD4SMMFpiCt-nQFKGKWWRnmU-I
Title: illegals to MV MASS
Post by: ccp on September 15, 2022, 02:14:02 PM
and the Martha's Vineyard elites are
furious:

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/fing-depraved-democrats-melt-down-after-desantis-flies-illegal-immigrants-to-marthas-vineyard/



Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis FTW!
Post by: G M on September 17, 2022, 08:07:03 AM
https://twitter.com/RealKyleMorris/status/1570873626710388738
Title: national guard called by Mass Gov. for the migrant "emergency"
Post by: ccp on September 17, 2022, 08:18:36 AM
https://nypost.com/2022/09/16/marthas-vineyard-migrants-sent-to-cape-cod-mass-calls-national-guard/

you know Obama et al got on the phone to the gov

use of NG

to make a point:

"we have the military apparatus on our side "

any thoughts?
Title: Re: national guard called by Mass Gov. for the migrant "emergency"
Post by: G M on September 17, 2022, 08:24:24 AM
https://nypost.com/2022/09/16/marthas-vineyard-migrants-sent-to-cape-cod-mass-calls-national-guard/

you know Obama et al got on the phone to the gov

use of NG

to make a point:

"we have the military apparatus on our side "

any thoughts?

The fake and gay military will put you into camps or shoot you if ordered to do so.

Plan accordingly.
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis bill to block ChiCom land buys next to bases in FL
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 22, 2022, 08:11:58 PM
https://dailycaller.com/2022/09/22/desantis-chinese-land-buyouts/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking&pnespid=pLM9BT1VZaYcg.DJ_CSwTJGWvAKqRItwfeW_wfNz80JmIMEp1nStMo2aaGKFVx.DAojOrk8e
Title: game on
Post by: ccp on September 23, 2022, 06:03:38 AM
Kushner bashes DeSantis

and promotes Donald:

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/09/22/kushner-on-desantis-migrants-flights-using-human-beings-as-political-pawns-very-troubling/

[while promoting his self promoting book]

he sounds more like an elite NY liberal here like his father
Title: Re: game on
Post by: G M on September 23, 2022, 07:49:08 AM
Exactly.


Kushner bashes DeSantis

and promotes Donald:

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2022/09/22/kushner-on-desantis-migrants-flights-using-human-beings-as-political-pawns-very-troubling/

[while promoting his self promoting book]

he sounds more like an elite NY liberal here like his father
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis on the real divide
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 23, 2022, 07:31:47 PM
Migrant Flights Obscure the Real DeSantis Divide
The governor has noted a historic shift that no political outrage will change.
Daniel Henninger hedcutBy Daniel HenningerFollow
Sept. 21, 2022 6:14 pm ET


Wonder Land: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has noted a historic shift that no political outrage will change. Images: AP/Zuma Press/AFP via Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly

What phenomenon of our time produces more falsity than any other? The list of contenders is long but we have a winner—political outrage. These days it surges by the minute. The past week produced faux political outrage for the record books when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis flew 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called it “almost monstrous,” adding, “I say that quite thoughtfully.” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre likened the governor to Guatemalan smugglers. Unsurpassable is a long piece by six CNN staffers that says flying 50 migrants to the Vineyard “has revived memories of strikingly similar tactics employed by southern segregationists 60 years ago.”

You probably didn’t notice that Gov. DeSantis did something else last week that has a lot more relevance to this country’s future. We’ll get to that but not before relating Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s view that the migrants being bused to her city from Texas are a “manufactured crisis” even as the federal government said that since January more than two million migrants have come illegally across the southern border in fiscal 2022.

Shortly before the Vineyard controversy, Gov. DeSantis delivered an interesting speech near Miami to a convocation of conservatives. Some called it a test drive of ideas for a presidential run, and it probably was. One DeSantis idea, though, should have caught the eye of anyone focused on the flow of U.S. history.

The governor described something he called a “Great American Exodus.” In short, he means the recent movement of U.S. population out of California and the North—primarily New York, New Jersey and Illinois—into states in the South and West. He says this shift has a “political character,” which he was happy to describe. Since the pandemic began, he said, “more adjusted gross income [moved] into the state of Florida than has ever moved into any one state over a similar time period in American history.”

For years, demographers have studied this population migration from North to South, a shift with significant implications for the economic health and political power of both regions.

In May, the Census Bureau released data noting a large departure from Northern cities between July 2020 and July 2021. The populations of San Francisco fell 6.3%, New York City 3.5%, Boston and Washington both 2.9%. The New York Post reported this week that, according to Florida driver’s-license registrations, 41,885 New Yorkers moved there this year.

More broadly, the Census Bureau reported in 2019 that “Florida had the most domestic inmovers, with 566,476 people moving from another state within the past year.” Meanwhile, “California had the most domestic outmovers, with 661,026 people moving to another state” in the previous year. Some movement has occurred inside state borders, for instance out of New York City to the suburbs or from Los Angeles and San Francisco to inland California counties. The “political character” point is that many cities administered for decades by liberal, and more recently progressive, Democrats are hemorrhaging population.

It’s not just the 1% fleeing high-tax states for lower taxes. Receiving little attention is the fact that black Americans are also moving south, reversing the Great Migration into the North during the 20th century.

Brookings Institution demographer William Frey details this in a September report. Describing what he calls “a virtual evacuation from many northern areas,” Mr. Frey writes the “movement is largely driven by younger, college-educated Black Americans, from both northern and western places of origin. They have contributed to the growth of the ‘New South,’ especially in Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina, as well as metropolitan regions such as Atlanta, Dallas, and Houston.”

Mr. Frey notes that these migrations to the South have increased black Americans’ political power there, much of it flowing to the Democratic Party. But an undeniable reality, emphasized by Gov. DeSantis, is that this movement is overwhelmingly driven by the prospect of greater economic opportunity.


Arguably the biggest boomtown in America is Miami, led by Republican Mayor Francis X. Suarez and described recently in this newspaper. A primary reason, according to the article, is Miami’s “friendlier business climate.”

You’ve probably noticed that the mayors of New York, Chicago and Washington say they lack resources to provide for several thousand migrants. I believe it. Decades of unrestrained public spending have turned their budgets into a ball and chain. Many once-great American population centers are tapped out.

Here’s the kicker, literally: Last week, 13 treasurers from Democratic states including California and Illinois plus New York City’s comptroller issued a letter attacking West Virginia, Idaho, Oklahoma, Texas and Florida for resisting public-pension investments tied to environmental, social and governance sustainability goals. The letter accuses these states of acting on behalf of “corporate interests.” What a spectacle—Democratic state treasurers denouncing corporations that are the bedrock of their tax base. Or were.

His critics call Gov. DeSantis “divisive.” The real DeSantis Divide, however, is about public-policy choices that are causing historic losses in the North and gains in the South and West. No amount of political outrage will change that.
Title: Trump getting jealous
Post by: ccp on September 24, 2022, 10:37:46 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-and-desantis-once-allies-now-in-simmering-rivalry-with-2024-nearing/ar-AA12bTSD

I still say DeSantis would be hurting himself if he were to run on. ticket with Trump

if wasn't 100% on his knees for 4 yrs

trump will turn on him like he always does.

DeSantis has a better future then that

That is why Kushneck had to criticize DeSantis sending illegals to MV . Trump team could not give him credit for it since it was so successful - and trump could not take the glory

IMHO

DeSantis for Prez!! '24


Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 24, 2022, 11:26:33 AM
"That is why Kushneck had to criticize DeSantis sending illegals to MV . Trump team could not give him credit for it since it was so successful - and trump could not take the glory"

I was on the road and did not see this.  Is there a convenient citation?
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on September 24, 2022, 11:38:34 AM
" I was on the road and did not see this.  Is there a convenient citation?"

please
see ccp post from

september 23rd
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 24, 2022, 11:45:21 AM
Thank you.

Kushner is such a cunt, though I must say he is coming across very well now in his TV appearances pushing his book etc.  Very much looks like he is up to something.
Title: lawfare on DeSantis
Post by: ccp on October 03, 2022, 03:53:11 PM
https://www.yahoo.com/news/story-behind-desantis-migrant-flights-121036625.html

he transported migrants to the Siberia that is MV
without legal permission

what?

who was he supposed to get "legal permission from ?"

Mayorkas?

DNC ?

DC Shysters
Title: word from Florida
Post by: ccp on October 06, 2022, 02:36:11 PM
is DeSantis is doing a great job

with Ian.  :-D

suck off MSM!   :wink:

and without the nasty tweets !
Title: Ron backs anti trump candidate in Colorado
Post by: ccp on October 24, 2022, 11:00:13 AM
https://www.yahoo.com/news/garland-hold-news-conference-significant-164441880.html

why because he could win

Trump response "big mistake!"   :roll:

Title: DeSantis in NY for Zeldin
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 30, 2022, 06:19:20 PM
Ron DeSantis Stumps for Lee Zeldin

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis campaigns alongside New York Republican gubernatorial hopeful Rep. Lee Zeldin (R., N.Y.) at a Get Out The Vote Rally in Hauppauge, N.Y., October 29, 2022. (David Dee Delgado/Getty Images)
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By DAN MCLAUGHLIN
October 30, 2022 12:12 AM
Lee Zeldin’s campaign for governor of New York now has a classic puncher’s chance: His is still very much an underdog race, with Kathy Hochul still holding a seven-point lead in the poll average, but with nine days to go, the national tailwind at his back, and fresh from capitalizing on gaffes by Hochul at their lone debate Tuesday night, Zeldin is still in the game. Republicans are not sending their frontline talent to help dead-in-the-water candidates like Darren Bailey in Illinois, Geoff Diehl in Massachusetts, or Dan Cox in Maryland. In fact, you know who is campaigning in Maryland the night before the election? Joe Biden.

But for Zeldin, they are rolling out the big guns. In heavily upscale suburban Westchester County north of the Bronx, maybe the single most critical swing county in this race, Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin is campaigning for Zeldin on Monday. That’s a change from 2014, when Rob Astorino ran a respectable but obviously doomed race against Andrew Cuomo, and couldn’t get Chris Christie to campaign for him. Meanwhile, Hochul is calling in Hillary Clinton — maybe the most tone-deaf choice possible even in New York — and First Lady Jill Biden is campaigning for New York congressional candidates upstate.

Then, there’s one of the few Republican stars bigger than Youngkin: Ron DeSantis. DeSantis has been intensely focused on his own re-election campaign — he was noticeably absent from Republican primary fights except in his own state — and he was at the Florida-Georgia game earlier today, but one of the luxuries of a double-digit poll lead is that you can afford to spend a little time helping to build your party’s team. DeSantis planned to come to a Zeldin fundraiser in late August, but had to cancel to attend a funeral for a former member of his protective detail killed in the line of duty. This time, he made it. I drove out to see both Zeldin and DeSantis live on the stump.

The event was behind Zeldin’s campaign headquarters in Hauppauge, which is geographically in the center of Long Island. If Youngkin is the right man for Westchester County crowds, DeSantis is the right man for the Island, which is not the fully-Trumpy areas of economically-desolate upstate, but is stocked with cops, firemen, nurses, and other blue-collar types. It was a cold night, dropping into the mid-40s by the time of the rally, and it was only publicly announced yesterday, but there were thousands in attendance — I’m bad at counting crowds, but an hour before the event, there was a nearly half-mile line to get in. There were people packed behind the press riser where I was stationed with some two dozen members of the media.

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A visit from DeSantis was treated as a big deal by the New York Republicans. We were treated to speeches by Suffolk County GOP Chairman Jesse Garcia, state chairman Nick Langworthy (who is also running for Congress in New York’s 23d district, but could spare the time from a district Donald Trump carried by 17 points in 2020), Nassau County executive Bruce Blakeman (who was elected in the red wave that swept the Island in 2021), Zeldin’s running mate, NYPD Deputy Inspector Alison Esposito (not to be confused with former NYPD detective Anthony D’Esposito, who is the House candidate in my district on the Island), and then finally Zeldin and DeSantis.

This was a very law enforcement-heavy and pro-cop, anti-crime crowd. Langworthy and Blakeman pulled no punches in their warmup speeches: Langworthy said of the supporters of New York’s bail reform laws, “there’s blood on their hands,” and Blakeman urged the crowd to “get down to business throwing out those government officials who masked our kids…and sent our senior citizens back to nursing homes to die!” Esposito zeroed in on Hochul’s big gaffe at the debate, when Zeldin pressed her to talk about actually locking up criminals, and she responded, “I don’t know why that’s so important to you.”


Langworthy also set what would become the central theme of the night, repeated by both Zeldin and DeSantis: that Zeldin would be “our own Ron DeSantis” for New York. A skeptic might say that New York is too ungovernable for a governor in the Ron DeSantis mold to have a similar impact, and it is surely true that getting the Democrat-run state legislature on board would be a harder slog, but New Yorkers of a certain age remember being told the same thing about an ungovernable state and city before Rudy Giuliani became mayor of New York City in 1993 and George Pataki was elected governor of the state in 1994 — leading to positive changes in the state’s day-to-day life as dramatic as any in American political experience in the past three decades.

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Kathy Hochul’s Underdog Story
The two headliners are, at first glance, quite similar. DeSantis, at 44, is the nation’s youngest governor; Zeldin, at 42, would supplant him for that title if elected. Both served in Iraq; both have law degrees and have been prosecutors. Both were elected as Tea Party congressmen, then served together in the House during the Trump era and adapted themselves accordingly. Both are fathers of two daughters, although Zeldin’s girls are teenagers and DeSantis also has a son. Zeldin has survived leukemia; DeSantis has seen his wife through breast cancer. DeSantis is an Italian Catholic in the South, Zeldin a Jewish Republican, making both of them outsiders of a sort. DeSantis was an eyewitness to the congressional baseball shooting, having passed and spoken with the assassin on his way out of the practice; Zeldin survived an attempted stabbing while giving a speech upstate during this campaign.

DeSantis played up the parallels. His speech settled into a recurring callout: Here’s what I did in Florida, New York didn’t do it, but Lee Zeldin will. They also offered bookends: Zeldin talked about why people are leaving New York, and DeSantis talked about why New Yorkers are coming to Florida. Those themes recurred across issues: vaccine and mask mandates, taxes, crime, parents’ rights in education, rogue prosecutors who won’t enforce the law. Zeldin emphasized, in terms that could have come straight from a DeSantis stump speech, that “A parent has a fundamental right to control the upbringing of their children, and they do not relinquish that right when they send their children off to school.” DeSantis argued that New York has twice the budget of Florida with 3 million fewer people, worse infrastructure, higher debt, and worse educational results. He talked about rebuilding a bridge to Pine Island in three days after the latest hurricane, and offered to sell oceanfront real estate in Arizona to anyone who thinks Hochul could do the same thing in New York. (The Second Avenue subway line began opening stops in 2017, but is still a decade from completion; it was first proposed in 1920).

But there were also noticeable contrasts in style. Zeldin is a little bit nebbishy, and comfortable with self-deprecating humor. He talked about the importance of humility. He noted that he is the fourth-ranking person in his own household and would stay that way if elected. He contrasted this with Hochul calling herself the “mother” of the state, and calling voters her “apostles.” “I promise you, if elected governor, at no point will I refer to myself as the father of New York’s 62 counties.” He also offered a humorous riff on how he wasn’t sure he’d have the courage to show up today after actor Mark Ruffalo made a video attacking him. “And then Leonardo diCaprio retweeted it! I was crushed!”

DeSantis doesn’t do self-deprecating; he radiates intensity and swagger. In fact, his entire presentation on the stump is a testament to the power of narrative. DeSantis isn’t naturally charming or funny. Crowds warm to him because he offers them a story of accomplishment and victory, backed by specific fights he had and won, specific things he did. He rarely rails with futility against unstoppable forces; like Giuliani 30 years ago, his message is this can be done, I did this, I fought and won, come with me if you want to win. For the Republican voters of Long Island, desperate to be heard, this is a powerful message. I was at the Mets-Padres game when Jacob deGrom took the mound, the wounded ace at home with the team down to an elimination game, and the mood tonight was much the same combination of desperate determination. Langworthy set the stakes: “This is our last stand in the State of New York.” If DeSantis runs nationally, he won’t be selling the sizzle, he’ll be selling the steak to people who are hungry for it.

In what might in some quarters be a nod to the next presidential race, DeSantis emphasized in his endorsement of Zeldin how nice it is to vote for somebody who is not just a lesser evil:


He stuck the landing, too:


 
Title: God is for Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 08, 2022, 06:31:14 AM
https://twitter.com/CaseyDeSantis/status/1588539069243473924?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1588539069243473924%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=nytresource%3A%2F%2Fnyt-local-asset-host
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on November 10, 2022, 03:33:32 AM
Here's how you avoid runoffs and cheating, DeSantis won by more than a million and a half votes, in a state that was evenly divided in 2000 and in his first Governor election in 2018. Worthy opponent, Crist is a former Gov of Florida.

Governor · Florida
From The Associated Press
Ron DeSantis wins · 99% reporting ·Associated Press

Ron DeSantis
Republican Party
59.4%
4,609,110

Charlie Crist
Democratic Party
40%
3,102,136
Title: NRO: The DeSantis Difference
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 11, 2022, 04:47:57 PM
The DeSantis Difference

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks at a press conference in Daytona Beach, Fla., November 22, 2021.(Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
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By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY
November 11, 2022 6:30 AM
His approach to the Covid crisis was a triumph of conservative statesmanship.
In the 2022 midterms, Florida was another country entirely. While Republicans underperformed in much of the nation, Ron DeSantis and Marco Rubio posted absolutely enormous wins against their Democratic opponents. DeSantis’s win — much larger than the generous one expected of him — immediately changed the conversation about 2024. His own supporters began chanting, hilariously, “Two More Years” at his victory party. GOP megadonors began declaring their interest in him. And former president Donald Trump began raging and sulking about him.

When was it that DeSantis’s brand diverged so much from Donald Trump’s? It is being presently forgotten. But if you had predicted four years ago that Republicans closely associated with Donald Trump’s brand were getting massacred in the 2022 elections, you would have assumed DeSantis was the first goner, having only squeaked by in 2018, and having done those ads that seemed to have no other purpose than to impress the Donald himself.

Instead DeSantis triumphed with a 20-point win.

I have cast about among friends and colleagues for their answer to why. They cited his competent governance. The fact that he became the locus of hostile media attention for a long time, but thrived. That he was organized and tactically sound. He had an unerring sense of where the electorate was, and how much room for maneuver he had. For instance, he occupies the governor’s mansion of the most pro-choice red state. And so his position on abortion, restricting it only after 15 weeks’ gestation, was more liberal than the policies pursued by Ohio or Texas. But on the issues related to transgenderism and children, he could pursue aggressive policies, knowing that he had the backing of 70 to 80 percent of the electorate. One friend said Trump was all talk, but DeSantis was a culture warrior with substance.

These are all important factors. But the truth is simpler and more profound. DeSantis understood his job.

In the speech he delivered to the National Conservatism Conference in September, he bragged about his state’s success due to his approach on Covid. Florida had prioritized keeping schools open. And businesses open, too. The results in test scores, economic recovery, and in-migration told a very obvious story. At the conference and in many speeches since, these are all huge applause lines.

While DeSantis says that he championed freedom, in Florida he did so in a way that wasn’t strictly ideological. In fact, he earned objections from libertarians and some conservatives when he banned businesses from instituting vaccine passports for entry and from instituting vaccine mandates for employees. But he explained that his job as a statesman (and yes, he used that word) was not to listen only to the experts in narrow fields, but to “harmonize” the diverse interests of the state he governs.

The approach DeSantis took had the insight that the new Covid-era restrictions were rapidly altering social relations between enterprises and customers, and between employers and employees — for the worse. Only where the data were extremely compelling — as in the need to protect the people in nursing homes — would the state take drastic action that disrupted normal life.

If you can describe the ideology of DeSantis’s approach, it was one of conserving the social fabric. You were free to be as careful as you wanted to be, but you weren’t free to change the social order. In Florida, you could have business meetings unmasked. In Florida, you weren’t going to be subjected to a permanent, or even temporary, biomedical security state that threatened your job. Just as before, you could expect your private medical decisions to remain your business, and not that of your human-resources department. Your kids could go to school, and socialize, and see their speech therapist unmasked. You could be who you are in Florida: a businessman, a kid on a softball team, a hypochondriac, or a vax-skeptic.

DeSantis’s approach seemed outrageous to some: He was defying expert advice. But it had a small-l libertarian humility to it, an understanding that a crisis will pass. This form of leadership had the effect of tempering the moral manias that afflicted so many institutions and cities across the country. That’s what attracted so many hundreds of thousands of people to Florida the past two and half years. And Florida’s success likely inspired other states to give up on these alterations to the social order earlier than they otherwise would have.

DeSantis is going to get absolutely Olympian praise on the right in the coming weeks and months, for all sorts of reasons. Some of them true, some of them mercenary, some of them just because he’s the best option not named Donald J. Trump. But his approach to the Covid crisis was a triumph of conservative statesmanship. Which is to say, it was anti-ideological, and by being so, it served well the diverse, strange, and prosperous society that we call Florida.
Title: Fed judge blocks DeSantis' WOKE ACT
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 19, 2022, 03:31:24 PM

Judge Blocks Florida’s Anti-Woke Law At Colleges And Universities
Ron DeSantis Holds Election Night Event In Tampa
(Photo by Octavio Jones/Getty Images)

Daily Caller News Foundation logo


A federal judge on Thursday blocked Florida’s “Stop W.O.K.E. Act,” signed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, from being enforced at colleges and universities.

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker ruled Thursday that the legislation, which prohibits faculty from teaching race in a way that might induce “guilt, anguish or other psychological distress,” cannot be enforced at higher education institutions calling it “positively dystopian.” The ruling comes after two lawsuits by a Florida A&M professor and University of South Florida student and professor who argued the act was unconstitutional. (RELATED: Gov. DeSantis Signs ‘Parental Rights’ Bill Into Law)

“Striking at the heart of ‘open-mindedness and critical inquiry,’ the State of Florida has taken over the ‘marketplace of ideas’ to suppress disfavored viewpoints and limit where professors may shine their light on eight specific ideas,” Walker wrote. “And Defendants’ argument permits zero restraint on the State of Florida’s power to expand its limitation on viewpoints to any idea it chooses.”

Under the law, professors who teach race in a way that induces guilt or blame in the classroom could be fired or penalized. Professors accused of violating the law would be reviewed by faculty members and could be fired if given an “unsatisfactory review”

DeSantis signed the “Stop W.O.K.E Act” into law in April, and it became effective on July 1. Walker blocked another aspect of the law in August, which prohibited businesses from implementing race-related training programs.

“The Stop W.O.K.E. Act protects the open exchange of ideas by prohibiting teachers or employers who hold agency over others from forcing discriminatory concepts on students as part of classroom instruction or on employees as a condition of maintaining employment,” DeSantis’ office said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “An ‘open-minded and critical’ environment necessitates that one is free from discrimination. We intend to appeal.”

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a campaign rally at the Cheyenne Saloon on November 7, 2022 in Orlando, Florida. DeSantis faces former Democratic Gov. Charlie Crist in tomorrow's general election. (Photo by Octavio Jones/Getty Images)
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a campaign rally at the Cheyenne Saloon on November 7, 2022 in Orlando, Florida. DeSantis faces former Democratic Gov. Charlie Crist in tomorrow’s general election. (Photo by Octavio Jones/Getty Images)

In his opinion, Walker quoted “1984” by George Orwell.

“‘It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen,’ and the powers in charge of Florida’s public university system have declared the State has unfettered authority to muzzle its professors in the name of ‘freedom,’” Walker wrote
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 22, 2022, 05:41:30 AM
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting in Las Vegas, Nev., on Nov. 19, 2022. (Wade Vandervort/AFP via Getty Images)
REPUBLICANS
Florida Offers ‘Blueprint for Success’: DeSantis Says at Major GOP Gathering in Las Vegas
By Rita Li November 21, 2022 Updated: November 21, 2022biggersmaller Print

0:00
4:03



1

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential presidential hopeful in 2024, said during the weekend that the midterm results show that the Sunshine State presents a “blueprint for success” for the Republican Party looking forward.

“What the election results in Florida show is that Florida really has a blueprint for success,” DeSantis told the influential crowd of Republican leaders, donors, and activists at the annual leadership meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition on Nov. 19.

“What we’ve shown in Florida is you can stand up for truth, you can stand on principle, you can fight the woke elite, and you can win,” DeSantis said during his 25-minute speech, which generates the most applause including multiple standing ovations.

Beginning a day earlier, the Las Vegas gathering was seen as the first major GOP cattle call in the next White House race, featuring about 10 possible presidential candidates in the 2024 GOP nomination race, such as former President Donald Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, most of whom addressed in person.

Despite securing one of the biggest wins in the midterm elections, rising GOP star DeSantis declined to address a 2024 speculation. Trump has recently taken to calling the governor “Ron DeSanctimonious,” and warned that DeSantis running in 2024 would be “a mistake.”

The Florida governor, who won the reelection with a double-digit lead over his Democrat rival, began his Saturday night speech by underscoring the fresh landslide victory and the Republican leadership across his state.

“We added four new Republican congressmen to the U.S. House of Representatives from the state of Florida,” DeSantis said after taking the stage. “We secured supermajorities in the Florida legislature, the most Republicans we’ve ever had in Florida history.”


“We dominated with independent voters, we secured record margins with Hispanic voters, we swept the suburbs all across the state of Florida. Our margins with rural voters were gravity-defying, we won by double digits, Miami Dade County. We won for the first time in almost 40 years, Palm Beach County.”

After taking office in 2018, DeSantis rolled out policy initiatives during his first term as a governor, such as fighting against woke indoctrination and the Disney corporation’s political activism.

“It is wrong to teach a kid that they were born in the wrong body. It is wrong to teach them that gender is a choice,” he reiterated, saying common sense is in “very short supply” nowadays.

DeSantis said a leader should never “stick your finger in the wind and try to contort yourself to wherever public opinion may be trending on one given moment,” but set out a vision, execute it, and deliver concrete results.

“And when you do that, the people respond,” the governor continued. “When you show people you’re willing to fight for them, they will walk over broken glass barefoot to come vote for you and that’s exactly what they did to me.”

“What we’ve shown is people respond to strong leadership,” he spotlighted.

After riding the endorsement of then-President Trump in the contested 2018 gubernatorial race, DeSantis barely won what was known as a swing state for many years.

More conservatives rallied behind DeSantis in the wake of the November midterms, as Republicans underperform expectations across the country outside of several states like Florida and New York. Some Republicans blame Trump, though a number of others noted he was not on the ballot. Some said DeSantis’s big win portended a strong result if he runs in 2024.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on November 22, 2022, 08:39:40 AM
"Some Republicans blame Trump, though a number of others noted he was not on the ballot. "

I dunno
every Dem in the country put Trump front and center 24/7
so his name was not on the ballot in writing but it was on the minds to some extent with every voter

so to say trump was not an issue is ridiculous


Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on November 22, 2022, 10:05:12 AM
"to say trump was not an issue is ridiculous"

   
Yes, Trump was on the ballot.  Every exit poll confirms he was a major motivator for opposition.  The test of it, had Republicans swept with his candidates, Oz, Masters, Bolduc, Walker, etc.  who would have taken credit?
Title: Musk for Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 26, 2022, 03:16:07 PM
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/elon-musk-says-hed-back-desantis-in-2024-presidential-race/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=29812066
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis takes on the Goolag Fascism of Apple
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 29, 2022, 04:32:35 PM
https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/ron-desantis-apple-elon-musk?utm_source=lwc-trending&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Afternoon%20Trending%20Curated%20Test%202022-11-29
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis vs. ESG
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 02, 2022, 05:47:44 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/florida-desantis-yank-billions-in-investments-from-woke-blackrock-over-esg-investing/ar-AA14Ny27?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=455012db531e4ba380cb261eae01306e
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 02, 2022, 01:26:41 PM
second

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/florida-republicans-expected-to-reverse-decision-stripping-disney-of-autonomy-over-walt-disney-world-property/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=29869428
Title: NR: Let's go with Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 02, 2022, 03:40:59 PM
third


The Case for Putting It All on Ron DeSantis
By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY
December 2, 2022 6:30 AM

Do I need to see more of Trump? No. Nor Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, or Mike Pompeo.

After the shortest possible amount of time, and the minimal amount of evidence, I’ve seen enough. I’m ready to bet the future of the Republican Party on Ron DeSantis. Let’s just get on with Ron.

The case is simple. While Donald Trump’s 2016 candidacy was remarkably efficient at attracting the precise number of voters it needed in the precise states to narrowly win the Electoral College, the Republican Party under Trump has repelled voters faster than it attracted them. It posted losses among white women and white men that could not be offset by gains among Hispanic voters. Ron DeSantis is the only figure in the Republican Party who has substantially expanded the appeal of the GOP in this recent era.

Donald Trump has unique attributes as a candidate that are useless to deny. He has star power. He is genuinely funny. And, most hateful to admit, his moral deficiencies come with political advantages. His shamelessness allows him to overpromise to every possible voting bloc. The intensely polarized dynamic he can establish with his establishment antagonists — Donald contra mundum — is intoxicating to Trump’s devoted supporters.

Trump is also profoundly unpopular outside of the Republican Party. He unites, outrages, and mobilizes the Democratic Party and many independents against him, the same way that Hillary Clinton united the Republican Party and many independents against her. And there are tremendous downsides to a Trump sequel. The chaotic nature of his first administration is likely to be exacerbated in a second. And he will not be eligible to run again in 2028. He will be nearly as old as Joe Biden was when he was elected.

The case against having an overcrowded field of underwhelming candidates for the Republican nomination is obvious. The effect is to diminish everyone. And the result will be to advantage Donald Trump, who starts with universal name recognition and all that star power.

Hundreds of thousands of people moved to Florida during Ron DeSantis’s first term as governor. They did so because DeSantis made a different choice on how to handle Covid-19, different from the establishment, and even from Donald Trump. Not all of these people were Republicans when they sought refuge in Florida, but the evidence on the voter-registration rolls suggests that many have become Republicans in Florida. DeSantis’s strong encouragement for schools to open benefited Florida students and won him fans nationwide, particularly among suburban moms who hated school closures, masked developmental therapies for their children, and the hasty imposition of Covid-19 vaccine mandates.

DeSantis was the figure in this era who made the Republican emphasis on removing the heavy hand of government appealing to entirely new groups of voters. Anecdotally, I know many Hillary 2016 voters who are all on board for DeSantis in 2024. Some were on the crunchier, skeptical left. Others were in what you might call the Joe Rogan middle. Public-health conformism and errors during the pandemic drove them to the political right. Why? Because of figures such as DeSantis. The cultural fights he has picked on education and gender ideology speak to their concerns. He is a conservative statesman who understands that present emergencies should not impel us to rashly alter ways of life that exist for a reason. That’s why he is already as effective a fund-raiser in the party as Donald Trump is.

And then there is the most obvious reason to bet on DeSantis. He can unite the Republican Party. The party may disagree deeply about trade, the rate and type of immigration that is useful, and foreign policy. But most Republicans seem to be able to agree on him.

He has a deep appeal to Trump voters who appreciate how DeSantis has taken up Trump’s mantle against the media and even big “woke” corporations. He appeals to anti-Trump voters, who see in him a bridge from the party as Trump re-created it — and a future where they aren’t embarrassed to pull the lever for Republicans. His political success compels Republicans to trust his instincts. His competence reassures independents.

Do I need to see more of Trump? No. Nor Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, or Mike Pompeo. I don’t want 18 months of drama. Just pencil in Ron and move on.
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis busts a slick move
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 14, 2022, 07:53:38 AM
https://redstate.com/joesquire/2022/12/14/desantis-hits-trump-where-hes-weakest-without-mentioning-trump-at-all-n673477
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis-- freedom blueprint
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 20, 2022, 08:27:02 AM
https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/ron-desantis-freedom-blueprint?utm_source=lwc-newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=LWC-Newsletter%202022-12-20
Title: Prepare for DeScovery!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 23, 2022, 10:49:18 AM
FLORIDA TO PFIZER: PREPARE FOR DeSCOVERY… Florida Supreme Court Approves Ron DeSantis’ Grand Jury To Investigate Pharma Companies

The Florida Supreme Court approved GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis’ request to convene a grand jury to investigate any wrongdoing related to the Covid-19 vaccines.

DeSantis called for the investigation in a Dec. 13 petition to the court, which goes through claims made by pharmaceutical companies and government officials about how covid-19 vaccines could “reduce the spread of disease.”

The petition also goes into detail about alleged vaccine-induced myocarditis among males aged 18-39 in particular, based on Florida Department of Health figures, according to the petition.

“The pharmaceutical industry has a notorious history of misleading the public for financial gain. Questions have been raised regarding the veracity of the representations made by the pharmaceutical manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines, particularly with respect to transmission, prevention, efficacy, and safety. An investigation is warranted to determine whether the pharmaceutical industry has engaged in fraudulent practices,” the petition states.

It focuses on Covid-19 manufacturers Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, the companies’ executives and other public health organizations who promoted the vaccines in Florida, the petition shows.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 30, 2022, 09:08:54 AM
https://dailycaller.com/2022/12/29/desantis-covid-response-pfizer-moderna-vaccines-never-trumpers/?utm_medium=email&pnespid=uLxrGCZIM7hL2_HEviykFJ.WoR_1WJ1rN.i2me9pqEVm_qC4vqpTiRhpEMQPVmsho_rCMY1M
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis, second inaugural
Post by: DougMacG on January 04, 2023, 09:49:00 AM
Calling Florida a “promised land of sanity” in a sea of cities being destroyed by woke ideology, DeSantis noted that “Many of these cities and states have embraced faddish ideology at the expense of enduring principles. They have harmed public safety by coddling criminals and attacking law enforcement. They have imposed unreasonable burdens on taxpayers to finance unfathomable levels of public spending. They have harmed education by subordinating the interests of students and parents to partisan interest groups.”

“They have imposed medical authoritarianism in the guise of pandemic mandates and restrictions that lack a scientific basis. [applause] This bizarre, but prevalent, ideology that permeates these policy measures purports to act in the name of justice for the marginalized, but it frowns upon American institutions, it rejects merit and achievement, and it advocates identity essentialism,” said DeSantis.

The crowd went wild when he declared: “We reject this woke ideology! We seek normalcy, not philosophical lunacy! We will not allow reality, facts, and truth to become optional. We will never surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die!”
   - via PJMedia
Title: Byron York
Post by: ccp on January 04, 2023, 11:20:15 AM
Contrast DC Repubs vs Desantis :

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/in-dc-and-tallahassee-a-split-screen-moment-for-the-republican-party
Title: Gov. DeSantis shakes up Woke college board
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 07, 2023, 08:07:15 PM
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/desantis-shakes-up-leadership-of-woke-florida-college-appoints-conservative-majority/?bypass_key=NWdHR2tLNHRQRy9LSnlHZHpaMkdQZz09OjpjVEpLYWpSWWVHOVBNMFZuV0c5c016ZE9WazlGZHowOQ%3D%3D?utm_source%3Demail&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=30174299&utm_source=Sailthru
Title: Gov. DeSantis seeks to ban Chinese entities from purchasing FL property
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 12, 2023, 12:32:02 PM
DeSantis Seeks to Ban China-Based Entities From Purchasing Florida Property
By Andrew Thornebrooke
January 11, 2023Updated: January 12, 2023

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is considering a move to ban Chinese entities from purchasing property in the state because of the economic and security risks posed by  China’s communist regime.

“If you look at the Chinese Communist Party, they’ve been very active throughout the Western Hemisphere in gobbling up land and investing in different things,” DeSantis said during a press conference on Jan. 10.

“And, you know, when they have interests that are opposed to ours, and you’ve seen how they’ve wielded their authority … it is not in the best interests of Florida to have the Chinese Communist Party owning farmland, owning land close to military bases.”

The remarks follow warnings from security experts and lawmakers that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, is seeking to purchase strategic parcels of land throughout the United States from which it can conduct espionage or otherwise sabotage U.S. national security interests.

In recent years, Chinese land purchases in Texas and North Dakota, which both were situated near U.S. military bases, raised alarm among locals and policymakers in state and federal governments.

DeSantis said that the CCP has “taken a much more Marxist–Leninist turn” under current Party leader Xi Jinping and suggested that communist China is now a “hostile nation.”

“We do not need to have CCP influence in Florida’s economy,” he said.

Chinese investors purchased more than $6 billion in U.S. real estate between March 2021 and March 2022, according to the National Association of Realtors, making it the largest foreign buyer in terms of dollars spent.

Florida has been at the center of that purchasing binge, with 24 percent of all foreign property purchases in the nation occurring there. The state with the next highest amount of foreign purchases was California, which accounted for 11 percent.

DeSantis described the CCP’s influence in U.S. society as “very insidious” and, to that end, said that he’s not only concerned with the CCP seeking out farmland, but also wanted to terminate its access to residential properties.

“Why would you want them buying residential developments and things like that?” he said. “I don’t want them owning subdivisions and things like that.”

While outrage over the issue has been widespread in recent months, there have been relatively few concrete actions taken to curb the buying of U.S. land by CCP-aligned organizations.

Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) introduced legislation in November 2022 that would “prohibit the purchase of public or private agricultural land in the United States by foreign nationals associated with the Government of the People’s Republic of China.”

Likewise, Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and Rick Crawford (R-Ark.) introduced legislation to improve national security by “preventing foreign adversaries from taking any ownership or control of the United States agriculture industry.”

There may be some movement on the issue. The House voted this week to establish a select committee to investigate issues related to the strategic competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party. That effort as well could help to shed light on the risk posed by CCP front companies that seek toscoop up U.S. land.

Still, there is the problem of identifying which companies are acting on behalf of the CCP, an issue that DeSantis said would need to be addressed to make any ban effective and fair.

“The issue is going to be, obviously, if someone comes in and buys, it’s not the CCP that’s signing that,” DeSantis said. “These are holding companies … So you have to structure that in a way that will effectively police it.”
Title: Trump will "handle" DeSantis if he runs
Post by: ccp on January 17, 2023, 07:19:06 AM

In his usual petty obnoxious fashion taking credit
for another's success, and making it about himself and his ego rather then what is good for the country and us :

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-possibility-ron-desantis-running-081608179.html

I don't want to relive Trump again ..     Boy I hope I don't "have to" vote for him.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 18, 2023, 06:41:25 AM
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/desantis-ap-african-american-studies-program-violates-florida-law/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=30282578
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis pushes to ban vaxx mandates
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 18, 2023, 03:42:50 PM
https://www.oann.com/newsroom/desantis-pushes-for-permanent-covid-changes/
Title: NR: DeSantis right to block FL African American Studies course
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 24, 2023, 03:42:07 PM
DeSantis Is Right on African-American Studies

Florida governor Ron DeSantis speaks in a neighborhood impacted by Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Fla., October 5, 2022.(Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)
By RICH LOWRY
January 24, 2023 6:30 AM

With the state of American historical and civic knowledge in near collapse, who thinks high-school students need to be brushing up on ‘Black Queer Studies’?

Florida governor Ron DeSantis stands accused of a long parade of horribles to which has now been added a new count — allegedly opposing the teaching of African-American history.

Florida rejected the College Board’s pilot Advanced Placement African American Studies course, and the decision has been treated in progressive quarters like the curricular equivalent of George Wallace standing in the schoolhouse door.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called the state’s decision “incomprehensible.” DeSantis wants to “block,” according to Jean-Pierre, “the study of Black Americans.” She noted, ominously, “These types of actions aren’t new, especially from what we’re seeing from Florida, sadly.”

Florida state senator Shevrin Jones, a Democrat, said the rejection of the course amounts to a “whitewash” of American history. Jones maintains that “we’re back at square one, seeing that we once again have to defend ourselves to be legitimate in America.”

Never mind that there’s obviously a difference between objecting to the ideological content of a pilot course that hasn’t yet been adopted and erasing the history of African Americans as such.

This is the typical game of pretending that the only way to teach the history of African Americans is through the tendentious political lens favored by the Left.

When red states push back against critical race theory, its proponents make it sound as if students will, as a consequence, never learn about the Transatlantic slave trade, the 13th Amendment, or Frederick Douglass.

This is preposterous. No reasonable person opposes teaching American history fully and truthfully. (In Florida, the controversial “Stop WOKE Act” itself stipulates that instructors should teach the history of African peoples, the Middle Passage, the experience of slavery, abolition, and the effects of segregation and other forms of discrimination.)

The problem is when the curriculum is used as an ideological weapon to inculcate a distorted, one-sided worldview, and here, Florida has the College Board dead to rights.

The College Board hasn’t released the pilot curriculum publicly, but, as conservative writer Stanley Kurtz and a publication called the Florida Standard have documented, it really goes off the rails when it addresses contemporary issues. The curriculum presents the Black Lives Matter and reparations movements favorably and recommends the writings of a clutch of writers on the left, from Robin D. G. Kelley to Michelle Alexander, without rejoinder.

Bias aside, with the state of American historical and civic knowledge in near collapse, who thinks high-school students need to be brushing up on “Black Queer Studies”? The curriculum explains that this topic “explores the concept of queer color critique, grounded in Black feminism and intersectionality, as a Black studies lens that shifts sexuality studies towards racial analysis.”

Surely, if anyone wants to marinate in this dreck, he or she can wait to do it in college, which specializes in wasting the time of students and spreading ridiculous cant and lies.

This is the more fundamental point. Such “studies” programs — African-American, women’s, queer, etc. — are intellectually corrupt and inherently biased at the university level and should be kept far away from the realm of K–12 public education.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that an AP curriculum developed with the input of practitioners of African-American studies at the university level would contain all the same perversities and warped ideas.

Florida should be commended for saying “no,” and other states that care about sound education should do the same.

African-American history is American history. It should be taught — and has been — as an inherent part of the American story. Only when we are confident that all students know that story should we be willing to entertain further specialization, and never if it is the poisoned fruit of “identitarian” courses at universities that take it as a given that their students should be encouraged to thoughtlessly adopt progressive attitudes and beliefs.

This fight isn’t about blocking history or erasing the country’s sins but drawing a line between hifalutin political advocacy and thorough, truthful instruction in the American past.

© 2023 by King Features Syndicate
Title: WSJ: Gov. Ron DeSantis does a teacher two-step
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2023, 03:08:56 AM
DeSantis Does a Teacher Pay Two-Step
The Governor offers teachers a pay raise with protection from coerced union dues.
By The Editorial BoardFollow
Updated Jan. 25, 2023 6:34 pm ET

Florida’s population is growing fast, which means it needs more teachers. That’s the motivation behind Gov. Ron DeSantis’s new proposal to give teachers a raise while making it harder for unions to withhold pay before teachers see it.

Gov. DeSantis announced a plan Monday to pass a Teachers’ Bill of Rights and spend an extra $200 million on teacher pay in the coming school year. The funds will bring the total the state has spent on teacher salaries to more than $3 billion from 2020 to 2024. They’ll also lift the minimum salary to more than $48,000, eighth-highest among states according to the National Education Association.

Addressing a classroom in a Jacksonville school, the Governor said the money would help ward off a teacher shortage. “The nationwide average is three vacancies for every school,” he said, while Florida has kept average openings to about half that level.

Yet the plan devotes as much attention to making sure teachers get the full benefit of the their pay raise. It proposes a policy known as paycheck protection, which blocks schools from extracting member dues on unions’ behalf. Teachers would still be free to join or decline the union, but they would get a clearer sense of what they’re paying if they do.

The change would make a difference since Florida teachers can pay as much as $700 in annual dues, according to the Orlando Sentinel. “If you want to do it, send money—that’s fine,” as Gov. DeSantis put it. But the Florida Education Association (FEA) spends millions of dollars on political causes and candidates that many teachers don’t support, such as its unsuccessful 2020 lawsuit to block school reopenings.

The Governor also wants to ensure that teachers get their raises on time. “Not every school district has raised the teacher salaries like they’re required to,” he said of his previous expansions of school budgets. It’s common for schools to leave such funds undisbursed during internal budgeting squabbles, but boosting recruitment and retention requires making the pay available fast.

In a statement about the raises, the FEA complained that the bulk of the pay would go to newer teachers, saying long-term educators faced an “experience penalty.” It’s an ironic attack because the union opposed the introduction of merit pay for teachers when former Gov. Rick Scott enacted it in 2011. They want their members to be compensated for clock punches and time served but not based on their performance.

The DeSantis plan addresses a real problem and combines it with clever politics to increase the attractiveness of teaching in Florida. Union leaders are showing their hand by criticizing a plan that leaves teachers better off without a guaranteed cut for the union middlemen
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis backs Dhillon for RNC
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 26, 2023, 04:08:25 PM
https://dailycaller.com/2023/01/26/desantis-rnc-dhillon-mcdaniel/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking&pnespid=6KE9DyhdbaIfhaearSm9D8uO4wm8RpIsfLTnx_J1tkZmVS4yVNnMJfZuhBKsniIY.LfY25O2
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis for tax exempt gas stoves
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 02, 2023, 09:38:41 AM
https://dailycaller.com/2023/02/01/ron-desantis-includes-tax-exempt-gas-stoves-budget-proposal-framework-for-freedom/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=rundown&pnespid=pKB.VTxfbv0f3vvFqm.vSJOcohOgT5gndO_nkOtsog1m3BT8Xj3KiTLcR.1hPUvK2c3SsvWq
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis strikes again!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 04, 2023, 05:20:04 AM
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/desantis-admin-revokes-liquor-license-of-orlando-venue-that-hosted-sexual-drag-show-for-children/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=30452158
Title: Miami Black leaders apologize to DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 06, 2023, 03:24:50 PM
https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/miami-black-leaders-apologize-to-gov-desantis-after-member-called-him-racist_5035552.html?utm_source=News&src_src=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2023-02-06-2&src_cmp=breaking-2023-02-06-2&utm_medium=email&est=BcCy816HvQud495iLZFnShgO82g3IqlFvdThlAyQsxpe1YLnf98FhePPGjYbAZ%2BBsPJv
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis vs ESG investment standards
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 13, 2023, 04:28:31 PM
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/ron-desantis-announces-crackdown-on-esg-investments-using-state-funds/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=30538388
Title: Selena Zito on Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on February 17, 2023, 05:50:27 AM
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/the-desantis-they-know
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis outplays Biden again
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 19, 2023, 09:45:46 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/joe-biden-s-attack-on-ron-desantis-backfires-after-florida-gov-was-accused-of-slander/ar-AA17EtGg?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=63c5e53a5d18468da8c8c4408463c0dd
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis on Ukraine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 20, 2023, 11:07:30 AM
No ‘Blank Check’: Ron DeSantis Enters the Ukraine Debate
By DAN MCLAUGHLIN
February 20, 2023 11:21 AM

As Russia’s war in Ukraine approaches the end of its first year, Republicans and conservatives face some difficult and divisive questions about America’s involvement. Robert Zubrin made the case on the homepage over the weekend that the Biden administration could be doing more to help Volodymyr Zelensky and his government deliver a disabling blow to Russia’s aggressive military machine, and noted that some on the right are so hostile to the Ukrainian cause that they may fairly be described as Putin apologists — more sympathetic to Putin and his regime than to Zelensky and his elected government. (I would part company with Zubrin to the extent that he identifies particular people in this way without specific quotations, and to the extent that he conflates opposition to supporting Ukraine with being a Putin apologist.)



There is, however, a very wide gulf between “We should do more in Ukraine to confront Russia” and “We should do nothing to help Ukraine,” and most Republicans and conservatives — whether they be elected officials, commentators, or ordinary voters — fall somewhere along that spectrum. That presents a challenge to Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell in managing their respective caucuses on this issue (McCarthy’s caucus is the more restive of the two), and it presents a challenge to Republican presidential contenders in framing both a political message and a policy that could be carried into the White House.

Enter Ron DeSantis. The Florida governor is looking more and more like a presidential candidate. He gave Salena Zito a tour of his hometown, is launching a book at the end of this month, and is speaking today to a law-enforcement group on Staten Island. As I noted in my review for the magazine of DeSantis on foreign-policy and national-security issues, he is the furthest thing from a Putin apologist, but he has been playing his cards close to the vest on aid to Ukraine:

When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, DeSantis branded the Russian leader an “authoritarian gas-station attendant,” blasted Europeans for buying energy that funds Putin’s regime, and argued that gaining independence from Russian oil and gas by boosting U.S. energy production would hit Putin where it hurts and weaken his grip on power by hitting the pocketbooks of Russian oligarchs. . . .

Unlike Donald Trump or other figures on the populist right such as Tucker Carlson (on whose show the governor is a frequent guest), DeSantis has not showered foreign authoritarians with praise or pandered to resentment of Ukraine and its leader. . . .

His rhetorical line has been consistently anti-Putin and pro-Ukraine. Nevertheless he defended Elon Musk, who used his satellites to aid the Ukrainian war effort, when Ukrainian officials criticized him for a comment he made about the war. That drew a reaction from DeSantis in defense of a magnate who has expressed support for the governor: “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you — good Lord!” But he has been circumspect on topics such as the limits of U.S. aid to Ukraine, other than taking an uncontroversial stance against direct American military intervention.

On Fox & Friends this morning, following Joe Biden’s visit to Kyiv, DeSantis waded further into the debate:

“These things can escalate, and I don’t think it’s in our interest to be getting into proxy war — with China getting involved — over things like the border lands, or over Crimea,” he said. “I think it would behoove them to identify what is the strategic objective they’re trying to achieve. Just saying it’s an open ended blank check that is not acceptable,” DeSantis said.

The governor was asked what a “win” would look like for Ukraine. “The fear of Russia going into NATO countries [and] steamrolling — you know, that has not even come close to happening. I think they’ve shown themselves to be a third rate military power,” he said. “I think they’ve suffered tremendous, tremendous losses. I gotta think that the people in Russia are probably disapproving of what’s going on. I don’t think they can speak up about it for obvious reasons.”

DeSantis downplayed the threat of Russia to the U.S. in comparison to China. “I don’t think that they are the same threat to our country, even though they’re hostile. I don’t think they’re on the same level as a China.”

All of this is correct as a general matter. It is true that Biden has failed to make the case to the American people regarding our strategy or desired end state in Ukraine, repeating the error of so many wartime presidents before him. He conspicuously refused to use this year’s State of the Union speech to make the case for what we are doing in Ukraine. It is true that there are limits to what we can or will spend on this conflict, and that we will hit those political limits sooner if the president fails to keep the public on board. National Review‘s editorials have been consistently supportive of aid to Ukraine, but as our editorial following Zelensky’s December speech to Congress observed:

We cannot indefinitely dodge the question of what we should do if the war drags on, or how we intend to pay for this. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, our current rate of spending on Ukraine is running at just under $7 billion a month. That means that, if the war continues (and it probably will), another aid package will have to be agreed to in the course of next year. That will be entirely deficit spending if no effort is made to sacrifice other spending priorities. The U.S. also needs to have formed a clearer view of its strategy before then. Waiting for Putin to die or be overthrown is not a strategy. And neither is waiting for a Russian economic or military collapse. However unlikely, the last of these possibilities, in particular, comes fraught with nuclear peril.

If our strategy is to continue on our current path, that needs to be acknowledged, as does the importance of ensuring that our European allies do their part, something that cannot be taken for granted. We must also face the reality that the longer this conflict persists, the greater the danger of a more widespread and, possibly, nuclear war. To reduce that possibility, we should still avoid supplying weapons that Ukraine could use to strike deep into Russia.

If we are unwilling to maintain our current level of support for Ukraine indefinitely, we should be working behind the scenes to push Kyiv toward a deal. One reason to do so now is the stronger bargaining power that Ukraine should enjoy as a result of its battlefield success.

It is also true that China is the larger threat than Russia, although simply saying so avoids the question: Are we better off demonstrating our resolve against the China-Russia-Iran axis by continuing to resist the tip of its spear in Ukraine, or by husbanding our finite resources in preparation for a possible conflict in Taiwan? DeSantis hints at his answer, but doesn’t say. For now, as merely a prospective candidate hawking a book, he doesn’t have to; soon enough, he will.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis on Ukraine
Post by: DougMacG on February 20, 2023, 01:33:58 PM
quote author=Crafty_Dog
No ‘Blank Check’: Ron DeSantis Enters the Ukraine Debate
---------------
I agree. 

Famous people caught reading the forum.
https://firehydrantoffreedom.com/index.php?topic=1751.msg154322#msg154322

The quagmire belongs to Russia, not us.
Title: DeSantis on Rus - Uk - China
Post by: ccp on February 21, 2023, 11:30:38 AM
https://www.dailywire.com/news/desantis-says-blank-check-for-ukraine-with-no-clear-objective-not-acceptable

similarities to N Korea and N Vietnam
Title: When does Gov. Ron DeSantis get his apology?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 24, 2023, 07:29:16 AM
https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2023/02/22/christina-pushaw-wonders-when-gov-desantis-gets-his-apology-after-these-media-pivots-on-thescience/?bcid=802726cd22d8a6f50a9b3645def15793245fd6d2052ee5680f33861e704cbe0d&utm_campaign=nl&utm_medium=email&utm_source=twtydaily
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on February 27, 2023, 04:21:29 AM
https://www.dailywire.com/news/decline-is-a-choice-desantis-releases-new-ad-rallying-conservatives-to-fight-for-freedom


"Decline is a choice."  Right from the forum.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 27, 2023, 11:26:59 AM
Caught the last ten minutes of him on Mark Levin last night.  Liked what I saw/heard.  I do have it recorded and so I look forward to watching it in its entirety.  One hour one-on-one with Mark Levin should be a good in depth introduction to the man.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on February 27, 2023, 02:28:15 PM
great interview
interesting Mark had him on last night promoting his book

I think DeSantis has or is converting him.

Trumpy bear must be SEETHING:

https://www.pngitem.com/middle/JJJRbb_emoji-anger-clip-art-transparent-background-angry-emoji/

of course, Fox is bad because they don't bow to the king:

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-lashes-out-fox-news-ron-desantis-1234687509/

Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis, Mark Levin segment
Post by: DougMacG on February 27, 2023, 03:06:08 PM
https://youtu.be/XfcXXCa1lnc
Title: This resonates for me
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 01, 2023, 01:33:11 PM

with Brittany Bernstein

Wednesday, March 01, 2023


'Make America Florida': DeSantis Lays Out 2024 Blueprint, Takes Veiled Shots at Trump in New Book


Ron DeSantis’s new book introduces a could-be 2024 slogan: “Make America Florida.”

 

The Florida governor dedicates an entire chapter in his new book, The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival, to the topic.

 

"The divisions in our society are not merely about different policy preferences regarding taxes, regulations, and welfare, but about our foundational principles," he writes. "The battles we have fought in Florida—from defeating the biomedical security state to stifling woke corporations to fighting indoctrination in schools—strike at the heart of what it means to be a Floridian and an American."

 

"The right path forward is not difficult to identify; it just requires using basic common sense and applying core American values to the problems of the day," states DeSantis, sounding an awful lot like a presidential candidate. "But it will not be easy to achieve. It will require successfully combating a lot of powerful, elite institutions that have driven the country into a cycle of repeated failures.”

 

To make America more like Florida, which he argues has “done a much better job than Washington in fostering accountability in government,” DeSantis advocates for term-limits for members of Congress and to make 50,000 federal workers at-will employees who can be fired by the president.

 

The book, which debuted at No. 1 on Amazon’s Top 100 list, paints DeSantis, a Yale University and Harvard Law grad, as an everyman who was raised in a working-class home with family ties to steel-country Ohio and Pennsylvania that made him “God-fearing, hard-working and America-loving.” He describes summers spent working at a local electric company to help pay for college and feeling like a working-class outsider at Yale.

 

While DeSantis mentions Trump more than 100 times in the book, he is not outwardly critical of the former president, choosing instead to deftly remind readers of Trump's weaknesses in a GOP primary without making value judgments of his own. He writes of the 2016 Republican opposition to a Trump candidacy:

The Republican party hierarchy was, unsurprisingly, almost universally opposed to Trump during the primaries. Some of this opposition was rooted in Trump’s liberal past, including his big donations to liberal candidates like Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Harry Reid; and his support for liberal abortion laws and restrictions on gun rights. Some of the opposition was rooted in Trump’s unique but polarizing persona and his efforts to avoid being drafted, which they found unbecoming of a presidential candidate.

DeSantis will kick off a book tour this week beginning in Venice, Fla. The tour will crisscross the country, allowing DeSantis to fortify his already-bright national star power. He will headline two Republican fundraisers in Texas on Saturday before heading to an event for the GOP of Orange County, Calif., the next day. He’s set to give a keynote speech for the Alabama GOP next week.

 

Last weekend, he hosted a “Freedom Blueprint” retreat with more than 150 donors, elected officials, and conservative influencers, including Senators Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), former Trump chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Representative Chip Roy (R., Texas), and Texas-based donor Roy Bailey, a former member of Trump’s national finance committee.

 

This weekend, DeSantis will also attend Club for Growth’s annual donor retreat, which runs from Thursday to Saturday in Palm Beach, Fla., at a location just three miles from former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club.

 

Trump, who will instead attend CPAC, attacked Club for Growth in a Truth Social post on Tuesday, calling the group “Club for NO Growth” and “an insignificant group of Globalists who I have beaten badly because of their anti America First views. They will only get the 'stragglers.'"

 

Other 2024 hopefuls slated to attend the Club for Growth event include former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, former vice president Mike Pence, Senator Tim Scott, New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu, and Woke, Inc. author Vivek Ramaswamy. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin were invited to the retreat but could not attend, CBS News reported.

 

DeSantis and Pence, meanwhile, declined to attend CPAC. Haley and Ramaswamy will attend both events.

 

The rift between Trump and his former ally comes after the former president and the Club for Growth supported different 2022 primary candidates in several Senate races, including in Ohio and Alabama. Club for Growth polling from earlier this month showed DeSantis defeating Trump in a hypothetical matchup.

 

“DeSantis has, in his style and the actions he’s taken as governor, shown a willingness to fight the traditional powers that be, the establishment,” Club for Growth president David McIntosh told the Associated Press. He called DeSantis’s style “refreshing,” as some critics have questioned DeSantis’s “lone wolf” persona.

 

DeSantis writes in his book that he has been able to achieve “great electoral triumphs by taking the political road less traveled." He does, however, acknowledge Trump's contribution to his upstart political career, explaining that he knew an endorsement from the then-president in the 2018 gubernatorial race would “enhance my name recognition.”

 

“I knew that a Trump endorsement would provide me with the exposure to GOP primary voters across the State of Florida, and I was confident that many would see me as a good candidate once they learned about my record,” he writes, adding that he had “developed a good relationship with the president largely because I supported his initiatives in Congress and opposed the Russia collusion conspiracy theory.”

 

In November, Trump infamously took credit for DeSantis’s 2018 victory and nicknamed the Florida governor “Ron DeSanctimonious.” Trump claimed at the time that his endorsement of DeSantis in 2017 served as a “nuclear weapon,” propelling DeSantis to the top of the GOP primary for Florida governor. He went on to falsely claim that he stopped DeSantis’s election from being stolen.

 

DeSantis writes in the book of meeting with Trump in the Oval Office to request additional federal assistance to the Florida Panhandle after Hurricane Michael in 2018. Trump agreed to send the funds but told DeSantis he had to give the president credit when discussing the funding with the area’s residents, DeSantis writes. However, the governor goes on to claim that Trump’s acting chief of staff at the time, Mick Mulvaney, asked DeSantis not to announce the funding because the president “doesn’t even know what he agreed to in terms of a price tag.”

 

He also writes of being a driving force behind Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

 

DeSantis, meanwhile, has been an “effective governor,” according to former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who suggested in a recent Fox Nation special that Florida “could be a model for the country." In the special, Who Is Ron DeSantis?, Bush went so far as to say that DeSantis could help lead a generational change in national politics and that it was the right opportunity to run for president.

 

But Bush, after a backlash from Trump loyalists, was left to clarify that his recent acclaim was “praising, not endorsing” in a statement to Politico Playbook. He avoided a question asking about his preference as to who should become the GOP nominee.

 

As DeSantis’s star rises, Trump has latched onto a Fox News clip that, while anecdotal, suggested a lack of enthusiasm for the governor in a Ponte Vedra, Fla., diner. Brian Kilmeade asked diners: “All right. 2024, who is pumped up for the election? Rapid fire. Who is your man? Who is your woman?” The first six people Kilmeade approached all listed Trump as their preferred candidate, including two who also mentioned Haley and one who also cited South Dakota governor Kristi Noem. Kilmeade then approached a woman wearing a DeSantis shirt and asked, “what about President DeSantis?” “Oh, gosh, I don’t know,” she replied. “Trump or DeSantis, either/or.”


• While California Republicans have no say in general elections for national and statewide office, a new BerkeleyIGS Poll for the Los Angeles Times that shows DeSantis’s eight-point lead over Trump is newsworthy because those voters can “still matter quite a lot in a presidential-primary contest,” Dan McLaughlin writes.

DeSantis leads Trump in the poll 37 percent to 29 percent, a reversal from the same poll taken in August 2022, when Trump led DeSantis 38 percent to 27 percent. Nikki Haley runs third at 7 percent, and nobody else is over the four percent who back Liz Cheney. Chris Sununu polls at zero. However, 11 percent say they are undecided, a measure of how much flux remains in voter preferences a year out, in a race with only three announced candidates, in a poll where 27 percent of respondents were either undecided or backing someone other than the top three potential contenders.

• Trump surged ahead of DeSantis in a hypothetical 2024 head-to-head match-up, a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll found. The new poll shows Trump leading DeSantis 47 percent to 39 percent among Republican voters, after previously trailing the Florida governor for the last three months. The poll also found 65 percent of Americans believe that Biden, 80, is “too old for another term as president,” while just 45 percent said the same of Trump, who is 76. More here.

 



 
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis: Hey hey! Ho ho! Pedo Porn has got to go!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 08, 2023, 05:42:13 PM
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11835973/Ron-DeSantis-airs-video-containing-sexually-explicit-content-childrens-books.html
Title: Ron against the proposed Fla bill
Post by: ccp on March 09, 2023, 07:01:49 AM
that would register bloggers:

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/not-a-concept-i-support-desantis-calls-out-media-using-his-picture-for-more-clicks-on-blogger-registration-bill-he-doesnt-advocate/

thumbs up
(so shut up MSmedia!)
Title: Re: Ron against the proposed Fla bill
Post by: G M on March 09, 2023, 07:07:29 AM
that would register bloggers:

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/not-a-concept-i-support-desantis-calls-out-media-using-his-picture-for-more-clicks-on-blogger-registration-bill-he-doesnt-advocate/

thumbs up
(so shut up MSmedia!)

It's very shocking that the MSM might be framing a story in a dishonest manner!
Title: NRO: What if DeSantis is less crazy than Trump?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 10, 2023, 07:19:35 PM
What If Ron DeSantis Is Less Crazy Than Donald Trump?

Left: Florida governor Ron DeSantis speaks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., March 5, 2023. Left: Former president Donald Trump speaks at CPAC in National Harbor, Md., March 4, 2023. (Allison Dinner, Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
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By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY
March 10, 2023 6:30 AM
For some Republicans, he represents a bridge away from Trump and Trumpism.
There’s a question haunting the minds of political junkies. What if Ron DeSantis is less crazy than Donald Trump?

There are several versions of it, because the semantic range of “crazy” in our politics is especially large.

For people on the left, the prospect of DeSantis has been met with some terror, because they fear he has Trump’s will to power but lacks Trump’s fundamental frivolousness and distractibility. Trump spent hours a day watching television coverage of the Trump administration and tweeting about it, rather than, you know, trying to get the Congress to build his wall, or ban Muslims, or take actual effective steps toward a coup after the 2020 election.

Brynn Tannehill gave voice to this view in the New Republic:


The damage Trump was able to do was limited by his lack of discipline, ignorance of how the system worked, laziness, and lack of motivation. He is simply a narcissist who likes feeling rich, powerful, and important. DeSantis, however, is none of these things. He is not lazy. He has discipline, motivation, and an intimate knowledge of how to use the system to get what he wants.

But there are those who think Trump’s greatest political asset was his craziness. Republican partisans worry about it, and committed Never Trumpers delight in the idea that DeSantis just isn’t crazy enough to win the Republican nomination. DeSantis won’t attack a Gold Star family. He won’t have an Access Hollywood tape. He won’t threaten to put his electoral opponent in jail. He won’t compare buttons with Kim Jong-un.

For them the theory is that the GOP primary electorate is entirely committed to Trumpism as a kind of troll of the existing political class. They are voting for the entertainment of it all — largely indifferent to policy or governance. This is the idea of Trump as post-scarcity political figure. Americans are so accustomed to things working out in the end that they vote for a breaker of norms just for the kick it provides.

The fact is, no one can quite agree on what Ron DeSantis following Donald Trump means. Some who loved Trump’s iconoclastic campaign for president are even more enthusiastic about DeSantis in 2024. They see him as an extension of Trump — more energetic, more competent, and more electable. In some cases, they see him as more populist — on Covid restrictions and vaccines. Other Republicans are going to support DeSantis enthusiastically because for them, DeSantis represents a bridge away from Trump and Trumpism. In their mind he’s a figure who can unite the party. He excites some populist and nationalist Republicans while simultaneously reopening the future leadership of the party to non-populist, non-nationalist factions. At the same time, there are Republicans who still find DeSantis too Trumpy to tolerate. Or not Trumpy enough.

But what if it’s just simpler than all this? I know it’s nuts to posit this, but what if Trump’s “craziness” was an electoral drag? What if that’s what drove people to embrace Ted Cruz as a potential alternative? What if it’s what drove suburban women away from the GOP, since Trump seemed both crude and unstable? What if that explains why Trump did worse among white men in 2020?

What if voters want competence in the execution of policy and administration, and they want someone who demonstrates self-possession?

If all that were true, and we turned our eyes to Ron DeSantis, what would we expect to see?

Well, it might look like Ron DeSantis in 2022 and 2023 — uniting his entire party, holding the affluent suburbs, and even making inroads in the cities while cruising to reelection in a year when other Republicans struggled. It would mean absolutely eye-popping fundraising numbers. It might mean that the Republican Party can benefit from political realignment on one side of the political spectrum — gaining a larger share of working-class voters of all races, while holding a reunion party on the other side, reaching back into the country clubs, and winning more of the white voters it shed in 2020.

Crazy as it sounds.
Title: CNN tries smearing DeSantis but the small print gives them away
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 14, 2023, 08:54:09 AM
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/26/politics/ron-desantis-supported-ukraine-russia-kfile/index.html
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis's Woke policy is rollback, not containment
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 14, 2023, 09:24:11 AM
second

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/03/the-desantis-policy-is-woke-rollback-not-woke-containment/?bypass_key=aE8yUjdCWkpVUFVQdUV0aEpKY1dqQT09OjpaelpCVFV3d2VXOXBabFY0YTB4b1JVc3hNV0Z2WnowOQ%3D%3D&lctg=547fd5293b35d0210c8df7b9&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NR%20Daily%20Monday%20through%20Friday%202023-03-13&utm_term=NRDaily-Smart
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis goes for the jugular on kiddie tranz surgeries
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 14, 2023, 03:29:16 PM
https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/biden-sinful-team-desantis
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis: FAFO
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 15, 2023, 03:54:03 AM
https://www.foxnews.com/us/desantis-strips-luxurious-florida-hotels-liquor-license-hosting-lewd-drag-show-children-present
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis: on Ukraine
Post by: ccp on March 15, 2023, 07:57:24 AM
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/ron-desantis-in-the-mainstream-on-ukraine

Mark Levin had a big angry rant against those who do not want to support Ukraines with jets missiles etc

he points out the Putin already said Poland is also on the menu
but Poland IS a NATO member  and that is  a distinction we could make very clear to Putin - I draw the line there myself

but there is the counter argument in favor of Ukraine; to set the example for  the Red Chinese

I am on the fence
I don't what the answer is.
Unless one can see into the future who knows

 
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis: on Ukraine
Post by: G M on March 15, 2023, 09:05:10 AM
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/ron-desantis-in-the-mainstream-on-ukraine

Mark Levin had a big angry rant against those who do not want to support Ukraines with jets missiles etc

he points out the Putin already said Poland is also on the menu
but Poland IS a NATO member  and that is  a distinction we could make very clear to Putin - I draw the line there myself

but there is the counter argument in favor of Ukraine; to set the example for  the Red Chinese

I am on the fence
I don't what the answer is.
Unless one can see into the future who knows

We are running out of weapons to send, and the Ukrainians are running out of Ukrainians.

Aside from that, Zelensy and his crew are fabulously wealthy!
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 15, 2023, 11:26:25 AM
I'm with you CCP.

In a chattering class segment on FOX the other night someone articulated that it was the weakness of Biden in Afghanistan that was key in emboldening Putin in Ukraine.  What message now to Xi if we pull the rug from under the Ukes? 

This is a potent argument and (Attention GM! haha) its merits vel non (Ah! A moment of law school Latin! have nothing to do with the stupidity of the Deep State in picking this fight with Russia-- e.g. Trump's management of conflict yielded peace instead of this fustercluck.

And yes (attention GM) there are plenty of potent arguments the other way on this too-- without needing to resort to Russian propaganda.

Either way it is a shit show of existential implications that will require bites of the shit sandwhich. 

How to take the smallest bite? 

Anyway, this is the DeSantis thread-- what are the implications for him of the position he has staked out for his presidential run?

The Uniparty, including GOPs Sens Rubio, Graham, et al will hit him hard from one side, and Trump will use Haley's line about "Why would you want DeSantis's echo to Trump's 'the original' "?

Already they hit him with waffling from what he said as a Congressman.  Reading for comprehension I think he properly nuanced at the time, but in the pant-hooting of a presidential campaign where the Uniparty and the Pravdas will be pant hooting, he is going to be taking fire.
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis's nuances on Ukraine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 17, 2023, 03:49:02 PM
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/ron-desantis-in-the-mainstream-on-ukraine
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 18, 2023, 07:34:28 PM
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1636828753480527872

I found this articulate.
Title: AMcC: What Gov. Ron DeSantis got on Ukraine
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 21, 2023, 01:42:02 PM
What Ron DeSantis Got Right in His Ukraine Statement
By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY
March 18, 2023 6:30 AM

The Florida governor’s stance on the war appears generally sound, despite his making the unforced error of describing it as a ‘territorial dispute.’

Today’s Russia is a pygmy compared to the Soviet Union of the 1980s. Yet, when Moscow invaded Afghanistan, the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan gave the mujahideen what they needed to sustain the fight. They did it because exhausting Russia was in the interests of the United States, not because we admired the pluck of the Afghans or hoped to strike a blow for freedom.



That’s the point I hope Ron DeSantis takes away from this week’s unforced error, in which he described the illegal war of aggression executed by Vladimir Putin’s thuggish regime against Ukraine as a mere “territorial dispute” — as if we should remain neutral in judging the relative merits of the armed robber and his victim. The flub was unfortunate, both because the promising Florida governor is just starting to introduce himself to much of the public as he readies a 2024 presidential bid, and because, on balance, the answers he submitted in response to questions by Fox News’ Tucker Carlson demonstrated a sound understanding of America’s interests in the world.

If he makes those interests his North Star, DeSantis will stay sharp — 1980s sharp.

It is a fair point that the world is a very different place than it was 40 years ago. At times, Republicans’ nostalgia for the party’s most successful modern presidency has attracted them to policy prescriptions that don’t fit contemporary conditions. (Read Rich Lowry’s superb Politico essay on the Reagan legacy for more.) Yet Reagan remains a worthy model. He is proof that practical politics always proceed best from a foundation of clear principle. He embodies peace through American strength, which is still the peace worth having — and, presumably, the kind of “peace” DeSantis had in mind when he described it as “the objective” for the United States in Ukraine.


To the limited extent that America is involved in the conflict, peace on our terms is the degrading of our Russian enemy.

No one would confuse Ronald Reagan for a populist anti-interventionist banging on about “forever wars.” Yet, his commitment to confronting the Soviets in Afghanistan came with significant restrictions that should resonate in today’s debate over America’s response to revanchist Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

There was, of course, no consideration of deploying American troops. Nor was there any transfer of advanced American weaponry to the Afghans — certainly not anything that could be used to attack Russian soil. The main American aid to the mujahideen took the form of Stinger missiles, whose use did not require much in the way of training. And even with respect to this modest aid, the Reagan administration used Pakistani intelligence as a cut-out, providing a fig leaf of deniability that might restrain the Kremlin from regarding us as a formal combatant.


Particularly given the unique topography of Afghanistan, the Stingers proved extraordinarily effective against the arsenal the Red Army had dedicated to the conflict. But that was only because the Afghans were willing to dig in and fight a long, withering campaign — to do what it took to convince a superpower that it could never win at a reasonable cost the dubious prize it sought.


This was the Cold War. Understanding that we had an identifiable, formidable enemy did much to concentrate the national mind, especially as the delusions of Carter and the foreign-relations clerisy gave way to Reagan’s hardheaded “we win, they lose” assessment of the twilight struggle. This was not post-9/11 Afghanistan or Iraq. Such inanities as “sharia democracy” were not being bandied about, let alone directing policy. No one was so daft as to claim that America’s vital interest in Afghanistan was Afghanistan. It was Russia. The Afghans were our proxies, not our protégés. We weren’t pretending to vindicate such abstractions as democracy and the post-war international order.

No, we were degrading our mortal enemy. At the time, few expected the USSR to collapse in a heap shortly after marching out of Kabul with its tail between its legs. But nobody doubted that tying down and humiliating the Soviet armed forces in Afghanistan would make them less of a threat and diminish their power in other Cold War hot spots. That was America’s interest in the Afghan conflict. That conflict was not the center of our universe. U.S. support was thus limited by the practical political, economic, and security realities of the situation. Nevertheless, U.S. support was also resolute and sufficiently audacious to make clear that the White House, not the Kremlin, was dictating the extent of American involvement.

To acknowledge that the Ukrainians are not our first-order priority is not to say that their fate is irrelevant to us. To the contrary, as I’ve previously conceded, while I am no fan of Kyiv’s deep-seated corruption (and I truly hope President Zelensky is sincere in his determination to eradicate it), we are obliged to support Ukraine because we induced it to disarm, in 1994 and 2006, on the assurance of such support. No, we didn’t enter a binding treaty, but we gave our word and Kyiv relied on it, so our honor is at stake.


It is in our vital interest that American security promises be kept, for miscalculation by our enemies on this point can lead to wider wars, and securing peace on America’s terms hinges on America’s credibility. It would also be a good thing for us and the world if Europe was at peace and Ukraine was thriving and productive rather than imperiled and burdensome. We can debate whether establishing that state of affairs is a “vital” American interest, but its desirability cannot be gainsaid.

All that said, our chief objective in Ukraine must be the weakening and dispiriting of Russia. Moscow should be made to understand that it may end up controlling parts of Ukraine, just as it controlled Afghanistan for a time; but it will sustain losses that it cannot afford in the process, and its control will never be secure because Ukrainian insurgents will continue to fight. China should be made to understand that, in Russia, it is backing a burdensome loser. It should also see that while our commitment to confronting Putin in Ukraine is real, it is commensurate with our interests — and in calculating those interests, we are mindful that Beijing is the greater threat.

Marrying policy to American interests means that the president we inaugurate in January 2025 will have to step up preparations to meet that greater threat. The attractive parts of DeSantis’s comments highlighted the imperatives of “addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party.”

Pace the “forever war” agonists, that’s the roadmap to peace through strength. It never goes out of style. If Ron DeSantis remembers that, he’ll be fine.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: G M on March 21, 2023, 01:47:13 PM
while I am no fan of Kyiv’s deep-seated corruption (and I truly hope President Zelensky is sincere in his determination to eradicate it)

His funniest line yet!
Title: NRO: The DeSantis Make-Up Call
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 23, 2023, 08:50:01 AM


The DeSantis Make-Up Call
by JIM GERAGHTY
March 23, 2023 9:48 AM

On the menu today: Florida governor Ron DeSantis significantly revises and extends his previous remarks on Ukraine, suddenly sounding much more critical of Vladimir Putin and Russia’s territorial claims and much more supportive of the Ukrainian cause. If DeSantis were a referee, we would call that a “make-up call”; House progressives affirm my assessment that the new White House chief of staff, Jeff Zients, is steering the administration in a different direction; and getting a sense of just how much “wokeness” played a role in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

DeSantis’s Revised Ukraine Remarks

Hey, remember how so many folks — left, right, and center — spent so much of last week arguing about Florida governor Ron DeSantis and his answers to Tucker Carlson’s questions about Russia and Ukraine?


This was a big, meaty topic of debate here at NR. Mark Wright had serious questions about the ramifications of how DeSantis perceived the Russian invasion and its consequences. Dan McLaughlin said DeSantis was trying to have it both ways. Noah Rothman concluded that DeSantis had “staked out a position he will struggle to defend and, should he emerge as the GOP nominee next year, potentially represents a significant liability for his campaign.” Jay Nordlinger said that DeSantis’s characterization of the war as a “territorial dispute” “betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of something very important to understand.” Michael Brendan Dougherty said the criticism of DeSantis from the hawks was unpersuasive and illegitimate, and an inaccurate reinterpretation of Ronald Reagan’s true record.

And I wondered how much a presidential candidate’s campaign-trail remarks actually reflect what he will do in office.

Earlier this week, Ramesh observed that, “Ron DeSantis’s remarks about Russia’s grinding war in Ukraine have now sustained more scrutiny than some treaties,” and concluded, “Americans should want both moral clarity and prudence in our foreign policy. Florida’s Republican governor is showing too little of the first, and many of his critics too little of the second.”

Now, as Emily Litella would say, “Never mind.”

For some reason, the man who is one of the two most likely Republican nominees in the upcoming presidential cycle, and probably one of the four figures most likely to take the presidential oath of office on January 20, 2025, chose to elaborate on his foreign-policy views on Piers Morgan Uncensored. (So much for “America first.” Clearly DeSantis is internationalist in his press outreach.)

Morgan lays out DeSantis’s revised and extended remarks on Ukraine in today’s New York Post:

Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis has branded Vladimir Putin a “war criminal” and demanded he be “held accountable” for his barbaric invasion of Ukraine.

Taking a tougher tone from his statement last week appearing to dismiss the year-long war as a “territorial dispute,” DeSantis now says Russia was WRONG to invade Ukraine and was WRONG to invade and take over Crimea in 2014, and won’t win the war.

And he’s made his strongest attack yet on Russia’s dictator, calling him a loser who is “basically a gas station with a bunch of nuclear weapons. . . .”

When I asked him specifically if he regretted using the phrase “territorial dispute,” DeSantis replied, “Well, I think it’s been mischaracterized. Obviously, Russia invaded (last year) — that was wrong. They invaded Crimea and took that in 2014 — That was wrong.

“What I’m referring to is where the fighting is going on now which is that eastern border region Donbas, and then Crimea, and you have a situation where Russia has had that. I don’t think legitimately but they had. There’s a lot of ethnic Russians there. So, that’s some difficult fighting and that’s what I was referring to and so it wasn’t that I thought Russia had a right to that, and so if I should have made that more clear, I could have done it, but I think the larger point is, okay, Russia is not showing the ability to take over Ukraine, to topple the government or certainly to threaten NATO. That’s a good thing. I just don’t think that’s a sufficient interest for us to escalate more involvement. I would not want to see American troops involved there. But the idea that I think somehow Russia was justified (in invading) — that’s nonsense. . . .”

“I think they have the right to that territory,” he replied. “If I could snap my fingers, I’d give it back to Ukraine 100 percent. But the reality is what is America’s involvement in terms of escalating with more weapons, and certainly ground troops I think would be a mistake. So, that was the point I was trying to make but Russia was wrong to invade. They were wrong to take Crimea.

“Russia did not have the right to go into Crimea or to go in February of 2022 and that should be clear. . . .”

“I think those regions in the (eastern) border, and Crimea, are likely to be a stalemate for quite some time, and unfortunately a lot of people will end up dying if that’s the case. But I do not think it’s going to end with Putin being victorious. I do not think the Ukrainian Government is going to be toppled by him and I think that’s a good thing.”

Many hawks will see this as the most stirring and appealing walk-back since Michael Jackson moonwalked.


So, does this mean that as DeSantis and his team were crafting that written response to Tucker Carlson, they just forgot to characterize Putin as a war criminal who must be held accountable? Did he just absentmindedly overlook a need to mention that the Russian invasion is wrong and that Russia’s territorial claims are nonsense?

Or were those, as I had described, remarks that were tailor-made for the Tucker Carlson audience, and now DeSantis is realizing he has some repair work to do with the parts of the GOP that aren’t in the Tucker Carlson audience?

I like DeSantis’s answer to Piers Morgan more than his answer to Tucker Carlson, but that doesn’t mean I have to pretend that the governor has handled this all smoothly or deftly with his sudden back-and-forth. The two sets of statements may not directly contradict, but they certainly have sharply different areas of emphasis. It’s as if DeSantis had a full page of thoughts on the proper U.S. response to the Russian invasion, and tore the page in half, offering the top half to Carlson and the bottom half to Morgan. The top featured the criticism of the so-called “blank check” for Ukraine, the denial of any military aid that could be used beyond Ukraine’s borders, and the argument that Ukraine is a distraction from the rising threat of China. The second half included the denunciation of Putin, the dismissal of Russia’s territorial claims, and praise for the righteousness of the Ukrainian cause.


It’s okay to have nuanced and complicated views on how to respond to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s a nuanced and complicated global crisis! I want the Biden administration to send the Ukrainians the weapons systems they say they need when they say they need them, instead of hemming and hawing for six months and then sending them a half-year later. I also am wary about sending combat air patrols to escort surveillance drones in international air space near Ukraine, because that seems likely to lead to U.S. and Russian fighter jets confronting each other and perhaps firing at each other, leading to a shooting war between the U.S. and Russia. Naturally, I’m too hawkish for the doves and too dovish for the hawks.

But when you’re asking for the job of commander in chief, at least in the old days, you were expected to have a coherent and well-defined foreign policy that you could articulate in a clear and direct manner. Now, a Republican former president can just boast, “I will prevent — and very easily — World War III, very easily before I even arrive at the Oval Office. I will have the disastrous war between Russia and Ukraine settled and it will take me no longer than one day,” and the audience applauds. Apparently, large swaths of the GOP believe in magic wands and wishing wells.
Title: NBC: stoking doubt about DeSantis
Post by: ccp on March 25, 2023, 09:44:18 AM
https://www.yahoo.com/news/ron-desantis-donors-allies-hes-022355757.html

The LEFT really wants Trump to be the nominee I am thinking

Title: Eric Bolling with Gov DeSantis
Post by: ccp on March 25, 2023, 02:23:13 PM
https://www.newsmax.com/us/bill-maher-donald-trump-ron-desantis/2023/03/25/id/1113787/
Title: MSN goes after Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 26, 2023, 06:59:32 PM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/rule-by-law-in-florida/ar-AA195AAX?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=efe065cd164a4bbbba458e86c28d2e43&ei=35
Title: WSJ: Gov. Ron DeSantis wins one against the Trial Lawyers bar
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 01, 2023, 08:40:42 AM
DeSantis Defeats Trump on Lawsuit Abuse
The Florida Governor beats the trial bar and its Mar-a-Lago ally.
By The Editorial BoardFollow
March 31, 2023 6:35 pm ET


Donald Trump is grabbing anything to attack Ron DeSantis, and he’s even joining forces with the plaintiff bar in a bizarre alliance. Fortunately for Floridians, their Governor won this exchange.

Mr. DeSantis last Friday signed legislation that will reduce legal costs for businesses, insurers and their customers. Litigation abuse is a tax that every citizen pays into the tort system, costing each Florida household more than $5,000 in 2020, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform.

Enter Mr. DeSantis, who this year proposed a package of tort reforms to curb abuses. Several changes target plaintiff attorneys’ common practice of inflating damages by presenting to juries the charges for medical costs billed by healthcare providers rather than what health insurers would pay out, which is typically much less.

Collusive agreements between physicians and lawyers to inflate charges will no longer be protected by attorney-client privilege. Lawyers could previously ensure that juries saw only the inflated amounts billed by their hand-picked doctors, and juries often based awards on those trumped-up bills.

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Florida law also previously allowed juries to allocate damages even for accidents caused by a plaintiff. If someone burned himself by spilling hot coffee on his lap, a coffee shop could be on the hook for paying some of his medical costs. No longer. Now if a plaintiff is found to be more than 50% at fault, he can’t recover damages.

Another change eliminates “one-way attorney fees,” which let plaintiffs collect massive attorney fees from defendants and their insurers if they win a lawsuit—but not the other way around. One-way fees encourage plaintiff attorneys to file more lawsuits and defendants to settle cases to avoid paying even larger legal bills.

Mr. DeSantis’s reforms provoked a five-alarm panic among plaintiff attorneys who ran ads targeting immigrants that recalled power grabs in socialist Venezuela and Cuba. “Today in Tallahassee powerful lobbies are spending millions to take our rights,” one ad warned. “If they succeed the law will protect them, but not us. It will let them take everything. We’ve seen it before, lived it before.”

Donald Trump piled on at Truth Social: “RINO Ron DeSanctimonious is delivering the biggest insurance company BAILOUT to Globalist Insurance Companies, IN HISTORY.” With his usual nuance, he called the reforms “the worst Insurance Scam in the entire Country!”

He’s got the wrong scammers. By reducing payouts for dubious claims, the Florida reforms will cut insurance premiums for businesses and citizens. Irony alert: This will benefit Mr. Trump’s properties in the state.

Plaintiff attorneys last week rushed to file claims before Mr. DeSantis signed the legislation since the changes aren’t retroactive. Over three days last week, Morgan & Morgan says it filed 23,000 cases, 3,000 more than in all of 2022. Some lawyers may move north to Georgia, which the American Tort Reform Association last year rated as the country’s worst judicial hellhole.

The Georgia Legislature has defeated several efforts to curb lawsuit abuse, but maybe Mr. DeSantis’s victory will prod Gov. Brian Kemp to take up the cause. As for Mr. Trump, we doubt he cares about the substance.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on April 01, 2023, 08:47:03 AM
"Donald Trump is grabbing anything to attack Ron DeSantis"

yes
probably you have also noticed MAGA attack adds on cable stating DeSantis wants to hurt Soc Sec.

Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 01, 2023, 09:00:11 AM
"probably you have also noticed MAGA attack adds on cable stating DeSantis wants to hurt Soc Sec."

Indistinguishable from Dem demagoguery!
Title: WSJ: Gov. Ron DeSantis is right to raise this issue
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 14, 2023, 08:55:03 AM
Ron DeSantis has focused his book tour remarks—a test drive for his presidential campaign—mainly on his Florida record. But lately he’s also hit on a larger theme: the failures of monetary policy and the Federal Reserve. The Governor is on to something, and the debate could be good for the economy and the country.

Speaking in Naples, Fla., last week, Mr. DeSantis criticized the Fed for contributing to inflation by printing “trillions and trillions of dollars.”

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“That obviously is going to create inflationary pressures,” he said, as recounted in the Miami Herald. “And so people were saying this, that this was always going to happen. They didn’t want to listen. And so you had inflation start to percolate.” He criticized Fed Chairman Jerome Powell for calling inflation “transitory” before realizing the mistake.

“So then what does the Fed do?” Mr. DeSantis continued. “Jerome Powell, they start hiking rates very rapidly. And that’s causing dislocations in the banking sector. It’s causing individuals to suffer just because they took their eye off the ball and didn’t know what they were doing. And, you know, I think the Fed has done a horrible job over these last few years. And they really are creating potential significant turmoil in the economy going forward.”

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This is unusual because most Republicans blame inflation solely on President Biden’s spending. But monetary policy has also played a major role, and it’s notable that a leading Republican politician is willing to say it.

It’s also notable that he puts the onus on the Fed for creating the inflationary pressures that have caused it to have to raise interest rates so rapidly as an antidote. Most political critics of the Fed today warn about rising rates, but they ignore the monetary cause and effect.

Mr. DeSantis has also criticized the Fed for contemplating a digital dollar, which is a more complicated subject for another day. But he is properly hitting the Fed and other financial regulators for rescuing the politically well-connected depositors of Silicon Valley Bank after it failed last month. “If there was a bank in this part of Pennsylvania that serviced, like, agriculture or small businesses, do you think that they would have been bailed out under similar circumstances? No,” Mr. DeSantis said recently in Pennsylvania.

Mr. DeSantis is teeing up an important debate if he’s willing to follow through and develop the theme. The Fed has largely been immune from criticism in recent years because it has always been seen by the political class as riding to the economy’s rescue. But it is never held accountable for its mistakes in creating the financial manias that eventually lead to panics and crashes.

In the 2000s, the mistake was keeping rates too low for too long and creating a subsidy for credit that led to the housing bubble and bust. After the Great Recession, the Fed kept interest rates near zero for more than a decade and contributed to distortions in asset prices and the highest inflation in 40 years. Financial casualties now are inevitable as the Fed abruptly raises rates and trips up banks and others that bet on zero-rates continuing for years, as the Fed’s misguided “forward guidance” forecast.

Any other institution that failed in such spectacular fashion would be held politically accountable, but the Fed skates past each crisis because it has the protection of elites on Wall Street and in Washington. The press corps is also in the Fed’s corner, and it’s already circling the wagons against the Governor’s criticism.

***
Mr. DeSantis could do a public service if he makes the Fed a campaign issue, and this may be the right moment to do it. Inflation has given every American a painful insight into failed monetary and fiscal policy that doesn’t require an economics degree. The mistakes are clear and understandable.

This is also an issue that cuts against both Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Mr. Trump first appointed Mr. Powell as Fed Chairman, and Mr. Biden reappointed him. Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Powell for raising interest rates before the pandemic, and Mr. Biden encouraged the Fed to keep rates low to finance his extravagant and needless spending. Both are free-money, weak-dollar advocates.

As for policies, Mr. DeSantis can argue that the Fed economic model is flawed and the board of governors needs fresh thinking. He might also promise to appoint a commission that would assess the Fed’s record and report on how and why it has gone so astray. In the 1980s Ronald Reagan understood the appeal of stable prices and their importance to the well-being of the middle class. There’s another opportunity now.
Title: DeSantis surrogates do the dirty work
Post by: ccp on April 17, 2023, 10:20:38 AM
https://www.axios.com/2023/04/16/desantis-trump-2024-tv-ads-fox-news

 :-D
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2023, 11:29:56 AM
Good!
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis vs. Disney-- continuing
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2023, 11:31:47 AM
https://dailycaller.com/2023/04/17/desantis-unveils-bill-revoke-disneys-attempts-ignore-oversight-board/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking&pnespid=6qA6ATkZavoBwKfFvzToEp7S4E.3TJgrMvamwrI1rQ9m3lsWrU_G5s.WFdV8HTI6kOjgoAot
Title: WSJ: The Stupid War Between DeSantis and Disney
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 17, 2023, 01:29:16 PM
second

The Stupid War Between Disney and DeSantis
Neither the company nor the Florida governor should want an extended brawl over sex ed for third-graders.
Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. hedcutBy Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.Follow
April 14, 2023 5:31 pm ET


Disney is still living with a mistake quite a few business leaders have made in recent years, letting itself be bullied—or bullying itself—into taking a needless political stand.

Last year’s Florida law, contrary to the “don’t say gay” moniker promoted by opponents, was reasonable. The interests on both sides were reasonable. LGBT people want their lifestyles respected and not stigmatized in the classroom. Parents want their third-graders not to be bombarded with messages they or their parents aren’t ready for.

Some activists clinging to an issue fret teachers might now interpret the law to mean they can stigmatize away, but the law says the opposite. It prohibits them from raising such subjects at all. In essence, it says such discussion should begin in the fourth grade.

Disney at first steered clear but then tripped over its own feet by unwisely projecting on Florida its own internal fights, then raging at the same time, over what constitutes “age-appropriate” representation in shows and movies aimed at kids—ironically, the phrase CEO Bob Iger lately highlights for guidance is also the phrase enshrined in the Florida law.


When previous CEO Bob Chapek panicked, of course, it didn’t matter what the law said. It didn’t matter, around the same time, what Georgia’s new voting law said either. CEOs ran as fast as their quivering knees could carry them to whichever side was calling the other side racist.

But hardly to his credit, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has also given the impression of enjoying the fight too much for fundraising and news-making purposes, rather than helping Florida’s leading corporate citizen get back in the state’s good graces.

He gives the impression also of thinking the electorate consists entirely of political hobbyists looking for entertainment rather than sound governance.

For anyone test-driving Mr. DeSantis as a possible president, the real mistake was needlessly parlaying the original dispute into an open-ended fight. He mobilized legislators to take away the county-like authority that Disney, since 1967, exercised over 25,000 acres where its Florida theme parks are located. In duly notified public meetings, Disney used the interim to transfer back to itself certain business-like powers, over its trademarks and characters, over the design and appearance of future park buildings.

Any sane company would have done so, rather than let purely commercial decisions be handed to a politically appointed board at the beck of Florida’s governor. Even more so because Gov. DeSantis seemed to want to load the board with his anti-gender-wokeness allies, as if this has anything to do with roads, sewers, police and fire protection.

With the help of Florida’s cackling if legally uncomprehending liberal media, Mr. DeSantis may also have felt obscurely mocked by one provision. Related to a common-law prejudice against perpetuities, it conventionally assures that the transferred rights will remain with Disney at least until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England . . .”

For whatever reason, Mr. DeSantis has decided he now needs to fight a possibly endless legal war to claw back these changes by the now-defunct Reedy Creek Improvement District, never mind that the changes have zippo to do with sex ed for 8-year-olds.

All this makes Mr. DeSantis look a mite unbalanced, with a Trumpian propensity to crank to 11 a dispute that would be better left at 4. The lessons are many but come down to a time-honored admonition for both sides: Grow up.

Very large contracts doled out to corporate chieftains are meant to make them brave in the face of risks that make sense to diversified shareholders, which are economic risks, never mind a CEO’s own natural incentive to seek a gilded safety.


Mr. Iger at one point claimed the Florida law was a matter of right and wrong, which is exactly what it’s not. It’s a conflict with defensible views on both sides. When business leaders adopt the uncompromising language of their mau-mauers, neither safety nor shareholder interests are served. It only indicates to the mau-mauists that corporate terrorism works. Mr. DeSantis is playing the same game from the other side.

Mr. Iger has now allowed that Disney did not handle its opposition to the Florida law well, though this recent statement wasn’t what the press most wanted to quote. On Thursday, he further offered to sit down with Florida’s governor to bury the hatchet. His shareholders would thank him. The right response from day one would have been to wish Florida voters and elected officials well in dealing with a knotty question, while hoping consensus would be achieved and all sides would at least feel respected and that their views were heard.

But when CEOs instead start lauding themselves for their courage in “taking a stand,” they should understand nobody believes they are brave. Just the opposite: They hear only a surrender to personal terrorism and bullying in a way that belies their duty to put shareholders before their own desire not to be called names.




Holman W. Jenkins Jr. is a member of the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal. He writes the twice-weekly “Business World” column that appears on the paper's op-ed page on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Mr. Jenkins joined the Journal in May 1992 as a writer for the editorial page in New York. In February 1994, he moved to Hong Kong as editor of The Asian Wall Street Journal's editorial page. He returned to the domestic Journal in December 1995 as a member of the paper's editorial board and was based in San Francisco. Mr. Jenkins won a 1997 Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business and financial coverage.

Born in Philadelphia, Mr. Jenkins received a bachelor's degree from Hobart and William Smith Colleges and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University. He was a 1991 journalism fellow at the University of Michigan.


Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis vs. Disney-- continuing
Post by: G M on April 17, 2023, 02:00:02 PM
https://dailycaller.com/2023/04/17/desantis-unveils-bill-revoke-disneys-attempts-ignore-oversight-board/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking&pnespid=6qA6ATkZavoBwKfFvzToEp7S4E.3TJgrMvamwrI1rQ9m3lsWrU_G5s.WFdV8HTI6kOjgoAot

Burn Disney to the ground. Salt the earth.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 19, 2023, 12:11:46 PM
https://babylonbee.com/news/disneyworld-forced-to-close-after-desantis-builds-elementary-school-within-1000-feet?utm_source=The%20Babylon%20Bee%20Newsletter&utm_medium=email
Title: wsj above
Post by: ccp on April 19, 2023, 12:45:27 PM
Holman W. Jenkins
must be Disney stock holder

yeah I guess grooming children is not and issue and just plain stupid

and yeah as CD pointed out in another thread Disney has every right to operate as the 51 st state :wink:

from some 18 century law... I think I read or something like that .


Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis vs. Disney-- continuing
Post by: G M on April 21, 2023, 06:28:49 AM
https://dailycaller.com/2023/04/17/desantis-unveils-bill-revoke-disneys-attempts-ignore-oversight-board/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking&pnespid=6qA6ATkZavoBwKfFvzToEp7S4E.3TJgrMvamwrI1rQ9m3lsWrU_G5s.WFdV8HTI6kOjgoAot

Burn Disney to the ground. Salt the earth.


Padraig Martin



Why DeSantis has to beat Disney

Whether you support DeSantis or not, his fight with Disney is a much bigger struggle than most on the right realize. The left knows why the fight is important. As usual, the American political right does not. To many Republicans, the dispute seems superfluous. Republicans lose because they focus on the trees, not the forest. In fact, the struggle between Disney and DeSantis may be the most important fight the American political right has had since the beginning of the 21st Century.

The reason that we find the United States in our current detestable condition is due to "woke" economics. As long as the Left was anti-corporations, their brand of politics was marginalized. The long march through the institutions would always get stymied by a Capitalist system that saw no reason to invest in woke social programming. It is not too long ago that a leftist group called "Occupy Wall Street" was fighting the same companies that are now allied to their leftist ideals. What changed? A merger of globalist goals.

Leftists have always hated the Constitutional restrictions placed upon their agenda. They have always hated the United States as it was built. The Left has constantly elevated systems that are decidely antithetical to our values. European-style democratic socialism and gun restrictions are good examples of the types of systems the Left routinely embraced as better alternatives to the American way of life. They want change.

Meanwhile, corporations have very little investment in the US because they seek ever expanding markets. The more "middle class" Chinese they can create, the more potential consumers. Thus, if the US falls and that creates a rise elsewhere, so be it. The need for uniform consumerism over national distinctions became the priority. Overtures to American "rivals" began in earnest, namely the Communist Chinese, who were more than happy to help kill American power with corporate facilitators. This is how Hollywood and Apple got into China - betraying their homeland.

Consequently, Corporate America and the Left finally found common ground. Defeating American hegemony, elevating systems and states that are anti-American, and introducing cultural uniformity became shared goals. To the Left, blurring social norms is the goal. To corporations, it is profit driven. If biological males and females are wearing the same jeans and have the same hairstyles from Beijing to Boston, profitability rises. The end results are the same, the origins of the goals simply differ. Neither party cares that they are being exploited by the other. This is a globalist alliance predicated on change and consumerism.

Correspondingly, this is why corporations have gone woke. They do not care that a few million Americans will boycott their products. They know that most will not. They also know that overseas markets will not care - provided they do not go afoul with global cultural censors. Movies like the latest "Buzz Lightyear" failed because they ran into Chinese and Islamic censors for lesbian content. Disney eventually exported a non lesbian version of the movie. They understood their limitations.

Here in the US, the Corporate-Left alliance accelerated over the past decade as corporations, seeing an opportunity to reduce and redirect wealth away from a shrinking America to other markets, began funding leftwing causes. The largest financial supporter of Black Lives Matter is Ford - despite the fact that Ford-150 is the most popular truck in rural America. The largest financial supporters of a variety of antifa causes have been American staples for generations - GM, Nike, Coca Cola, and Disney. "Go Woke, Go Broke," never really impacts the companies that increasingly rely on overseas consumerism.

Enter the fight with DeSantis

Democrats have predictably attacked DeSantis over this fight. The media has predictably mocked the Florida governor, claiming Disney victories while never reporting on the myriad of counter punches and wins accumulated by DeSantis. Republican politicians from Donald Trump to Chris Christie to Mitt Romney only see an opportunity to pounce on a potential political rival. They do not care that DeSantis is literally fighting a small war to choke-off the Left's corporate financiers.

When Disney injected itself into the Parental Rights in Education debate (aka, "Don't Say Gay") it ostensibly showed itself to be a political actor - not a corporation. In fact, it was acting like corporations have acted for the past decade - taking decidedly anti-American, pro-Leftist positions to advance its corporate goals. DeSantis' fight is not with Disney alone. DeSantis' fight is to kill ALL of the corporate wokeness that is funding deleterious political positions in states like Florida. It's their money supply he is after.

Republicans do not see it. The Left does. Corporate America does, too. That is why they are after DeSantis over this fight. Republicans should not help them.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on April 21, 2023, 07:20:37 AM
"It is not too long ago that a leftist group called "Occupy Wall Street" was fighting the same companies that are now allied to their leftist ideals. What changed? A merger of globalist goals."

really excellent point!

yes big wall street corporations see a profit motive to support the LEFT Woke religion. 

I was thinking
1) cater to the Woke crowd as one profit motive
2)and maybe support a party (democrats ) they can bribe and control.
3)virtue signal / remove the MSM going after corporations (rich vs poor hustling )
4) the party of cheap labor (illegal endless immigration )
and maybe most important to drive them to promote the party of wokism =>
5) ****Chinese  investment******







Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: G M on April 21, 2023, 07:38:19 AM
None of this is accidental.

The long march through American institutions has paid off for the left.

Know who is at the core of leftist ideology ?

Saul Alinsky dedicated Rules to Radicals to "That first rebel who rebelled against God and won for himself his own kingdom, Lucifer"

"It is not too long ago that a leftist group called "Occupy Wall Street" was fighting the same companies that are now allied to their leftist ideals. What changed? A merger of globalist goals."

really excellent point!

yes big wall street corporations see a profit motive to support the LEFT Woke religion. 

I was thinking
1) cater to the Woke crowd as one profit motive
2)and maybe support a party (democrats ) they can bribe and control.
3)virtue signal / remove the MSM going after corporations (rich vs poor hustling )
4) the party of cheap labor (illegal endless immigration )
and maybe most important to drive them to promote the party of wokism =>
5) ****Chinese  investment******
Title: WSJ: DeSantis vs. Disney
Post by: Crafty_Dog on April 27, 2023, 06:59:28 PM
The Disney-DeSantis Knife Fight
A dispute over corporate favoritism becomes a political blood feud.
By The Editorial BoardFollow
April 27, 2023 6:43 pm ET



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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis PHOTO: KOBI WOLF/BLOOMBERG NEWS
The donnybrook between Disney and Ron DeSantis keeps escalating, and what should be a dispute over corporate welfare has devolved into an unfortunate political brawl that both could lose.

Disney sued Florida this week claiming the state is retaliating because the company opposed its law that bars instruction on sexuality and gender ideology in grades K-3. The state’s alleged retaliation, Disney says, violates its First Amendment rights and the U.S. Constitution’s contracts and takings clauses.

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The media fueled a backlash against Florida’s law by giving it the false label of “don’t say gay.” Disney then felt pressure from its employees to denounce it. Republicans in Tallahassee responded by dissolving the 56-year-old Reedy Creek Improvement District that let Disney essentially regulate itself.

Lawmakers later replaced Reedy Creek with a new Central Florida Tourism Oversight District with a board handpicked by the Governor. But before the handover, Disney and Reedy Creek executed two contracts that cemented long-term development rights and obligations.

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The state raised no objections at the time. The state’s Department of Economic Opportunity had signed off on Disney’s land development plans last summer. The agreements also didn’t restrict the ability of Mr. DeSantis’s board to impose taxes, reject building permits, exercise eminent domain or otherwise regulate Disney.

But as Disney’s lawsuit explains, “A public narrative about these Contracts quickly formed around the idea that Governor DeSantis was ‘caught off guard’ and ‘had the rug pulled from under him,’” to quote news stories. The press crowed that Mr. DeSantis had been humiliated by Disney. “Despite the facts, the political story was set,” the lawsuit says.

Mr. DeSantis then dug in. “There will be round two in terms of those fireworks,” Mr. DeSantis vouched. He promised to pass legislation to “make sure that people understand that you don’t get to put your own company over the will of the people of Florida.”

The Governor’s board followed through on Wednesday, which prompted Disney to sue. Its strongest claim is that the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from impairing contracts unless “necessary” to serve an “important” government interest. Why is it in the government’s interest to cancel Disney’s land development plans that it had earlier approved?

Disney also alleges that it was targeted for expressing its political opinions, which has a chilling effect on protected speech. This is hard to refute given how many times Mr. DeSantis and Republican legislators threatened to punish Disney for its “woke politics” and criticism of Florida’s education law. “Go woke, go broke,” Mr. DeSantis’s former press secretary warned.

The Governor’s best defense is that the state has a right to rescind special privileges that it once granted to Disney, which is true. Corporate welfare and favoritism for some businesses but not others is an unseemly political habit. The legal difficulty is that Republicans appear to have targeted Disney and abrogated contracts for political reasons.

Disney’s denunciation of Florida’s education law was gratuitous, but so are Mr. DeSantis's threats of retribution. The lawsuit doesn’t paint the Governor in the best light, and he will get a black eye as he runs for President if Disney prevails in its lawsuit.

But why is Disney CEO Bob Iger escalating the fight when he has bigger business problems? Millions of his customers—i.e., parents—don’t appreciate the company’s woke turn, which may be one reason that subscriber growth for its Disney+ streaming service is flagging. In this fiscal year’s first quarter, Disney+ reported its first subscriber loss. Mr. Iger said in February the company would slash 7,000 jobs. How will battling Florida’s Governor boost Disney’s profits?

Mr. Iger appears to be playing politics himself, trying to please his progressive employees and taking on a Republican disliked by media and culture elites. It’s hard to see a happy ending here for Disney or Mr. DeSantis.
Title: Re: WSJ: DeSantis vs. Disney
Post by: G M on April 28, 2023, 09:18:49 AM
WSJoke.

The Demonmouse needs to be destroyed.

No compromise.


The Disney-DeSantis Knife Fight
A dispute over corporate favoritism becomes a political blood feud.
By The Editorial BoardFollow
April 27, 2023 6:43 pm ET



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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis PHOTO: KOBI WOLF/BLOOMBERG NEWS
The donnybrook between Disney and Ron DeSantis keeps escalating, and what should be a dispute over corporate welfare has devolved into an unfortunate political brawl that both could lose.

Disney sued Florida this week claiming the state is retaliating because the company opposed its law that bars instruction on sexuality and gender ideology in grades K-3. The state’s alleged retaliation, Disney says, violates its First Amendment rights and the U.S. Constitution’s contracts and takings clauses.

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The media fueled a backlash against Florida’s law by giving it the false label of “don’t say gay.” Disney then felt pressure from its employees to denounce it. Republicans in Tallahassee responded by dissolving the 56-year-old Reedy Creek Improvement District that let Disney essentially regulate itself.

Lawmakers later replaced Reedy Creek with a new Central Florida Tourism Oversight District with a board handpicked by the Governor. But before the handover, Disney and Reedy Creek executed two contracts that cemented long-term development rights and obligations.

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The state raised no objections at the time. The state’s Department of Economic Opportunity had signed off on Disney’s land development plans last summer. The agreements also didn’t restrict the ability of Mr. DeSantis’s board to impose taxes, reject building permits, exercise eminent domain or otherwise regulate Disney.

But as Disney’s lawsuit explains, “A public narrative about these Contracts quickly formed around the idea that Governor DeSantis was ‘caught off guard’ and ‘had the rug pulled from under him,’” to quote news stories. The press crowed that Mr. DeSantis had been humiliated by Disney. “Despite the facts, the political story was set,” the lawsuit says.

Mr. DeSantis then dug in. “There will be round two in terms of those fireworks,” Mr. DeSantis vouched. He promised to pass legislation to “make sure that people understand that you don’t get to put your own company over the will of the people of Florida.”

The Governor’s board followed through on Wednesday, which prompted Disney to sue. Its strongest claim is that the U.S. Constitution prohibits states from impairing contracts unless “necessary” to serve an “important” government interest. Why is it in the government’s interest to cancel Disney’s land development plans that it had earlier approved?

Disney also alleges that it was targeted for expressing its political opinions, which has a chilling effect on protected speech. This is hard to refute given how many times Mr. DeSantis and Republican legislators threatened to punish Disney for its “woke politics” and criticism of Florida’s education law. “Go woke, go broke,” Mr. DeSantis’s former press secretary warned.

The Governor’s best defense is that the state has a right to rescind special privileges that it once granted to Disney, which is true. Corporate welfare and favoritism for some businesses but not others is an unseemly political habit. The legal difficulty is that Republicans appear to have targeted Disney and abrogated contracts for political reasons.

Disney’s denunciation of Florida’s education law was gratuitous, but so are Mr. DeSantis's threats of retribution. The lawsuit doesn’t paint the Governor in the best light, and he will get a black eye as he runs for President if Disney prevails in its lawsuit.

But why is Disney CEO Bob Iger escalating the fight when he has bigger business problems? Millions of his customers—i.e., parents—don’t appreciate the company’s woke turn, which may be one reason that subscriber growth for its Disney+ streaming service is flagging. In this fiscal year’s first quarter, Disney+ reported its first subscriber loss. Mr. Iger said in February the company would slash 7,000 jobs. How will battling Florida’s Governor boost Disney’s profits?

Mr. Iger appears to be playing politics himself, trying to please his progressive employees and taking on a Republican disliked by media and culture elites. It’s hard to see a happy ending here for Disney or Mr. DeSantis.
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis takes on PBM and big pharma
Post by: ccp on May 05, 2023, 12:08:43 PM
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gov-desantis-signs-prescription-drug-133723620.html

this is a start

Title: NRO: Gov. Ron DeSantis so much winning!
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 05, 2023, 08:26:04 PM
By CHARLES C. W. COOKE
May 5, 2023 11:51 AM
What the GOP has achieved in Florida is astounding. Republican primary voters should credit the governor who spearheaded it.

Is this what it felt like to be a progressive during the Great Society?

Today, the Florida legislature concludes its 2023 session. And good Lord has it made the most of it. In the space of just three months, Governor DeSantis and the Republican supermajority have created the largest school-choice program in American history, banned abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, made Florida the 26th constitutional-carry state in the nation, forced unions to abide by the Supreme Court’s Janus decision, cut taxes by $2 billion, banned sex-change operations from being performed on minors, barred DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives in universities, expanded the use of mandatory E-Verify in the state, achieved a previously unthinkable collection of tort reforms, declared driver’s licenses issued to out-of-state illegal immigrants invalid in Florida, prohibited state and local governments from considering ESG (environmental, social, and governance) factors in their contracting and investing decisions, extended last year’s Parental Rights in Education law through twelfth grade, made it illegal for financial institutions to discriminate on the basis of “religious, political, or social beliefs,” and prevented credit-card companies from tracking their customers’ gun purchases.

In recent weeks, Governor DeSantis has been keen to point out that politicians who wish to effect change must first win their elections. The GOP’s achievements within this legislative session underscore his point. Florida is not Florida by accident. It is Florida because, for the last 28 years, the Republican Party has controlled the state’s legislature, and, for the last 24 years, it has controlled the governor’s office. This, not posting memes on Twitter, has allowed it to prohibit the taxation of any form of income, to require any tax or fee increases to receive the blessing of a supermajority of both legislative houses, to create the top fiscal and economic environment in the country, to ban affirmative action, to reject Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, to appoint six out of the state’s seven supreme court judges, to provide the sane response to Covid that attracted hundreds of thousands of émigrés during 2020 and 2021, and to accumulate all of the other policy wins that, frankly, are just too numerous to list.

I do not like every last thing that Republicans have done in Florida, and I have been happy to say as much. But that is not my point here. My point — the sine qua non point, really — is that Florida provides a remarkable example of a political organization having conceived of, and then executed, a coherent vision. Until 1999, Florida had elected only two Republican governors since Reconstruction. Since then, voters have refused to elect a single Democrat to the mansion. Better still, Republicans have been rewarded for their efforts. From the end of the Civil War until 2021, there were more registered Democrats in the state than Republicans. Today, the Republicans have an advantage of 454,918, the Republican governor has a 59–39 approve–disapprove rating, and the legislature has so many Republican legislators sitting in it that it could pass any legislation it wished to over a gubernatorial veto.
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis backs Daniel Penny
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2023, 08:36:48 AM


https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/daniel-penny-marine-manslaughter
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis bans central bank digital currency
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 13, 2023, 01:35:46 PM
https://www.oann.com/video/oan-contribution/gov-desantis-bans-central-bank-digital-currency/
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis signs defunding DEI at FL colleges
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 15, 2023, 05:27:03 PM
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/desantis-signs-law-defunding-dei-programs-at-state-colleges/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=31487065
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis signs defunding DEI at FL colleges
Post by: G M on May 15, 2023, 05:33:15 PM
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/desantis-signs-law-defunding-dei-programs-at-state-colleges/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=31487065

DeSantis demonstrates just how lame most republican't governors are.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 15, 2023, 06:38:50 PM
Agreed!

I think/hope that with his actual accomplishments he is laying the groundwork for contrasting with Trump's perennial food fights.
Title: So much winning with Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 18, 2023, 08:17:41 AM
https://survival-situation.com/news/florida-signs-law-to-prohibit-tracking-gun-sales-via-credit-card/
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: G M on May 18, 2023, 09:24:51 AM
Agreed!

I think/hope that with his actual accomplishments he is laying the groundwork for contrasting with Trump's perennial food fights.

For all his flaws and missteps, Trump was targeted by the one true branch of government. The one branch of actual government will not let DeSantis or RFK or anyone else really hold the levers of power.

At the federal level, all politics is just professional wrestling theatrics for the rubes.

Don’t be a rube.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 18, 2023, 02:07:42 PM
I would be a rube only if I did not recognize the possibilities.
Title: PJmedia - truth behind Disney axe of 900 million project
Post by: ccp on May 19, 2023, 01:44:36 PM
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/chris-queen/2023/05/19/disney-cancels-1-billion-project-in-florida-but-not-for-the-reason-the-media-wants-you-to-believe-n1696612

Igor did not like it the minute he came back as CEO
Title: Miami mayor, a Rep, criticizes DeSantis over Disney feud.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 20, 2023, 07:03:30 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/ron-desantis-slammed-by-miami-mayor-for-personal-vendetta-on-disney-2-000-jobs-gone-1b-fallout/ar-AA1bnX3Y?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=8231dcb385204d4cb5fe0ceff9eea775&ei=25
Title: Re: Miami mayor, a Rep, criticizes DeSantis over Disney feud.
Post by: G M on May 20, 2023, 07:05:11 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/ron-desantis-slammed-by-miami-mayor-for-personal-vendetta-on-disney-2-000-jobs-gone-1b-fallout/ar-AA1bnX3Y?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=8231dcb385204d4cb5fe0ceff9eea775&ei=25

Oh, a republican't wants to surrender. How typical.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on May 20, 2023, 08:49:45 AM
and the amazing part is a majority of citizens in America do not agree with the religion of woke

yet the power of the DNC-media-SiliconValley-Hollywood
woke MOB

would have us thinking it is the other way around

Title: the Second Ronald the first Italian America if President
Post by: ccp on May 24, 2023, 05:28:09 AM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_DeSantis

Italians would finally break the glass ceiling!!!   :wink:
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 25, 2023, 01:01:42 PM
Very strong one hour interview on FOX last night with Trey Gowdy.

Can we get our hands on this?
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis interview
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 28, 2023, 06:54:49 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uGoWr1hspM

Would love to find:

a) His interview on FOX with Trey Gowdy;

b) His candidacy announcement video;

c) where to go to give him money
Title: Is this the Trey interview of De Santis?
Post by: ccp on May 29, 2023, 05:21:40 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1rTX-ef-Og
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on May 29, 2023, 06:18:20 AM
Yes it is the first segment of it.  IIRC it went for the whole hour.

This is perfect to send to my 91 year old mom.  Thank you.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on May 29, 2023, 06:55:28 AM
regards to your Mom
 :-D
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis vs Newsom
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 21, 2023, 08:01:46 AM
https://www.louderwithcrowder.com/ron-desantis-san-francisco
Title: DeSantis announces nationwide sheriff coalition to push back on border crisis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 22, 2023, 08:47:45 AM
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/desantis-announces-nationwide-coalition-80-sheriffs-push-back-against-border-crisis?fbclid=IwAR3kBeO6xyJJpgsNlM1y6UATuzoXYaedDz6gBjsBXGYkenx2BvfZWIfEnCI
Title: politico
Post by: ccp on June 26, 2023, 07:01:24 AM
DESANTIS STUMBLES.  !!!!!!

is the claim:

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/26/ron-desantis-new-hampshire-00103519

he insulted a couple of girls by scheduling on the wrong day

wow - he is stupid - a disgrace - insulting yada yada.  :roll:

God I hate the MSM
Title: end automatic citizenship
Post by: ccp on June 26, 2023, 03:04:48 PM
to anyone who steps over the surveyed borderline

what was that movie that showed illegal stepping over the border crying with joy at then delivering the baby just inside the "foul" line?

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/desantis-texas-immigration/2023/06/26/id/1124981/

OTOH this is easier said then done......... is my understanding
Title: At approx 02:00; 03:05; 04:10
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 27, 2023, 06:46:44 PM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtBE8k1LlvA&t=140s
Title: abolish Dept's of Ed , Energy , IRS , and Commerce
Post by: ccp on June 29, 2023, 03:29:22 PM
https://www.conservativereview.com/desantis-supports-abolishing-the-irs-department-of-education-and-more-but-he-also-has-a-backup-plan-2662011767.html

I can only imagine the furor in the deep state over this.

IRS - 79,070 full time employees

Dept of Ed - 3,912

Dept of Energy - 14,000 federal employees and over 95,000 management and operating contractor and other contractor employees

Dept of Commerce - 47,000

total -  238,982
Title: Re: abolish Dept's of Ed , Energy , IRS , and Commerce
Post by: G M on June 29, 2023, 03:47:30 PM
Remember when Reagan got rid of the Dept. of Education?


https://www.conservativereview.com/desantis-supports-abolishing-the-irs-department-of-education-and-more-but-he-also-has-a-backup-plan-2662011767.html

I can only imagine the furor in the deep state over this.

IRS - 79,070 full time employees

Dept of Ed - 3,912

Dept of Energy - 14,000 federal employees and over 95,000 management and operating contractor and other contractor employees

Dept of Commerce - 47,000

total -  238,982
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on June 29, 2023, 04:33:02 PM

DeSantis's vote as a Congressman in favor of a national sales tax instead of other taxes would have greatly vitiated the justification for IRS agents.
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis wealth numbers
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 01, 2023, 03:10:38 AM
Ron DeSantis, Who Touts Blue-Collar Roots, More Than Triples Net Worth
Book deal boosts Florida governor’s wealth, new filings show, but it still pales in comparison to Trump’s
By Jack Gillum Alex Leary
June 30, 2023 9:08 pm ET

On the presidential campaign trail, Ron DeSantis touts his blue-collar roots and how he joined the Navy instead of taking lucrative opportunities available to a graduate of Yale and Harvard. But as the Florida governor’s political power has grown, so too has his financial status.

State financial disclosures for 2022 released Friday show that DeSantis earned $1.25 million for a book timed to the launch of his presidential campaign, part of what a person familiar with the deal said was a $2 million advance. Now, his net worth is more than three times the $319,000 that he reported for 2021.

The assets put DeSantis, 44 years old, on par with some of his Republican rivals, but they remain paltry compared with those of the billionaire he is trying to defeat for the GOP nomination—former President Donald Trump.

READ THE DOCUMENT
Ron DeSantis’s Financial Disclosures
A Wall Street Journal review of DeSantis’s previous state and federal disclosures shows how, until his White House bid, he had far less personal wealth than other recent prominent Republican candidates. Before his February bestseller, DeSantis’s wealth largely included retirement savings and proceeds from home sales.

Trump, by contrast, has assets of at least $1.5 billion, federal data show. And Mitt Romney, the Republican standard-bearer in 2012, then had assets totaling at least $80 million.

DeSantis had been worth about $319,000 in 2021, according to the most recent data before Friday’s release. Previous figures took into account the salary he earned as a congressman, as well as the 2019 sale of his three-bedroom Jacksonville home. As governor, records show, he makes $141,400.

A spokesman for DeSantis didn’t immediately respond to inquiries seeking comment Friday.

When he resigned from Congress in 2018 amid a run for governor, DeSantis said it would be inappropriate to continue to accept a lawmaker’s salary given the time he would devote to campaigning. That isn’t the case now as he travels the country while running for president; legislators in Tallahassee recently changed state law so he wouldn’t have to resign, meaning he will keep the governorship and paycheck. DeSantis has said he continues to do the job he was re-elected to in November.


Former President Donald Trump has assets of at least $1.5 billion, federal data show. PHOTO: STEVEN SENNE/ASSOCIATED PRESS
DeSantis has cited his life in government—and, by extension, his comparatively modest income—as part of his everyman campaign pitch.

“I could have earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in law or finance,” he wrote in his 2023 autobiography, “The Courage to Be Free.” “But I decided to pass on that money because I wanted to serve.” While at Harvard Law School, DeSantis was commissioned in the Navy, and went on to serve in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps.

DeSantis is relying on his biography as the Florida-raised son of a Nielsen TV ratings box installer and nurse as part of an appeal to voters, and drawing a contrast with Trump. Ironically, Trump won in 2016 by appealing to working-class voters and they remain steadfast in support of him, while polling shows DeSantis does better with more educated and affluent Republicans.

As DeSantis has risen in politics, he has enjoyed the trappings of wealth.

He has long courted ultrarich donors, dating to his time in Congress, some of whom have lent him use of their private jets, at times drawing media scrutiny. An avid golfer, he has married fundraising and schmoozing with donors with rounds at top courses and exclusive locations. He has appointed numerous donors to key state positions and boards, a practice not out of step with what other governors have done.

DeSantis at times has grumbled about political consultants, lawyers or state officials making more money than him, according to several former aides.


Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis stopped in Iowa earlier this year during his book tour. PHOTO: JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS
His book was an immediate hit, ranking No. 1 on the Journal’s hardcover nonfiction list for the week ended March 4. Through mid-June, it had sold nearly 170,000 print copies, according to book tracker Circana BookScan, a strong performance for a presidential candidate. 

“It’s a rare political book filled with policy wins,” said Eric Nelson, publisher of Broadside Books, the conservative imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, adding that most candidates’ books “are about what the writer would do if they won office.” HarperCollins and the Journal are owned by News Corp.

The book highlights what he describes as his modest upbringing. When he arrived at Yale as a “blue-collar kid” in shorts and flip-flops, he said, he didn’t fit in with the crowd of students from families who were millionaires. While studying, he wrote, he worked various jobs around campus, including recycling trash and moving furniture.

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After graduation, he said his bank account balance stood at $101.24.

Once at Harvard Law School, DeSantis said he had the impression that many students were there simply to get their tickets punched to lucrative careers in business or law. DeSantis said he instead chose to serve in the Navy, starting on an ensign’s salary while carrying college-loan debt.

On Friday, DeSantis reported that he still had $18,628.66 in student loans.

Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Arian Campo-Flores contributed to this article.

Write to Jack Gillum at jack.gillum@wsj.com and Alex Leary at alex.leary@wsj.com
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on July 01, 2023, 08:19:32 AM
"Once at Harvard Law School, DeSantis said he had the impression that many students were there simply to get their tickets punched to lucrative careers in business or law. DeSantis said he instead chose to serve in the Navy, starting on an ensign’s salary while carrying college-loan debt."

I asked
my nephew a Harvard law grad -  8-)
some questions -

are the students there really all brilliant - his response no, most just work real hard though he did add a few are.

I asked
if he knew Larry Lib - he says he knows of him but never had a class with him
I asked if he knew Dershowitz and he said he was something the to effect full of himself -

My nephew does real estate law and has become super successful - I am proud for my sister and him.

I am not sure about his politics .  He called himself once a social liberal and fiscal conservative like many like to think of themselves

But actually I hate that phrase

it is in my opinion not possible to be both in today's context

How can one be socially liberal which includes free this that , safety nets, spending into the bottomless well of hell - and at the same time call yourself a fiscal conservative ? -- YOU CAN'T`
Title: This doesn’t bode well
Post by: G M on July 03, 2023, 02:03:43 PM
https://thenationalpulse.com/2023/06/21/ron-desantis-hosts-d-c-fundraiser-at-dominions-lawyers-office/
Title: A DeSantis hate piece
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 05, 2023, 06:32:24 PM

https://theintercept.com/2023/07/03/desantis-florida-supreme-court/

DeSantis Stacked Florida’s Supreme Court With Cronies Who Wage His War on Wokeness — or Else
Akela LacyJuly 3 2023, 5:00 a.m.
Shortly after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took office in 2019, the state Supreme Court threatened to dissolve the Florida Bar Association if it didn’t get rid of its diversity programs.

The court had taken a sharp right turn after DeSantis selected three new justices with the help of Federalist Society board co-chair Leonard Leo. Leo led a secret panel of advisers that vetted DeSantis’s judicial nominees before he took office.

The revelation came on the heels of a slew of news stories on conservative donors buying influence on the U.S. Supreme Court — where Leo, again, was among the conservative legal activists who helped to install a conservative majority. The top federal court has since made landmark rulings against abortion rights and in favor of business interests. And Leo isn’t done yet: He funnels money to a network of right-wing organizations orchestrating key Supreme Court cases on red-meat conservative issues.

In Florida, Leo was working to overturn a 40-year status quo of judiciary balance and restraint. The state Supreme Court had fostered an image of independence after corruption scandals that forced two justices to resign in the early 1970s. When DeSantis took office, concerns about improprieties disappeared. The governor has a long history with the Federalist Society — he was a member at Harvard Law School — and his judicial nominees are backed by the group.

The ideological project DeSantis is pushing Florida is no secret. He unabashedly appoints political allies to posts across the state. Such picks have shown up in the judiciary, nonpartisan election offices, and state boards that oversee public schools and colleges, medical practices, business, and real estate.

DeSantis’s appointments, budget decisions, and fundraising tactics have come under heightened scrutiny since he announced a presidential run last month. None of the appointments, however, eclipse the lasting change of his state Supreme Court takeover. DeSantis has named five of the court’s seven members, all of whom are members of the Federalist Society.

“I don’t think he’s appointing chumps, but he’s clearly put a more ideological litmus test on his justices than others have,” said Neil Skene, who published an official history of the court. Vetting justices by patronage was common starting under President George Bush in the early 2000s, Skene said, but DeSantis is at the vanguard of making purely ideological appointments.

WASHINGTON DC - APRIL 23 Leonard Leo speaks at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC on April 23, 2019. Leo is an Executive Vice President with the Federalist Society and a confidant of President Trump. He is a maestro of a network of interlocking nonprofits working on media campaigns and other initiatives to pressure lawmakers and generate public support for conservative judges. (Photo by Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
Leonard Leo speaks at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C. on April 23, 2019.

Photo: Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post via Getty Images

He is not the first to award contracts to donors or administrative posts to political operatives, but DeSantis does it at an unprecedented scale. The thoroughness of his cronyism has had a chilling effect in Florida: There is a perception among politicians and residents alike that nothing can get done if you’re seen a DeSantis foe, said Barbara Petersen, executive director of the Florida Center for Government Accountability.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Petersen said. Public servants are dismayed at what’s happening to their state, she said: “People are afraid of him.”

No Diversity Policies
After the scandals in the 1970s, successive Florida governors sought to improve the diversity of viewpoints on the state Supreme Court.

“The idea behind all of that, of course, is to make sure that all of Florida is represented on its highest court,” said Craig Waters, who worked at the court for 35 years and was its communications director until he retired last year. “It makes sure that a state Supreme Court does not become an echo chamber, but a true debate society. If you have members of a state Supreme Court that are careful of each other and watching each other, it prevents anything happening that might lend itself to a lack of public trust and confidence. It’s very important that the justices police each other.”

That stopped under DeSantis.

“What I see today,” Waters said, “is a court that lacks diversity and that lacks that internal policing mechanism that has served it so well in the past.”

Shortly after DeSantis made his first appointments, the court started chipping away at its diversity programs.

In 1949, the state Supreme Court founded the Florida Bar, an association that regulates attorneys. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the bar sought to diversify the judiciary along ideological, ethnic, and gender lines and to address judicial discrimination. The association convened a diversity symposium in 2004 and issued a report with recommendations to help improve diversity and strengthen its independence. In 2010, the Florida Bar created a committee to address diversity and inclusion.

When DeSantis’s allies arrived on the court, threats began coming down: The bar would be dissolved if it didn’t get rid of its diversity initiatives. Soon enough, the attacks proved effective. In 2021, the state Supreme Court ordered that the bar association amend its continuing legal education, or CLE, policy and eliminate a requirement for diversity among speakers and panelists in its continuing educational programs. The fight even made its way to the American Bar Association, which changed its own policies in April 2022 to bring the group into compliance with the rules imposed on the Florida Bar.

Florida Bar spokesperson Jennifer Krell Davis told The Intercept that the association had not changed its diversity programs, but that it adhered with the court’s order to eliminate diversity requirements in CLE programs. She declined to comment on a question about the court’s alleged threat to dissolve the association. “Our Leadership Academy, Path to Unity and Diversity grant programs (and others) continue to thrive under our Diversity and Inclusion committee,” Krell Davis said.

In February, the state Supreme Court went so far to dissolve the court system’s Standing Committee on Fairness and Diversity and eliminate its fairness and diversity training for judges.

The court’s public information Director Paul Flemming said the court’s opinion was self-explanatory. “The opinions of the Florida Supreme Court speak for themselves,” Flemming said. “I would refer you to what is written there: ‘Quotas based on characteristics like the ones in this policy are antithetical to basic American principles of nondiscrimination.’”

DeSantis Court Picks
How the state Supreme Court arrived here is the story of DeSantis’s picks. The court’s current chief justice, Carlos Muñiz, took an unusual path to the bench. He had previously been a Republican political operative and worked in the Trump administration as general counsel to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. Muñiz was deputy attorney general and chief of staff to former Attorney General Pam Bondi, deputy chief of staff and general counsel to the former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, and deputy general counsel to former Gov. Jeb Bush.

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When DeSantis took office, Alan Lawson, a conservative and the most senior judge on the bench, was in line to be the next chief justice of the court. Court staff had been preparing for his ascension and budgeting for his administration when Lawson abruptly announced in April 2022 that he would retire. Lawson went to work as a partner at a new law firm in Tallahassee run by Republican political operatives who had broken off from one of the state’s top GOP law firms, Shutts & Bowen. Lawson told the Washington Post his decision to leave court was purely personal.

That July, less than four years after he was appointed to the state Supreme Court, Muñiz became its chief. Lawson was the first justice to be passed over for chief despite his seniority since 1976, said Skene, the expert on Florida courts. “He was not of the solidly Federalist Society group and Muñiz was,” he said. “Muñiz had a much more political job before that.”

Another DeSantis pick, Renatha Francis, worked at Shutts & Bowen before she was appointed to the court in 2020. Her original nomination was nullified because she hadn’t been a member of the bar for 10 years, as required by the state constitution. She was nominated again in 2022.


Related
DeSantis State Government Appointee Holds DeSantis Fundraiser in The Villages
The web of allies and appointments DeSantis has woven across the state overlaps with and influences the court. In May, after another justice abruptly stepped down to take a job at a DeSantis-linked insurance company, the governor appointed Meredith Sasso to the state Supreme Court. Several months before, DeSantis had appointed her husband, Mike Sasso, to the board of the former Reedy Creek Improvement District, where the governor has been embroiled in a battle with Disney. DeSantis appointed Sasso and four other Republicans to the board in February, including a major GOP donor and a co-founder of the far-right group Moms for Liberty who is married to the chair of Florida’s GOP.

Four days after Meredith Sasso joined the bench, her husband resigned from the improvement district board. Had Sasso remained on, it would have raised questions about his wife’s ability to participate in court decisions related to Disney without presenting a conflict of interest.

Similar questions may soon face Charles Canady, another justice who was appointed by former Democratic Gov. Charlie Crist. Canady’s wife Jennifer was elected last year to the Florida state House and quickly co-sponsored a bill that would ban abortion beyond six weeks. DeSantis signed the six-week ban into law in April, but its implementation is pending an ongoing court challenge to the state’s current 15-week ban. Jennifer Canady has been floated as the state’s next speaker of the House with DeSantis’s blessing.

“That poses a really difficult kind of situation for Canady because basically every law that gets passed and might be up for court review will come through the House of Representatives,” Skene said. “It certainly creates this interesting proposition where husband and wife might be at the head of two different branches of government.”

Cronies Everywhere
What makes DeSantis different from his predecessors is that his actions are overtly political, said Ben Wilcox, research director and co-founder of Integrity Florida, a government watchdog. DeSantis has reshaped Florida politics far beyond the judiciary, from the boards of public schools to boards of medicine.

“Because DeSantis has such an aggressive agenda, that’s why you’re seeing all these appointments to school boards, universities,” Wilcox said. “He’s really trying to push his agenda in pretty much every chance he has.”

The governor, for instance, overhauled the board of trustees at the New College of Florida and installed conservative activists. One pick to the board was the architect of the war on critical race theory. The new board quickly fired the college president and replaced her with the former Republican speaker of the Florida House. He, in turn, tapped a GOP lawmaker — whom his office had previously suspended from a county position after he was charged with impersonating a law enforcement officer — to become the next president of South Florida State College.

The lawmaker, state Rep. Fred Hawkins, had no higher education experience, and the school lowered the education requirements for the position just three days before he submitted his application. Three finalist candidates withdrew their applications after the governor’s office contacted members of the board, the Herald Advocate reported. Hawkins got the job.

Hawkins would prove to be yet another loop in the tangle of DeSantis cronies. Before arriving at South Florida State, Hawkins sponsored a bill that gave DeSantis power to appoint the board for the Reedy Creek Improvement District, where Disney is based. The move came just under a year after DeSantis signed a bill to revoke Disney’s special tax status after the entertainment giant publicly opposed his “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Disney sued DeSantis in April, claiming the governor weaponized the state government to retaliate against it for making First Amendment-protected speech.

DeSantis also stacked the state’s two medical boards, including an appointment for a real estate broker whose wife DeSantis had installed in a real estate appraisal board. Both medical boards voted last year to ban gender-affirming health care for trans youth.

Lobbyists
DeSantis repeatedly leveraged his position to bully Florida political figures — from elected officials to lobbyists in the state — into supporting his ambitions and pet causes.

“What he is doing, and what is now being reported, is his shakedown of lobbyists,” said Petersen, of the Florida Center for Government Accountability.

DeSantis’s chief of staff organized government officials to solicit campaign contributions from lobbyists, NBC reported earlier this month.

“Shaking down legislators, you know: ‘Give me your endorsement, I haven’t signed the budget yet,’” Petersen said. “And damned if he did not retaliate against those people. You can see it in the vetoes. It’s stunning.”

The governor’s allies have also gone on to enrich themselves. In September 2020, shortly after former Florida Republican House Majority Leader Dane Eagle lost in the Republican congressional primary for a U.S. House seat, DeSantis gave him a new job. Eagle, a commercial real estate broker, was appointed as the executive director of the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity. In January, less than two and a half years into the job, Eagle announced that he would join the government affairs team at Ballard Partners, one of Florida’s biggest international lobbying firms, with extensive ties to Donald Trump.

“DeSantis continues to use his political position as Governor to feed the grift of his allies, by gifting them positions their unqualified for, allowing contracts to be diverted towards friendly vendors and pleasing donors with bills that he signs into law,” said Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani, who represents parts of Orlando, in a text message. “It’s unethical and feeds into people’s distrust of the Governor.”

With DeSantis’s budget for 2023 to 2024, critics saw a governor intent on funding his top causes at the expense of Floridians’ real concerns. DeSantis cut funding for projects to protect public lands and prevent flooding that were pushed by Democrats and Republican lawmakers who resisted his requests for endorsements in the presidential primary.

“It’s becoming more and more clear as all of this information is coming out that what he’s doing, he’s doing for the sole purpose of his political ambition — and to the detriment of Floridians,” said Petersen. “We’ve got real problems in Florida.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on July 06, 2023, 05:33:36 AM
The previous (intercept) hit piece seems almost like political humor piece, the Governor on behalf of the majority of voters is trying to run the state government against the will of the more experienced "public servants", aka deep state.

"the court started chipping away at its diversity programs."

"diversity programs", aka racial discrimination.
-------------------
In this piece, a writer tells the Disney DeSantis story in context. Odd that a kid oriented amusement park opposes parental rights in education or is politically active at all, and that any corporation enjoys special tax and other considerations no one else gets.  As pointed out below, leadership to fight that takes guts.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/why-ron-desantis-disney-fight-matters
Fox News OPINION Published July 5, 2023
Why Ron DeSantis' Disney fight matters

I moved my family and two businesses from California to Florida because of Ron DeSantis' leadership
 By Dave Rubin | Fox News

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis says 'the chance of us backing down' from the state of Florida's dispute with Disney 'is zero'Video
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis says 'the chance of us backing down' from the state of Florida's dispute with Disney 'is zero'
DeSantis, who's expected to launch a presidential campaign next week, spoke during a stop on May 19, 2023 at the Red Arrow Diner in Manchester, New Hampshire.

The true test of leaders is when they put aside political self-interest.

In Florida, political self-interest rose to an all-time high, following endless calls for Gov. Ron DeSantis to surrender his fight against Disney and the woke mob. Disney, the largest employer in the state of Florida, has pulled the strings of Tallahassee politicians for over 40 years.

Those strings were finally cut when DeSantis became governor.

Most standard politicians would’ve caved to the public pressure overnight. Especially if they were even contemplating a run for president. But DeSantis didn't. And his display of courage and conviction in the fight against Disney is exactly why he should be the next president of the United States.

FOR DESANTIS TO BE PRESIDENT, HE MUST CONVINCE VOTERS HE CAN FINISH WHAT TRUMP STARTED WITHOUT THE CHAOS

Political memories are notoriously short, but let’s not forget: Disney took a shot at Florida first. The Florida legislature had passed a bill protecting children from sexualized content in classrooms, a law that earned the overwhelming favor of countless teachers and legions of parents.

With no working knowledge of the legislation, Disney attacked the governor for signing the bill into law.

Disney's Iger should 'stay out of politics' and focus on the company:
A handful of Disney employees pressured the company's then-CEO, Bob Chapek, into action. What followed was a familiar ritual: the woke CEO merry-go-round.

First you side with the social justice warriors and "take a stand." Then you learn that you've overstepped – and just sit right back down. Then, having ticked off pretty much everyone, you get slammed for sitting down after standing up. And then you get fired.

Thus, Bob Chapek was out, and another Bob – Bob Iger – returned to Disney. This is where most politicians might have left it. But Disney's intrusive and arrogant behavior forced a hard question: Why does Disney – a multibillion-dollar, California-headquartered corporation – get special tax treatments and handouts in the state of Florida? Why are they allowed to essentially operate as a pseudo-government in the state, and what permits Disney the access to corporate welfare unavailable to small businesses?

The answer was because the Sunshine State’s chief executives – including Republicans – had operated for decades sheepishly looking the other way on corporatism and gave them a pass because "it’s Disney."

But DeSantis decided to change the game. He bucked Disney of its unjust ties with the Florida government by revoking their special privileges with the state. Even though the left and corporate media painted this move as unfair, it wasn't. He was taking the crony out of crony capitalism and evening the playing field, as is the promise of America.

Republicans have spent years chirping about fighting big government and big corporations, but none have had the guts or political conviction to truly act on these issues. Not even Donald Trump. These "pet Republicans" as I often refer to them on my show, trade short-term election wins – that turn out to be losses – in the exchange for long-term bloated government.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis
Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a press conference at the American Police Hall of Fame & Museum in Titusville, Florida. (Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

What Ron DeSantis did in Florida is what Republicans should have done years ago.

Corporations like Disney are far too eager to lobby for tax breaks and be given special favors from Republican politicians – only to turn around and smear the right as soon as woke activist agendas get in their ears. Over and over, Republicans fall for the trick, debasing themselves before companies that send jobs overseas, poison the culture with insane left-wing ideology, and, in Disney’s case, push this toxicity on to young children.

DeSantis said "enough is enough." To do that in any year would have been a case study in political courage, but to do it on the cusp of a presidential run is a shining example of the leadership our country needs. We finally have a presidential contender we can count on to put Americans – not corporations – first.

Freedom-loving Americans are sick of those in the Republican Party who claim to be fighters. That unfortunately includes former President Trump, who talks a big game but falls short when it comes to not firing Dr. Anthony Fauci, attacking governors who didn’t lock down their states, not building a border wall, and recklessly spending our money. Trump even took his friend Bob Iger’s side and attacked DeSantis’ battle with Disney.

Trump had four years to check corporate welfare and wield the power of the Oval Office  to stop wokeness. But under his leadership, wokeness only metastasized. He folded on this critical battle.

Unlike Trump, DeSantis stood unapologetically strong. He protected children from sexualized classrooms. He stood up for small businesses and students during the COVID lockdowns. He reduced crime and curved illegal immigration in the state of Florida. And, most of all, he does not back down from the toughest battles against powerful corporations when they are harming American families.

Ron DeSantis says what he means, and does what he says. Which is all the more reason Americans ought to make him their standard-bearer against Joe Biden. Because it isn't enough to have faux courage on social media. You've got to display actual courage – even when the odds are against you.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 06, 2023, 07:29:52 AM
Saw Dave Rubin on FOX this morning describe Trump "as gas lighting his own base" with his attacks on RDS and the nomination race is between "the tortoise and the hare".

Title: WSJ: DeSantis Immigration Law is a Misfire
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 06, 2023, 06:16:54 PM
What say we?
============================

Florida’s Immigration Law Is a Misfire
DeSantis’s crackdown will exacerbate the state’s labor shortage while doing nothing to fix Biden’s border failures.
By
The Editorial Board
Follow
Updated July 6, 2023 6:41 pm ET

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s economic record may be the biggest selling point of his presidential campaign. Yet he’s doing neither his state nor his campaign a favor with an immigration crackdown that looks excessive and may do economic damage in the fast-growing state.

Mr. DeSantis signed legislation in May that he claimed would “combat Biden’s border crisis.” But the law, which took effect last week, does nothing to stem the flood of migrants taking advantage of the Biden Administration’s lax border enforcement and asylum-law loopholes. It will, however, worsen labor shortages.

The law requires employers with 25 or more workers to use the U.S. government’s E-Verify system to confirm the legal status of new hires. Those who don’t can be fined $1,000 a day. Businesses that “knowingly” employ undocumented immigrants can have their state licenses and permits revoked. Many employers may lay off workers they suspect are illegal to protect themselves.

An estimated 772,000 undocumented immigrants lived in Florida in 2019, many of whom have been there for years and contribute significantly to the state economy. Construction, agriculture and hospitality depend heavily on undocumented workforces, not least because of a shortage of U.S. workers for such lower-wage and -skilled jobs.

Employers in these industries are reporting that they have been losing long-time employees and can’t find new ones to replace them. Many workers who are here illegally are worried they will be found out, and some are moving to other states. A quarter to half of workers have reportedly gone missing from some construction sites in South Florida.

Florida is a top producer of tomatoes, oranges and avocados, yet about half of crop farm workers lack legal immigration status. One grower in Homestead told Noticias Telemundo that she has struggled to find workers since the law passed. “South Florida’s economy here in Homestead is agriculture. Most of them we know are undocumented,” she said. “Who’s going to harvest?”

Demand for services and housing are surging amid Florida’s population boom. That means more workers are needed to build homes, change hospital beds, serve nursing home patients meals, and keep restaurants open. Employers can raise wages only so much and stay in business, assuming they can find any workers. This will dent the state’s economic expansion, which has produced a jobs and tax-revenue boom and an affordable standard of living for nearly everyone.

Florida ranked second in state job growth over the last year after only Texas. Its 2.6% unemployment rate is near a record low. In Miami unemployment is 1.8%. In other words, Florida already suffers from a severe labor shortage, and now it will get worse.

Mr. DeSantis’s campaign immigration plan also parrots the restrictionist right’s lump of labor fallacy that illegal immigrants are taking U.S. jobs and reducing wages of America’s working class. This is contradicted by Florida’s experience and many economic studies. His plan also neglects the need for more legal pathways for migrants, which would help reduce illegal immigration.

Mr. DeSantis is right to lambaste the Biden Administration and Congress for their immigration failures. They have polarized the issue politically, and made solutions much more difficult. But it makes no sense for Mr. DeSantis to punish his own state even as he vows to clean up the mess in Washington.
Title: Re: WSJ: DeSantis Immigration Law is a Misfire
Post by: DougMacG on July 06, 2023, 06:58:45 PM
"What say we?"

"Mr. DeSantis’s campaign immigration plan also parrots the restrictionist right’s lump of labor fallacy that illegal immigrants are taking U.S. jobs and reducing wages of America’s working class."

(Doug) And they parrot the old talking point that we need illegals to pick fruit etc, with no regard for the rule of law.

I'm with DeSantis on this. Send the illegals to the blue States until they cry uncle.  If restrictive immigration laws need to be rewritten, rewrite them. We want a border.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 07, 2023, 06:16:03 AM
Agreed.

AND, speaking from the perspective of forty years in LA, there will be serious adjustments to be made, not only in agriculture but also construction, restaurants, maintenance, etc.

I remember getting my son a job as a construction laborer with a student/friend who was a general contractor.

"You sure about this?  In this work white people (his crew was latino of mixed legality and he paid in cash) don't last."

And so it was.  My son lasted about a month.

BTW there are permits for temp ag workers.  If too cumbersome some tweaks should be made.
Title: Mark Levin endorses DeSantis, America's Governor
Post by: DougMacG on July 13, 2023, 05:37:48 AM
Extended interview on yesterday's show.

Will look for transcript or audio video.
Title: question for Dough
Post by: ccp on July 13, 2023, 05:55:10 AM
I only heard a few minutes of the interview
at the end where he calls DeSantis a "great guy"

on way to store yesterday.


Did he endorse him OVER Trump ?

or is he endorsing both ?

Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on July 13, 2023, 06:00:30 AM
I only heard a small part. He didn't formally endorse but made clear that is our best choice.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on July 13, 2023, 06:18:25 AM
 8-) :-D

take THAT MAGA heads

Trump will attack Mark with dumb tweets now ............. Mark is a true warrior

the tweets will bounce off his steel chest!
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 15, 2023, 05:50:08 PM
Transcript will be appreciated.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on July 18, 2023, 09:29:54 PM
https://twitter.com/mirandadevine/status/1681450303684526082
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on July 19, 2023, 05:35:42 AM
agreed
I enjoy listening to him !   :-D
Unlike the tired loser BS artist .

Ron gets attacked mercilessly from both MAGA nuts and progressive nuts

through a complicit media and shysters.

Tapper was reasonable with honest questions and did not press negative follow ups designed to make the interviewee look bad

Unlike the rest at CNN who would have
 but what about this.
 "your critics say that about you"

etc.

Ron was ready !
he continues to learn and improve ........

Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis narrowing the Gap in the early States
Post by: DougMacG on July 19, 2023, 06:04:11 AM
"I enjoy listening to him !"

   - They told Bobby Jindal he was too smart and talked too fast and when he tried to slow it down he became boring. We will see how people like getting to know Ron DeSantis. He doesn't need to run as an anti-trump or to the right of trump, he needs to run against Biden and the Left machine every minute of every day.  He is certainly not a clone of Biden policies, as some with the "uniparty" allegation might suggest.  He has experience in military and served in Congress, but he is most certainly not a creature of Washington DC.
-----------------------
Latest New Hampshire poll and maybe the last pole before the new indictment come, Trump 37, DeSantis 23.  That is not an insurmountable early lead.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2023, 02:31:26 PM
14 points? Compared to 30+ elsewhere? 

And NH is very much a state where voters get to know a candidate.
Title: Candidate Ron DeSantis on Jake Tapper
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 19, 2023, 03:22:48 PM
https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/07/18/ron-desantis-takes-it-to-cnn-and-jake-tapper-in-solid-interview-performance-n778543
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis, Hugh Hewitt defense interview
Post by: DougMacG on July 20, 2023, 04:28:57 PM
https://youtu.be/SyVYPhL1N_c
Title: DeSantis w Russell Brand: "I have the right enemies"
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 22, 2023, 01:29:16 PM
https://dailycaller.com/2023/07/21/all-the-right-enemies-russell-brand-asks-desantis-if-hes-part-of-the-establishment/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=29912&pnespid=7KJ8AiQWP.wcwPXHtiWxTo_Ss06xTcMvK7Wkyrdx9BZmwDEt4BLbfaDXinW1DFqRAh49ljrz
Title: Was the benefit of Trump's endorsement
Post by: ccp on July 25, 2023, 02:07:51 PM
exaggerated ?  a bit of a myth ?

https://anncoulter.com/2023/07/19/trumps-endorsement-got-desantis-nothing/
Title: WSJ: DeSantis was right
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 25, 2023, 07:13:16 PM
The Real DeSantis Covid Record
Trump and the left are distorting Florida’s superior pandemic performance on public health and limiting harm from lockdowns.
By  The WSJ Editorial Board

Progressives want Donald Trump to win the GOP nomination, which explains why they’re distorting Ron DeSantis’s Covid record. The press knows the Florida Governor’s opposition to lockdowns is a political selling point, so in Trumpian fashion they are rewriting history.


Democrats have never forgiven Mr. DeSantis for defying the lockdown consensus and reopening his state in spring 2020. Americans can recall—though would probably rather forget—how the Trump Administration extended its “15 days to slow the spread” again and again.

Mr. DeSantis and some other GOP Governors, notably Brian Kemp in Georgia and South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, broke ranks in early May by easing virus restrictions. Democrats denounced Mr. DeSantis for “letting it rip,” but he reopened the state in phases and took into account the healthcare system’s capacity to treat sick patients.

On May 4 restaurants and retail stores were allowed to open at 25% of capacity. Two weeks later Mr. DeSantis announced that theme parks, including Disney World, could submit plans to reopen as early as June if they could keep patrons safe. In June Mr. DeSantis gradually eased other restrictions.

That summer Covid swept Florida and southern states that had largely dodged a first wave in the spring. But Mr. DeSantis, having examined the data and consulted scientists such as Stanford University’s Jay Bhattacharya, refused to shut down businesses. Instead he focused on protecting the elderly who faced immensely higher risk.

Seniors over the age of 75 years were hundreds of times more likely to die of Covid than young adults. And lockdowns disproportionately harmed young people who were more likely to die of drug overdoses than Covid. The public-health clerisy focused narrowly on virus risks, ignoring the social, economic and psychological damage from lockdowns.

Not least of these was learning loss from school closures, which may never be made up. Mr. DeSantis was among the few Governors to reopen schools for in-person learning in autumn 2020 despite opposition from the teachers’ unions. His reopening mitigated learning loss and helped parents return to work.

Mr. DeSantis’s strategy of focused protection was articulated in the Great Barrington Declaration, which progressives still revile despite its vindication. In 2020 Florida had the tenth lowest age-adjusted Covid death rate in the country, which was nearly 20% lower than California’s despite the Golden State’s prolonged lockdown.

Progressives are implicitly conceding Mr. DeSantis’s strategy of focused protection succeeded by attacking him now for allegedly equivocating on vaccines. The smear is that the Governor at first backed Covid vaccines for seniors, but then declined to mandate the shots. He also didn’t hector young people to get them.

This ignores that many young people already had natural immunity, which is more protective than vaccines. Vaccines can also cause myocarditis in young men, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was slow to acknowledge. It also became clear by summer 2021 that vaccines provided only transitory protection against infection.

News stories attribute Florida’s higher death rate during the summer 2021 Delta wave to Mr. DeSantis’s refusal to embrace vaccine mandates. But they leave out that Florida also suffered a much smaller Covid wave in the previous winter than most states. As we’ve learned, infections build population-level protection that extends many months.

Florida experienced a lower Covid death rate than most states in late 2021 and early 2022. The press likes to cherry-pick data and focus on discrete periods to present Mr. DeSantis as a grim-reaper. But Florida’s overall age-adjusted Covid death rate during the pandemic is 13% lower than the U.S. average and about the same as California’s.

Florida’s vaccination rate among seniors is 94.4%, similar to most Democratic-run states. About 79.6% of Floridians age 18 and over have received two doses, which is higher than most states, including many with Democratic Governors such as Michigan (71.6%), North Carolina (77.1%), and Wisconsin (77.7%).

Progressives and Mr. Trump also won’t concede that Mr. DeSantis’s Covid strategy proved to be an economic boon. Between April 2020 and July 2022, 622,476 people moved to Florida from other states, including families who wanted children in school. Employment in Florida has grown by 7.4% since January 2020 versus 2.5% in California and a 1.2% decline in New York.

The lockdown damage continues, but progressives can’t admit they were wrong. Nor can Mr. Trump. So they are trying to take down Mr. DeSantis for being right.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on July 26, 2023, 07:50:52 AM
"The Real DeSantis Covid Record
Trump and the left are distorting Florida’s superior pandemic performance on public health and limiting harm from lockdowns."

I don't think Trump claiming he did a good job during the pandemic is a winner  :roll:

That said , once the virus cat was out of the bag ,  it was curtains no matter what we did.

Should have listened to GM on that one.  He was right. 
Title: C Christie bashes DeSantis
Post by: ccp on July 26, 2023, 08:35:44 AM
https://news.yahoo.com/chris-christie-criticizes-ron-desantis-124246776.html

 Presidential candidate and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie went after one of his 2024 Republican primary rivals, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, for his reaction to new education standards approved by Florida’s Board of Education last week.

The new standards require teachers to instruct “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” When CNN asked DeSantis about the standards, he said last week, “I didn’t do it and I wasn’t involved in it.”

Christie assailed DeSantis for not taking responsibility for the material and called the problem one of his own making.

“‘I didn’t do it, and I’m not involved in it’ are not the words of leadership,” Christie said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Christie laid the blame at DeSantis’ feet for signing the Stop WOKE Act in 2022, a bill limiting how gender and race are discussed in schools.

“Governor DeSantis started this fire with the bill that he signed. And now he doesn’t want to take responsibility for whatever is done in the aftermath of it. And from listening and watching his comments, he’s obviously uncomfortable.”


------


FUNNY , I DON'T RECALL CHRISTIE TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR BRIDGE GATE AND DUMPED IT ON STAFF LYING THROUGH HIS TEETH.

this guy keeps climbing out of the Arctic ocean water to wallow up onto the icy beach to get some sun.

Like he did at his beach house - after closing the beaches for the rest of the population of NJ

If this guy really took responsibility for leaving governorship with an approval rating of 27 % he would simply leave us alone.

Peggy Noonan will be just about the only one who will vote for him

though she is probably a Democrat ........

I wonder if another supposed Republican
an - Margaret Hoover - would vote for him.
Title: WSJ: DeSantis at a crossroads
Post by: Crafty_Dog on July 28, 2023, 10:08:49 AM
Ron DeSantis at a Crossroads
Will the Florida Governor broaden his campaign message?
By
The Editorial Board
Follow
Updated July 27, 2023 10:12 pm ET

The headlines say Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign is in an unrecoverable dive, even as the primaries are months away. But the Florida Governor can still decide to run as the successful executive he is, if he broadens his public appeal and articulates a governing vision and agenda to revive the country.


Gov. DeSantis has let go about one-third of his campaign staff, as the press has noted with obvious delight. The Governor is polling at about 18% in the Real Clear Politics average, down from 30% in January. Democrats have since made an in-kind donation to Donald Trump’s campaign by indicting the former President, which no doubt revived some of his support in the polls.

***
Why isn’t Gov. DeSantis breaking through? Florida is booming, and Americans are pouring over the border seeking asylum from progressive states. The Governor was brave and correct on a major test of executive leadership: The Covid-19 pandemic. He had the courage to open schools and businesses in 2020, and he was vindicated on the merits and rewarded by voters. He’s won the Hispanic voters Republicans need to prevail in national politics.

The mystery is why the Governor has been running a narrow campaign aimed at a fraction of GOP primary voters. An illustration was the odd decision to launch his campaign in a Twitter chat with Elon Musk. Most Americans have the good sense not to spend time on Twitter, and he missed a chance to introduce himself to new voters in a speech that explained his reasons for running.

The Governor has too often catered to putative conservative populists who want to unleash the force of government to “own the libs” and win the culture war. Take the example of Bud Light. The beer’s sales have been in free fall since a brouhaha involving a marketing campaign and a transgender social media personality.

Gov. DeSantis might have simply noted that Americans don’t want to be lectured about gender identity while drinking beer, and offered the case as a cautionary tale for corporate executives wading into live political debates. Mission accomplished. But no. The Governor is now threatening to pummel Anheuser-Busch InBev with lawsuits.

This week the Governor has been hooted down for floating in an interview that as President he might unleash anti-vaccine crusader Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on the Food and Drug Administration or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Running against the measles vaccine is not a platform that will excite suburban America. Many voters will conclude Mr. DeSantis is simply pandering to what a small but loud faction of Republicans wants to hear.

This was an unforced error that raises larger questions about the Governor’s ability to beat Mr. Trump. The former President is a target-rich environment for criticism. But Mr. DeSantis has for some reason decided to attack Mr. Trump on vaccines and as a “pioneer” in promoting “gender ideology.”

Gov. DeSantis is set to give a speech on the economy, and it’s an opportunity for a fresh start. Americans don’t feel better off than they were four years ago, and President Biden’s gusher of federal spending that fueled inflation is one reason.

Mr. DeSantis can flesh out his “great American comeback” into a plan for price stability, lower taxes for all rather than for the politically favored, lower prices from unleashing American energy, and healthcare reform to give Americans more choices. He can set a target of 3% growth in GDP without inflation to lift the real wages of all Americans.

He can also connect economic revival with restoring American defenses in a dangerous world. The Governor has said China is the biggest threat to America, and he’d be doing the country a favor if he made rebuilding a vulnerable military and winning economic competition with China a central theme. So far he’s settled for gimmicks like blocking the purchase of U.S. land by Chinese nationals.

***
Gov. DeSantis’s many accomplishments in Florida—on school choice, public unions, and more—will have greater political resonance when they are part of a larger message of national renewal. The Governor can’t beat Mr. Trump by running as a more competent, sane version of Trump. He has to offer voters something better.

Mr. DeSantis turned a narrow first gubernatorial win into a blowout re-election in a competitive state. A record that compelling would be a terrible thing to waste on a campaign based on right-wing grievances.

Correction: An earlier version mistakenly said Mr. DeSantis has criticized Donald Trump’s views on same-sex marriage
Title: DeSantis for BTC / crypto
Post by: ccp on August 03, 2023, 06:29:29 AM
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/desantis-stakes-out-a-spot-as-the-chief-anti-fed-and-pro-crypto-candidate-for-2024-105133991.html
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on August 03, 2023, 06:31:08 AM
Desantis to debate Newsom I read

hope he analyzes Newsom's slickness and is ready to counter it and pick it apart.
and not just make a broad proclamation about Florida is attracting people vs California the opposite.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on August 03, 2023, 08:00:49 AM
Update: Oops, ccp already got to this.
https://firehydrantoffreedom.com/index.php?topic=2781.msg161603#msg161603
----------
While the hurricanes of Hunter, Joe, Jack Smith and Trump blow theough, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has agreed to debate California Gov. Gavin Newsom, "just tell me when and where".

Anybody who thinks this bizarre 2024 race between octogenarians Biden and Trump, a criminal versus a defendant, isn't going to have more twists and turns in it with more than a year to go is kidding themselves.

The DeSantis campaign is (allegedly) in a tailspin, the margin Trump leads him by has been growing with each indictment, 76 charges so far. He's had to lay off staff and his campaign financiers are holding back money. Yet he stays in. Why?

It's because he may have the best chance of winning.

He isn't drawing giant crowds to giant stadiums and isn't the orator that Trump apparently is. But who else is? I haven't seen a full stadium chanting Gavin either (or Vivek or Doug Bergum or RFKjr).

The race sure to be Trump v Biden may well be DeSantis versus Newsom and it looks like we are about to get a preview.

There are a lot of great states in the Union, but for Democrats the showcase is California (or NY) and for Republicans it is Florida (or Texas).

DeSantis is betting his career on this appearance. Even if the audience turns out to be small, clips and tidbits will come out of this, talking points for both sides.

I'm not familiar with Newsom other than his policies, but know he he is a highly skilled advocate and defender of Leftism. He is the one to beat, more so than Biden or Harris (or Bobby Jr).Both states are amazing places but their current governance and trend lines are opposite.

If DeSantis shows up unprepared, he will get slaughtered.

My prediction is they will both skillfully present their own case in its best light. Democrats will like Newsom and Republicans will like DeSantis.  The facts on the ground support Republican governance over the period these two have been in office and that will hopefully win over independents over the course of the campaign.

DeSantis showing he could beat the best of Democrats, using his record and governing philosophy could eventually win over Republicans - even if it is only if Trump falls.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on August 03, 2023, 08:09:55 AM
"DeSantis showing he could beat the best of Democrats, using his record and governing philosophy could eventually win over Republicans - even if it is only if Trump falls."

And I would add *independents* which Trump CANNOT do.

Trump  is at his ceiling of ~ 45 % at best - a formula for us to lose.

As we have noted along with other prominent opinions besides myself :)
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 03, 2023, 08:48:13 AM
The decision to debate Newsome is very good.  High click bait potential for the gladiatorial aspect of it all, and a chance for DeSantis to show what he can do without the complexities of wooing Trump voters with annoying them or pandering to them and annoying independents.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on August 04, 2023, 09:05:01 AM
did he really say this?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/desantis-calls-for-slitting-throats-in-government-escalating-rhetoric/ar-AA1eL3SJ

one sentence , one line almost down to one word gets taken out of context and blared all over the media airwaves and then they focus on this and ignore everything else

of course the usual fake news will be talking about this for 5 % of the time for next few days while 94% will be Trump stuff.

1% on ukraine, and climate change, woke , gender etc
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on August 04, 2023, 10:31:31 AM
I think he meant figuratively.   )
Title: Disney bends the knee?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 04, 2023, 04:48:57 PM
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-disney-board-eliminates-diversity-equity-and-inclusion-programs?utm_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=1711
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on August 07, 2023, 05:55:19 AM
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/08/07/desantis-plan-strengthen-us-economy-middle-class/70521175007/

The DeSantis plan sounds just right to me.

Two criteria, who can win and who can get the right things done if they win. My take is that DeSantis is the best choice on both counts. Trump is no doubt flashier. Trump is more well known. Trump had amazing accomplishments as president but in general is a divider.  DeSantis is a better team builder.  DeSantis has a better record of keeping his focus.

Ironically, Trump proved this can't be done in one term, and Trump is only eligible for one term.

Trump started with a Republican House and Senate and ended with losing that, not all his fault but partly. DeSantis has a record of building support for his policies and his administration.

For a young candidate, DeSantis has an excellent background for the job, military experience, higher education, served in Congress and second term governor.  No one new to the job is perfectly positioned to be President of the United States, Commander in Chief, but this is close to the best background credentials a person can have coming into it. He may lack private sector experience, but he seems to have a strong understanding that the private sector is the engine of growth.

Trump's best bet for getting his pardons would be for a Republican to win the White House, end the Trump distraction and remake the agencies. In the end, Trump should support DeSantis.

A little bit tongue in cheek, but I'm glad the santis is not peaking too early in the campaign. He doesn't deserve widespread nationwide support until he earns it.

Both Trump and DeSantis are bold, but in this campaign, Trump hesitates to debate Republican challengers because he is a front-runner, and DeSantis, without hesitation or any need to do so, agrees to debate the top guy on the other side, Gavin Newsom.

Newsome OTOH said he needed one day notice to debate to Santa's. DeSantis agreed and now Newsome said he needed 3 months to get ready.  Not exactly bold, he is taking his timing from the Biden handlers.  Not exactly a California outsider, Nancy's and nephew will take his orders from the same backstage regime.

As they say when things are about to get interesting, pass the popcorn.

I'm ready to send my first donation.  This is not about them. It's about us.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 07, 2023, 06:41:18 AM
Concur.

===============

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/desantis-trump-contributed-to-his-own-2020-loss-when-he-turned-the-government-over-to-fauci/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=32317445
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 07, 2023, 11:45:36 AM
second

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/us/mega-donor-threatens-to-cut-off-funding-if-desantis-doesnt-go-moderate-5446880?utm_source=News&src_src=News&utm_campaign=breaking-2023-08-07-1&src_cmp=breaking-2023-08-07-1&utm_medium=email&est=ZQWElA96TqHp5sTKvyJzMGThcm72NPI5WzE2Kx7LrgfIe4XnPba4Jn2gIRLMt%2B2Pxe83
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on August 08, 2023, 12:28:14 PM
Ron can't get break not only from Left wing media

but not even right wing

another Breitbart hit.....
Title: Those truncated DeSantis quotes
Post by: DougMacG on August 11, 2023, 01:21:51 AM
https://www.thenewneo.com/2023/08/09/those-truncated-desantis-quotes/
Title: The use of quotes, wrongly
Post by: ccp on August 11, 2023, 08:49:03 AM
It is one thing when the press inadvertently
take a quote out of context but when it is done on purpose

of Trump will do it too to Ron.

I don't recall Ron taking Trump quotes out of context....

Yes, usually nice guys finish last in politics (look at Romney , Mc Cain)

I recall with dismay my quote being taken out of context in 1983. 
I was flown to Newark NJ from SC airforce base from Grenada.

I was met at the airport by a local reporter who was running up to us asking our views of Grenada invasion.

One wanted to interview me at my home later.  Or perhaps he called us later I don't quite recall.

He from the city newspaper and later one from the Newark Star Ledger came to my house and interviewed me as a home town witness to the invasion.

At one point I remember perfectly clearly I said , " once the US soldiers came and rescued us I was not scared"

MY goal was to thank the US military and give them credit for courage and the sense of pride that they helped US citizens abroad.  I know the real purpose of the invasion was not the medical students but to prevent the Cubans from using an airstrip for their military advantage.

Yet, I saw with dismay the quote in the newspaper was among other things, printed as " I was not scared"

Taken out of the full quote made it appear I was boasting about courage I did not have instead of giving credit to the soldiers who earned it.

I can honestly say I was not particularly brave and of course was in shock and fear when while standing on our landlords porch on the hillside and seeing a helicopter wing around from behind the  hill and whiz past us right before our eyes , and seeing two Grenadians who appeared to be all of about 16 years old holding AK 47s I certainly was intimidated.

How would I fight back ?  Throw heavy medical books at them?

Yes it is one thing when quotes are taken out of context or misquoted by accidental mistake, but when taken out of context the whole meaning can be changed, masked or reversed.

Sickening when this is done on purpose......


 :x
Title: Kurt Schlichter likes DeSantis' chances
Post by: DougMacG on August 15, 2023, 05:59:19 AM
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2023/08/14/column-n2626931
--------------------

Kurt's arguments overlap what I wanted to say about how DeSantis can still win.  A number of things have to come together,  and why wouldn't they?

For DeSantis to win the nomination, something has to change in the Trump Biden matchup.

Age related health is just one elephant in the room. Trump is pushing 80. Biden will be 86 as he finishes his second term.  We saw him falling apart in his late 70s (and he wasn't real bright to begin with).  Everybody knows Joe Biden won't make it to the end of a second term.  Will he make it to the beginning?

If it's Biden who steps out while healthy or has an age related setback, that changes the dynamic of the race for Trump and his challengers.

Trump could have something stick on any one of these legal quagmires, or just look bad. 76 felony charges, oops more today, almost all bs, but if any guilt shines through on any charge, the race changes.

Some 53% of voters will never vote for Trump.  Many Trump primary voters are unaffected by that but it's early.  As we get closer to the decision date, winning the general election matters.

Also in the Trump Biden dynamic is the 3rd party candidate certainty.  Even if that  hurts Biden more, if (when) Biden bows out, that changes the Republican race.  DeSantis is already fighting with Newsom. That is a good matchup for him.  Funny that Newsom wanted a November debate after he said he only needed one day notice. I wonder what Newsom already knows about the schedule.  If Biden drops out and Kamala and Newsom both jump in, Newsom will need the exposure as well.  If not, why is he doing it, and backing out looks weak.

Now look at everyone else's chances.  Only two people are in an equal or better position right now, three if you count Newsom. 

Biden has a corruption scandal closing in on him (plus can't walk or talk) and has a bad record as incumbent. 

Trump has distractions galore, could make a new mistake, could have an old mistake exposed, age already mentioned, but his biggest vulnerability for the nomination is his ceiling of support in the general election.  The tie goes to the Democrat and he isn't polling better than a tie even with a corrupt, diminished, failed opponent.

Newsom would have to defend his own failed record,  a failed governing philosophy that belongs in the trash heap of history, and defend Biden's failed record too.  His fresh face defense of it will not mask the fact that we've heard it all before and it doesn't work.

The crazy things DeSantis needs to happen to be President are already in motion.  He needs to do the hard work and inch his support up a day at a time in the early contest states.  The rest may take care of itself.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on August 15, 2023, 08:23:55 AM
just thinking what the landscape would be if Trump suddenly dies

all the wind would be taken out of the DNC hot air

they would be left with trying to tie the Republican to Trump

but this would allow us to make the case more on policy

I would welcome this frankly
Title: WSJ: FL's education triumph
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 17, 2023, 03:35:25 PM
https://www.wsj.com/articles/floridas-education-triumph-woke-schooling-teachers-unions-dues-textbooks-students-afc26028?mod=opinion_lead_pos9
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis, what he actually said
Post by: DougMacG on August 22, 2023, 09:44:28 PM
https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/kevin-tober/2023/08/20/cuccinelli-calls-out-cnns-hunt-deceptively-editing-desantis
Title: Ron D.
Post by: ccp on August 23, 2023, 05:52:59 AM
He is still my first choice by far.

But he cannot catch a break.

He is being chopped up by both the LEFT - which obviously wants the candidate to be Trump
and selfish Trump who happily obliges.

Hard to imagine the Republicans will nominate the person who probably has the least chance of beating a demented lying old mediocore politician who reads his lines provided from Obama marxists.

But that is what we are facing at this point.

Actually I don't know who else I could support
The guy from ND sound interesting and I want to hear more from him.

Vivek while has good ideas I just can't see making him President of the US .

I like Nikki - she is competent and qualified but , yes , a bit of a rhino

Cristy is out.
Huthinson is a joke and I don't know he even got into the debate

Pence would be ok but cannot win.

DeSanits is still the best choice other than the BIG loser .

We have to be going into the election up at least by a couple of % not even because we know the election will be rigged .
Title: 2nd post
Post by: ccp on August 23, 2023, 06:03:34 AM
Come to think of it, I cannot recall a SINGLE article, post, or presentation recently that presents a positive view about anything Ron has said .

Everything is negative from all sides clearly contributing to his fall in the polls.
A vicious cycle.

Do we ever hear a positive excerpt about ANYTHING he has said.

Everything is taken out of context and posted to make him look bad.

Title: WT: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on August 23, 2023, 06:21:12 AM
According to this piece Vivek was a pro masker:

===========================

Ron DeSantis, American liberator

Florida governor is the one candidate who can save our country

By Steve Cortes

America needs a political savior. Why? Because citizens of the United States rightly recognize that we are losing our country, and fast. Indeed, the trajectory and speed of the current decline intensify materially.

But perhaps not enough Americans have also come to terms with the true stakes of the current election cycle. A failure to reclaim the levers of power by November 2024 will imperil our republic in ways that are likely irreversible.

Just how depressed are Americans? Well, consider that a staggering 78% of citizens do not believe that their children will have better lives in the future. That number marks the worst pessimism ever recorded in a Wall Street Journal/University of Chicago survey that goes back over three decades.

The same study found that only 17% of Americans describe their current financial condition as better than expected for this stage in their life.

Given this gloom, perhaps it is unsurprising that the percentage of Americans reporting that having children is “very important” declined from 60% in 1998 to just 30% in 2023.

Patriotic sentiment similarly collapsed over the last 25 years. In 1998, 70% of Americans regarded patriotism as “very important,” but now, only 38% do. Even the leftist Washington Post bemoaned this meltdown in patriotism as “jarring.”

This malaise over the land flows directly from the unholy alliance that increasingly plunges America into an oligarchic rule that abuses the rights and prerogatives of regular citizens.

Specifically, the fusion of the political left with ruling-class power brokers of big business, media and academia creates a country with a crumbling standard of living for ordinary workers concurrent with soaring benefits for the credentialed, entitled elitists.

To smash this corrupt system requires a political liberator of unparalleled character, rare intellect and steely discipline. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is that leader. How do we know? Because he has already taken on the most powerful interests in America … and won.

As a former military officer, the only one in the presidential field, he brings the determination and doggedness of a true warrior to the political and cultural battlefields. Mr. DeSantis, unlike blustering, loud-talking politicians who merely entertain right-wing voters, delivers real policy wins over the pernicious forces of political repression and cultural Marxism.

For example, he took on Dr. Anthony Fauci and the Washington public health bureaucracy in 2020 when they exploited the virus as a pretext to inflict tyranny on Americans, especially children. Not only did Mr. DeSantis tell Washington to pound sand, but he also stood strongly against the corrupt media, which howled in protest that he dared to stop unscientific and illegal lockdowns and mandates.

More recently, Mr. DeSantis has punched back at abusive corporate conglomerates, from Bud Light to BlackRock. He pledges to bring that approach to the national stage, where large companies, especially Big Tech companies, use inordinate market share and political power to preclude real competition and infect America with toxic cultural pollution.

Mr. DeSantis will protect employees from the indignities of bigoted diversity, equity and inclusion programs. He will also repel corporate attempts to invade parental rights, especially regarding radical education indoctrination and the sexualization of children.

In all these instances, it becomes increasingly evident that our leftist political opponents today represent a true threat to the American way of life. These 2020s radicals are not your parents’ and grandparents’ Democrats. Instead, these nihilists reject the inherent goodness of our country, vaporize the sovereignty of our nation-state’s border, disrespect Godgiven inherent rights, and even deny the existence of the two sexes. As such, knowing what time it is in America, in this cycle voters can show no patience for mere political posturing or media bloviating. Nor should GOP voters countenance the antics of fake conservatives like Vivek Ramaswamy, who has never been a Republican, defended COVID-19 lockdown abuses like masks and wants to substantially increase immigration into America.

Likewise, voters should reject slick entreaties of Sen. Tim Scott, the establishment toady who played footsie with “defund the police” madness following the Black Lives Matter riots of summer 2020 across the country.

Instead, Republican voters must identify and elevate an intrepid political liberator — a leader who understands the gravity of the moment, embraces the full scope of the battle, and demonstrates the character traits necessary to deliver restoration.

Only such a leader can save America from this present peril. As I believe he will demonstrate at the Milwaukee debate, only Ron DeSantis deserves the full faith of voters — because he can both win and then implement the patriotic populist agenda to save our republic
Title: WSJ: Hurricane Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 01, 2023, 03:31:24 PM
Hurricane Ron DeSantis
If he can do the executive job, maybe his skill at small talk is immaterial.
By
The Editorial Board
Follow
Aug. 31, 2023 6:10 pm ET



Ron DeSantis spent Thursday visiting rural Florida counties hit by Hurricane Idalia, and during his morning news update the Governor was in command of the details. “As of 6 a.m. today,” he said, “there are approximately 146,000 power outages reported across the state,” but thousands of borrowed linemen were at work, and 420,000 accounts had already been restored.


As of the night before, Mr. DeSantis said, authorities had done about 40 successful rescues. “All state bridges, including the Cedar Key Bridge, have been cleared, and that happened within 12 hours of landfall,” he added. Schools? “Thirty of the 52 districts that closed during the storm are open today, and an additional eight will be open tomorrow.” Fuel, water, tarps? “All that stuff we have an abundance of, and we’ll be providing that as needed.”

The driving winds in Florida’s Big Bend region were enough to rip off roofs and topple a gas-station canopy. Yet worse appears to have been avoided because Idalia hit mostly rural areas, after a forecast of its path that Mr. DeSantis called “pretty doggone accurate.” The contrast is with Hurricane Ian last year, which was predicted to hit the Big Bend but veered into Fort Myers and killed about 150 Americans.

Mr. DeSantis received high marks for his handling of that disaster, in particular after the state Transportation Department made swift emergency repairs to two bridges the storm damaged, stranding thousands of residents.

Hurricane Idalia cleanup isn’t over, and perhaps there will be hiccups. But if there aren’t, we’ll know it by what we don’t read in the national press. The Governor will get no credit for success.

This seems to be Mr. DeSantis in his element, examining the figures, the emergency response plans, the Covid-19 statistics, and then synthesizing it into government policy. Everyone knows an introvert like this, and the flip side of the personality type is that Mr. DeSantis, now a 2024 presidential candidate, has proved less than adept at making small talk with Iowans.

There’s a reason that at least some Republican voters have preferred to nominate governors, who have executive experience, over legislators, whose basic job description is to spend three hours orating followed by one minute voting. Using the bully pulpit effectively is important for a President, but so is dragging better policy out of a vast federal bureaucracy that views a Republican in the Oval Office as a temporary hostile occupying power.

A question to ponder is whether today’s soundbite-driven primaries are selecting for the qualities that Republicans, and Americans, really want in a President. This is one slice of the case for Mr. DeSantis’s candidacy, despite his recent struggles. His competitors might have a better 15-second retort to the 30-second drive-by at the debate. But could they get the bridge open?
Title: good move :))
Post by: ccp on September 02, 2023, 07:13:45 AM
https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/hurricane-idalia-biden-desantis/2023/09/01/id/1132971/
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 04, 2023, 05:49:14 PM
https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1698385938081022243
Title: DeSantis clip calls for deadly force at the border
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 06, 2023, 08:27:44 AM
https://dailycaller.com/2023/09/05/desantis-deadly-force-border/?utm_source=piano&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=29912&pnespid=pOU8CS9cKKEZxf3J.SqsSo6XshuxUZ97KLnk2fQ1r01mNGHmU0Mi7Tofl6sSX8SLe0e0yIQr
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on September 06, 2023, 09:00:05 AM
that would fix things fast.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis on Agriculture
Post by: DougMacG on September 10, 2023, 09:22:13 PM
Governor DeSantis has a current article published at Des Moines register which I cannot get into without subscribing. This article has some extended quotes from it.

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/633653-desantis-iowa-farmers/
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 11, 2023, 02:56:13 AM
IMHO the appeal to ethanol is a pander, as understandable as that may be.

BTW I remember Ted Cruz impressing me in the 2016 Iowa primary campaign having a one-on-one convo with an Iowa farmer and actually changing his mind on ethanol.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on September 11, 2023, 05:47:53 AM
"IMHO the appeal to ethanol is a pander, as understandable as that may be."

Yes but the alternative is to make ethanol the big fight and concede Iowa to Trump.

There are bigger fights and ethanol additives and E15 and E85 products are already part of the economy.  I don't see him promising to expand it.

"BTW I remember Ted Cruz impressing me in the 2016 Iowa primary campaign having a one-on-one convo with an Iowa farmer and actually changing his mind on ethanol.

Yes.  That was Sen. Cruz, not Pres. Cruz.    :wink:
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 11, 2023, 05:55:54 AM
"Yes.  That was Sen. Cruz, not Pres. Cruz."

Zang!

 :-D :-D :-D
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on September 11, 2023, 06:23:56 AM
In Schoen's book he has chapter on Ted Cruz commenting positively on Ted Cruz's political savvy in chapter titled 'You have to give, to get"

Ted was bashed by Trump as lyin Ted during the '16 primaries, but Ted is savvy enough to come out and support become a huge supporter of Trump after he dropped out and Trump won.


NO indication would do the same for someone else I note
Title: DeSantis advises against boosters for under 65s.
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 14, 2023, 08:33:01 AM


https://www.nationalreview.com/news/desantis-advises-against-covid-boosters-for-people-under-65-floridians-will-not-be-guinea-pigs/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=breaking&utm_campaign=newstrack&utm_term=32707140 
Title: trying to tarnish Ron D with "naziism"
Post by: ccp on September 14, 2023, 08:36:36 AM
https://www.yahoo.com/news/neo-nazis-gloat-florida-becomes-140000174.html

scroll down to the United States:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Nazism

The National Socialist Movement is the largest "Neo Nazi " group in 32 states with , get this 400 members

so the idea they are exploding in numbers is not true.

so there were 40 at this rally
up 196% states the hit piece

so they went from ~ 13 to 40 .  does not sound like real threat to me
though of course I hate them and worth keeping eye on them
and Trump should not come out and exclaim some are good people or something like that

they are not the as big a threat we keep hearing from ADL and. SPLC etc.
I still more anti semitism from the LEFT .

Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on September 14, 2023, 08:39:28 AM
I have not gotten a booster recently

and simply do not see any clear reason to get one

I get flu shots usually to reduce chance of more serious flu infection

I am not clear what the new vaccines do or don't do
no studies

All we hear is covid is still a risk and people are still dying

but do the vaccines work anymore?

I don't see any evidence they do .

Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis, end border crisis
Post by: DougMacG on September 16, 2023, 07:57:01 PM
https://x.com/RonDeSantis/status/1703092711476052068?s=20

outline the way to end the (border) crisis once and for all.
Title: take on the cartels
Post by: ccp on September 17, 2023, 09:43:47 AM
thumbs up

we need to resurrect General Pershing and send him down there to put a stop to this.

not sure how we would take them on
wouldn't we have to be able to go into Mexico to do so?


Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 17, 2023, 09:55:42 AM
IMO going into Mexico would be a grave error.

It would require legal declarations that would make it harder to stop refugees from asserting the right to come in.

It would ignite fierce Mexican nationalism.

We would not know who was whom and operations would be giant fusterclucks.

Enforce our laws, enforce our borders (shooting as necessary those who would so dispute), deport illegals.  Period.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on September 17, 2023, 10:06:45 AM
your probably right

it would be a bloody mess

civilians would be used as hostages

etc



Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on September 26, 2023, 05:30:11 AM
I've been taking in the comments on DeSantis and having similar thoughts of my own.  He is a smart guy, I like to think he has a plan. Same for Nikki Haley, the only other Trump challenger who seems to have a chance.

Headlines counting RD out seem like the type that so often come back to bite.

If I were him being questioned about his lack of upward momentum in the polls, I would note that a solid and consistent third place in a presidential race one year out isn't a bad position when the majority of people strongly want it to be someone other than the first two.

For DeSantis, some major dynamic in the race has to change, and there are plenty of possibilities. 

Joe Biden has precarious health and $10 million untaxed 'family income's to explain, plus a 37% approval and a country with declining real incomes and skyrocketing costs that are all on him..

Trump has 87 potential felonies against him, or is it more now?  Most are worse than BS but if one is real and sticks with the public, not just a biased jury, he would lose all independents and half his own party.  Plus he sees it all as personal and the country sees a bigger picture.

The DeSantis Newsom debate could be a game changer as well, if it happens.  People might see what they already know, that Biden and Trump are not the best path forward for either party.  Neither is articulating a vision and both are eligible for just one term.

A serious third party challenge could be a game changer.

An abortion, they say 6 weeks but he says heartbeat.  6 weeks seems too soon to know much.  Heartbeat means something else is involved.  I don't want a national standard that will just be struck down.  All we wanted all along was for it to be sent back to the states.  He needs to make that clear even if it means changing a flawed, earlier position.

If every abortion advocate political dollar went instead toward transportation for these pregnant women burdened with a baby in an abortion restrictive state, you could send them the long way around the world to the next state over to have their baby killed and removed with money to spare.
Title: Fox better not be stupid enough to waste time on the WP poll
Post by: ccp on September 26, 2023, 06:11:03 AM
I hope the moderators in tomorrow's debate are not stupid enough to take the bait and start asking the candidates about the recent WP poll.

Indeed, they should not be asking questions about any polls unless candidate(s) raises the issue.

I don't want to hear them discuss why WP has them way behind the Donald, and Donald is way ahead of Biden (who will NOT be the nominee anyway).

I want to hear candidates  outline their platforms.

I fear the Fox dupes will take the bait and waste time
raising dumb ass questions like :

We have heard about this WP poll that has DJT 10 points above Biden. Do you have any comments about this?

If this continues do you plan to drop out?
Will you support DJT if he is the nominee?
etc etc

Title: Re: Fox better not be stupid enough to waste time on the WP poll
Post by: DougMacG on September 26, 2023, 06:47:19 AM
I strongly agree ccp.  The debate purpose is to find out what these people would do if given the chance.  The horse race aspect should outside of the 90 minutes on stage.

I never did get to see the first debate.  It should be the first link at gop.org, still.  (A link that won't come up for me.). The media owns our public discourse?  Why doesn't public television carry it?  Not in the public interest?  The party sold the exclusive rights to the highest bidder?
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis vs. Newsom
Post by: Crafty_Dog on September 26, 2023, 07:57:12 AM
A BFD IMHO that DeSantis and Newsome are going to debate on FOX in late November.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis vs. Newsom
Post by: DougMacG on September 26, 2023, 09:03:02 AM
A BFD IMHO that DeSantis and Newsome are going to debate on FOX in late November.

From Steve Moore, CTUP:
THIS Is a Debate We Can’t Wait To Watch!
Finally, a really smart move by Ron DeSantis. DeSantis has been an A++ governor and he has turned Florida into the fastest growing state in the country with low taxes, school choice, right-to-work laws, record low unemployment, and businesses from blue-state America stampeding in.

FOX News Channel’s Sean Hannity will moderate a red vs. blue state debate between Florida Gov. and Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis and Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom, FOX News Media announced Monday.

The 90-minute event will air at 9 p.m. ET on Nov. 30 in Georgia, marking the first time the two prominent governors will face off in a debate.

It is important for Americans to watch this debate. We are two nations today – red states and blue states. Florida is the showcase of red-state prosperity. California is the epitome of blue state decline. Be careful, because Newsom is a slick talker – reminiscent of Bill Clinton. But no slick-talking is going to explain how California has lost three million people – and is now the nation’s capital for the homeless, criminals, and drug users. 
Title: DeSantis - Newsom
Post by: ccp on September 28, 2023, 09:57:34 AM
Interesting.

Newsom appeared on CNN with Dana Bash , msdnc with Maddow and Fox with Sean for his opinion on the debate (of course he states "Biden" won  :roll: :wink:)

He is gave opinions on his California immigration policy, energy inflation etc
He is clearly slick but I could see multiple ways to take his slick answers and turn them inside out and reveal deceit and overt lying

I would like to think Ron and team are studying this and preparing good answers .

I would have liked Sean to answer Gavin , when he states the US is producing more oil then ever with , yes and that is solely because the US (likely ) blew up the Nordstream and then promised Europe we would provide them  the needed oil which is apparently what we are doing.

NOTICE WE NEVER HEARD SO FAR AS A PEEP FROM THE EUROS ANY ANGER AT US (LIKELY) BLOWING UP NORDSTREAM
THE BIDEN ADMIN. MUST HAVE MADE A SECRET DEAL WITH THEM

WE BLOW UP YOUR LIFELINE TO GET YOU OFF OF RUSSIAN GAS ETC. AND WE REDUCE MONEY GOING TO THE RUSKIS AND IN RETURN WE PROMISE TO GET YOU THE NEEDED OIL.

OTHERWISE HOW COME THE EUROS DID NOT SEEM TO MAKE A FUSS ABOUT IT.
CAN YOU IMAGINE THE OUTRAGE IF SOME EURO COUNTRY BLEW UP OUR ALASKA PIPELINE?

Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis interview
Post by: DougMacG on October 06, 2023, 06:39:14 AM
https://hughhewitt.com/florida-governor-ron-desantis-on-chaos-in-the-hopuse-and-the-gop-race
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 07, 2023, 01:37:22 AM
The Two Sides of Ron DeSantis on National Security
He’s right about the need for a bigger Navy, but he’s still fudging on Ukraine.
By
The Editorial Board
Follow
Oct. 6, 2023 6:43 pm ET

Ron DeSantis has struggled as a GOP presidential candidate. And he hasn’t helped himself by getting stuck in a Donald Trump loop on Ukraine, even as he is selling himself as the candidate with the mettle to deter the Chinese Communist Party.
OPINION: POTOMAC WATCH
WSJ Opinion Potomac Watch

On Friday on CNBC the Governor was asked to clarify his position on Ukraine, after these pages suggested he was ducking the real questions and opposing a “blank check” that no one is offering.

“First of all,” he said, “they have done a blank check. When you’re having U.S. tax dollars fund the pensions and salaries of Ukrainian bureaucrats,” that “is a blank check, especially when we have so many problems here in the United States.”

He’s ostensibly talking about economic aid to Ukraine, and the Governor may have missed that the European Union is moving forward with a multiyear €50 billion fund for Ukraine’s economy. This refutes the canard that Europe isn’t chipping in. But because European militaries are weak, the U.S. will have to shoulder more of the weapons burden for Ukraine to have a chance of defeating Russia.

Gov. DeSantis and Republicans in Congress could argue that further aid should focus on lethality—donating long-range missiles at scale and revving up production lines for long-range fires. Try listening to Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton. But the “blank check” line is cover for a deeper GOP confusion on Ukraine. The $300 million for Ukraine that more than 100 House Republicans voted to strip out of a spending bill recently was marked for a fund procuring American equipment and ammo.

The fundamental question for Republicans is whether they’re going to abandon Ukraine the way the Democrats did Vietnam, and demonstrate to Mr. Putin and Xi Jinping that the Americans won’t back their friends in a fight. That won’t deter Beijing, which Mr. DeSantis called one of his core priorities in the second GOP debate.

In better news, this week Mr. DeSantis said that as President he’d aim to grow the U.S. Navy to 355 ships to counter China’s extraordinary naval buildup. He deserves credit for endorsing this priority, which could be a down payment on a larger agenda of peace through strength. Most Americans understand you can’t claim to be tough on China while letting its ally in the Kremlin triumph in Europe.

Mr. DeSantis’s Ukraine position has cost him politically because it shows a lack of conviction and fear of crossing the GOP’s isolationist right. It also neutralized a rich line of attack against Mr. Biden, who has been painstakingly slow to arm the Ukrainians—and against Mr. Trump, who has offered voters zero substantive thinking on Ukraine and didn’t do enough to prepare the U.S. military against the growing threat from China.

Mr. DeSantis might also ponder what the world would look like if he makes it to the White House after the U.S. abandons Ukraine. He won’t want to inherit a world with Mr. Putin victorious and American allies looking to cut deals with Russia and China. 
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 13, 2023, 06:16:27 PM
Was on one of the FOX opinion shows the other night (Laura?) and spoke thoughtfully about Ukraine-- an area of concern I have had about him.

Roughly-- It is a stalemate-- we can recognize it now or five years from now.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 22, 2023, 04:26:52 PM
I like the way DeSantis goes for solutions:

https://resistthemainstream.com/desantis-outlines-his-plans-to-shut-down-hamas-influence-if-elected-president/?utm_source=newsletter2
Title: WSJ: Gov. Ron DeSantis and Foreign Policy
Post by: Crafty_Dog on October 23, 2023, 08:15:57 AM


DeSantis Isn’t at Home Abroad
The governor is strong on domestic policy, but is he up to the challenge of a suddenly menacing world?
By
Barton Swaim
Follow
Oct. 22, 2023 4:10 pm ET




295

Gift unlocked article

Listen

(7 min)


image
Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis participates in a campaign event at Anderson University in Anderson, S.C., Oct. 19. PHOTO: ERIK S LESSER/SHUTTERSTOCK
Murrells Inlet, S.C.

Richard Nixon was famously bored by domestic policy. “I’ve always thought the country could run itself domestically without a president,” he once told an interviewer. “All you need is a competent cabinet to run the country at home. You need a president for foreign policy.” Ron DeSantis might say the opposite. Ask him any question on domestic policy and he can offer a seminar. Foreign policy clearly bores him. 


His book, “The Courage to Be Free,” treats the major issues of his years as Florida’s governor—crime, education, corporate activism, public health—with technical mastery and rhetorical sophistication. His few remarks on foreign affairs suggest a need for intellectual cloture. He calls George W. Bush’s foreign policy “Wilsonianism on steroids.” When Mr. Bush said in his Second Inaugural that “the survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands,” Mr. DeSantis, then 27, reports asking himself: “Does the survival of American liberty depend on whether liberty succeeds in Djibouti?”

As a presidential candidate, he has talked more about what the U.S. shouldn’t be doing than what it should. Hamas’s invasion of Israel made that approach impracticable. Nikki Haley, who has emerged as Mr. DeSantis’s chief rival for the coveted position of Donald Trump’s leading challenger, likely benefits most from the sudden salience of foreign policy. She was United Nations ambassador for two years, and unlike most U.N. ambassadors performed memorably.

On a swing last week through South Carolina—which holds its primary on Feb. 24—Mr. DeSantis began every talk by discussing Israel, although he mostly confined himself to points of domestic significance: the media’s perfidy in falsely characterizing an explosion in a Gaza hospital as an Israeli attack, the threat of terrorists’ crossing the U.S. southern border, the unwisdom of “importing” Gaza refugees.

Mr. DeSantis believes the greatest threat to U.S. national security is China. On Thursday at Anderson University, he acknowledged that the war in Israel could inflame the Middle East, and that the “conflict in Europe”—he prefers not to say “Ukraine”—could expand westward. But “we have one true global threat to this country, and that is the Chinese Communist Party.” Yet even his discussion of the Chinese threat had mainly to do with homeland policies: barring the Chinese government from purchasing U.S. land, “disentangling” the American and Chinese economies.

Mr. DeSantis is a gifted rhetorician. There are few domestic-policy questions on which he isn’t prepared to give a coherent multipart answer. Only on foreign policy does he rely on ham-fisted conventional-wisdom talking points.

At a Thursday town hall in Rock Hill, a questioner asked why the governor had said in March that aiding Ukraine in its war with Russia was strategically unimportant. Mr. DeSantis interrupted with a correction: What he said was that it was of “secondary or tertiary” importance. (The questioner had it right. In a response to a candidate survey from Tucker Carlson, Mr. DeSantis wrote that “while the U.S. has many vital national interests . . . becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them.”)

Mr. DeSantis then told the questioner that President Biden has given Ukraine a “blank check”—the most shopworn metaphor in this debate—and that “a lot of Republican senators don’t articulate, you know, how do you have an endgame in a conflict?” He went on: “Because what they’re doing is not gonna get where their rhetoric is. . . . Look, some of our Republican senators, they want to bomb everywhere. That’s their view.”

Later that night, in an onstage interview at a gathering of Republican women in Rock Hill, Mr. DeSantis was asked about aid to Israel. “We support their right to defend themselves,” he said. “But it’s their war, it’s not our war.” Part of what he meant was that the U.S. shouldn’t constrain Israel’s response. He’s right about that. But had he forgotten that Hamas murdered Americans on Oct. 7, and that some of the hostages now held by Hamas are Americans?

As for the war in Ukraine, Mr. DeSantis recited the usual objection: “They haven’t put a clear objective to it. It’s kind of a stalemate.” That’s true as far as it goes, but the result of that haphazard policy is that the Russian military is grinding itself to dust in Ukraine.

To be fair, avoiding substantive discussions of foreign policy may be the smarter political play. The GOP is badly divided on the Ukraine question; most voters don’t hold strong, consistent views on foreign policy; and campaign positions are often overtaken by events, both before and after the election.

On Friday morning, some 300 people crammed into a small VFW in Murrells Inlet, south of Myrtle Beach. Some were turned away, as per fire-marshal regulations. Mr. DeSantis was running more than an hour late, so I had time to canvas listeners on why they’d come. About half said they supported Mr. Trump, chiefly because prosecutors had targeted him so relentlessly that to vote against him didn’t feel right. “He’s been needled over and over,” one woman said. “It’s wrong, and I just think I can’t let them do that.” Her presence at a DeSantis event, though, suggested her mind wasn’t made up.

Mr. DeSantis spoke for nearly an hour and took questions for another 30 minutes. Ukraine didn’t come up. Nobody asked what he’d do if China invaded Taiwan on his watch. They asked about woke companies, rogue school boards, DEI and prosecutors backed by George Soros. Mr. DeSantis, standing on a dais in his usual blue suit, tieless white shirt and black cowboy boots, kept the room rapt.

On the way out, the woman who’d spoken of prosecutors needling Donald Trump grabbed my elbow. “I’ve changed my vote,” she said. “That was incredible.” Another person said the same, in almost the same words.

Mr. DeSantis’s impatience with foreign policy may alienate some donor-class friends. I find it frustrating. But I wouldn’t discount his ability to talk uncommitted voters into joining his side. You need a president for foreign policy, as Nixon said, but Ron DeSantis’s message—that he’s done it in Florida and he can do it in Washington—may hold more appeal than simple poll questions can foretell.
Title: Hugh Hewitt with Gov. Ron DeSantis this morning
Post by: DougMacG on October 31, 2023, 06:05:03 PM
https://hughhewitt.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/10-31hhs-desantis-2.mp3
16 min 40sec.

I still like this guy.
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis - Still has a path?
Post by: DougMacG on November 04, 2023, 05:00:46 PM
https://unherd.com/thepost/dont-count-ron-desantis-out/
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on November 04, 2023, 05:18:25 PM
Good article.  It should also have mentioned his apparent lack of geopolitical clarity-- a matter of increasing importance across the spectrum.  Both Trump and Haley speak identifiably in this regard, but DeSantis does not.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on November 05, 2023, 07:32:24 AM
https://thefederalist.com/2023/11/03/iowa-poll-shows-desantis-not-haley-is-trumps-only-real-competition/
Another take on the same poll?

We will keep a watch out for geopolitical clarity.

National security is the main interest of Hugh Hewitt, the conservative questioner in the next debate.  DeSantis expresses full support for Israel I think, no blank check for Ukraine, more ships and strong defense to compete with and deter China.  He is the only one running who served in the armed forces.

I wonder what you heard that you didn't like - or what you have not heard - yet.

Haley I think is more hawkish than the party today and than the country.  Trump also has a  clarity challenge, very transactional in his dealings in my view.  His perceived quality of being highly unpredictable is his deterrence.  I recall Thomas Sowell saying Trump does not have a personality suited to having his finger on the button.

For Biden, you would have to find out who really makes the decisions in order to study them further.

Newsom for some reason wants to help the Chinese steal more technology and sell more products here while staying mum on oppression and genocide.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on November 05, 2023, 08:35:48 AM
Newsom

can anyone imagine him taking on Xi?

why he couldn't even take on tiny Chinese children in basketball!  (falling on his face)



Title: President Ron DeSantis Foreign Policy
Post by: DougMacG on November 16, 2023, 05:52:35 AM
https://nypost.com/2023/11/14/opinion/desantis-countering-china-requires-decisive-action-not-talk-and-flattery-heres-how-ill-do-it-as-president/
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on November 16, 2023, 06:21:45 AM
DeSantis for Prez

Pompeo for SOS !   :-D
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on November 16, 2023, 06:28:25 AM
DeSantis has not caught on (yet?), trails Trump by a mile, trails Haley in NH, but is still solidly winning the race for second place nationwide.

My feedback from the other side is that liberals have it already pounded into their heads that DeSantis is a book banner and they hate that.

This will no doubt come up in the Newsom debate, if it happens.  What else can the Gov of Calif do in contrast with the record of Florida but lie about DeSantis' record.

The "books banned" are aimed at sexualizing children Kindergarten through third grade as I understand it.  We don't need to teach kids to question their gender identity in K-3 math, art and gym class, and yes, we want parents to have more say in the schools than state and federal teachers unions.  The wrongly called "don't say gay" law doesn't say "gay".

These people who hate Trump more than anything have already built their hate for his closest competitor. It's kind of sad.

This nation has two sets of "news" and two sets of "facts", and we are losing that war of words.  DeSantis has been thoroughly demogogued, before he could introduce himself to the nation.

If we are to ever win we must be able to get out our own messages outside the liberal news and spin machines.  Talking to conservatives on conservative only outlets doesn't count in that regard. For DeSantis, the Newsom debate may be a first chance to begin that, if both sides and the middle are curious enough to watch..

We are losing the war of media and of social media and of K-12 and of 'higher education' and then we let our candidates get out spent by 5 or 6 to one in the elections.

We have to start turning this back.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on November 16, 2023, 06:44:12 AM
Dems response to DeSantis

nothing on problems

only,

"DON'T SAY GAY!"   

 as if the majority of Americans do not agree with him or otherwise care.
Title: RE titans battle Gov. Ron DeSantis over China property crackdown
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 11, 2023, 05:43:06 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/real-estate-titans-battle-desantis-over-china-property-crackdown/ar-AA1ljSjC?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=260e8c043e91470cb18e106583b863d1&ei=7
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis and President Coolidge
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 14, 2023, 05:44:33 PM


https://notthebee.com/article/this-is-probably-the-best-thing-ron-desantis-has-ever-said?utm_source=Not+The+Bee+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=12142023
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis vs Satan/First Amendment?
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 17, 2023, 08:56:58 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/read-the-first-amendment-ron-desantis-slammed-for-backing-michael-cassidy-after-satanic-statue-demolition/ar-AA1lCZfp?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=29eaf9a5a30445d88b2615355dec1c97&ei=49
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on December 17, 2023, 10:22:25 AM
someone recently
said the Satan worshippers will get their wish

and all go to hell.
Title: WSJ Ameircans choose DeSantis for Gov
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 20, 2023, 09:04:00 AM
Americans Still Choosing DeSantis as Their Governor
Are pollsters underestimating the Floridian?
James Freeman
By
James Freeman
Follow
Dec. 19, 2023 3:55 pm ET


Share



Media outlets keep trying to write the political obituary of the second-most-popular Republican presidential candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. It’s true that he’s far behind Donald Trump in the polls, but it’s also striking how often Americans keep choosing Mr. DeSantis as their governor. Political pundits may continue to pick nits about Mr. DeSantis’s charisma or stage presence. But for Americans looking to start a business or raise a family, Mr. DeSantis seems to have a powerful allure.

It’s not just his notable electoral success in turning a swing state Republican. Since his 2022 re-election as governor, Mr. DeSantis has continued to win the most consequential votes of confidence from people all over the country. The Journal’s Paul Overberg and Alyssa Lukpat report:

The U.S. population grew 0.5% this year, according to Census Bureau estimates released Tuesday, as the pandemic’s effects on births, deaths and immigration continued to fade...
Migration among states slowed but extended perennial gains in the South. The Northeast, Midwest and West all saw net losses while the South gained 706,000 net movers. California lost a net of 338,000 people to other states, about as many as the previous year. New York (minus 217,000), Illinois (minus 84,000), New Jersey (minus 45,000) and Massachusetts (minus 39,000) saw losses continue but shrink from the previous year.
Top gainers were Florida, which added a net 194,000 movers, and Texas (187,000). North Carolina (97,000), South Carolina (83,000), Tennessee (63,000) and Georgia (58,000) also saw strong but slower gains.
Yes, many Californians continue to flee rather than live under their allegedly charming governor. As the members of California’s flight club search for a new place to call home, Mr. DeSantis may appear to be all business as he goes about the task of maintaining liberty. And they dig it.

***

Many longtime Floridians as well as recent arrivals appreciated their governor’s opposition to the Covid panic. It’s a shame more jurisdictions around the world didn’t have leaders willing to stand against historic expansions of government power. The libertarians at the Cato Institute and Canada’s Fraser Institute are out with their annual Human Freedom Index and they report recent trends that are not positive:

Human freedom deteriorated severely in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Most areas of freedom fell, including significant declines in the rule of law; freedom of movement, expression, and association and assembly; and freedom to trade. After having fallen significantly in 2020, human freedom remained low during the second year of the pandemic. On a scale of 0 to 10, where 10 represents more freedom, the average human freedom rating for 165 jurisdictions fell slightly, from 6.79 in 2020 to 6.75 in 2021.
Title: Re: WSJ Ameircans choose DeSantis for Gov
Post by: DougMacG on December 20, 2023, 02:21:55 PM
So many positive reports on DeSantis.  Best election victory of 2022.  Highly regarding by so many people we respect.  Most say he won each debate.  Yet his numbers have headed in the wrong direction.  He has held on to second place (until now), but the new attacks on Trump assure us he will be far and away front runner through Super Tuesday and after that, too late to change course. 

Politics keeps coming down to what other people think, and that our efforts to find the best people and the best policies and solutions seem so futile. 
Title: WSJ: Gov. Ron DeSantis vs. Teachers Union
Post by: Crafty_Dog on December 30, 2023, 08:44:45 AM
How Do You Like DeSantis Now?
The Miami Herald’s attack on the Florida governor could make an impression in Iowa and New Hampshire.
James Freeman
By
James Freeman
Follow
Dec. 28, 2023 4:30 pm ET


With enemies like these, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R., Fla.) is bound to make new friends among caucus and primary voters nationwide. A Florida newspaper has published a scathing editorial about the governor’s education policies, and it seems that his team couldn’t be happier.


If American parents learned anything from the educational catastrophe of Covid lockdowns, it’s that teachers union bosses are not their allies. As learning losses spiked and isolated adolescents suffered from a host of mental challenges, union officials who should have been advocates of immediate reopening kept demanding delays and all manner of unnecessary changes to school buildings and operations in the name of safety—without any rigorous analysis of costs and benefits.

Mr. DeSantis would have none of it, driving an early reopening in Florida and pursuing a sensible strategy of focused protection. The idea was to help those most at risk while allowing people at low risk to live their lives and maintain a thriving society. He also resolved to shift power over education back to parents, where it belongs. Now a hostile media outlet is providing a helpful reminder.

“DeSantis delivers a political smackdown as Miami teachers union struggles to survive,” is the headline on a Miami Herald editorial that claims the following possible results from changes in law signed by Mr. DeSantis:

The results may be upwards of 30,000 school employees being left without representation to bargain for better pay and working conditions.

The state’s largest teachers union, United Teachers of Dade, is close to decertification thanks to a new law that requires unions have at least 60% of union members pay dues, the Herald reported. The law -- Senate Bill 256 -- was a union-busting one-two-punch that not only raised the threshold for certification from 50%, but also prohibited unions from deducting dues directly from members’ paychecks. UTD, which represents teachers in the state’s biggest school district in Miami-Dade County, has gained 800 new members, but still failed to meet the state’s stringent requirements. In November, the Herald reported union membership was at 58.4%.

But if teachers don’t express overwhelming support for the union and don’t choose to write checks to support it, why should it have the power to negotiate on their behalf? The numbers quoted by the Herald suggest that there are significant numbers of Florida teachers who don’t want such representation. Maybe they simply disagree with the bosses about how to prioritize the interests of kids and teachers.

The Herald opines further:

The Republican anti-union spiel usually leaves out the fact that Florida, unlike many blue states, is among 26 states that have “right to work” laws. That means workers cannot be forced to join a union and pay dues as a condition of employment.

Apologies to the Herald if this column is missing a joke here, but the implication seems to be that opposing forced unionization is some sort of secret among Republicans, and that not forcing individuals to join makes one “anti-union.” Is Gov. DeSantis supposed to be embarrassed that his state allows workers to make free choices?

The editorial then dredges up his opponents’ “don’t say gay” smear, which mischaracterized his efforts to ensure that sexual discussions in Florida schools are age-appropriate.

Media outlets have spent a lot of time this year publishing obituaries of the DeSantis campaign. The team at NBC’s “Meet the Press” for its part decided that attempting to badger him into quitting was a good use of their viewers’ time.

Yet the governor is still out on the trail making the case to voters. And lest those voters think Mr. DeSantis is only concerned with education, he is running perhaps the most fiscally responsible government in the country. Wednesday’s column noted his latest effort to further shrink Florida’s modest state debt. This is bound to make him increasingly likable to taxpayers.

This week’s Miami Herald editorial seems like progress if the press is ready to engage the debate on policy. That’s a fight Mr. DeSantis can win
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on January 05, 2024, 07:11:27 AM
Ron was superb! last night on CNN

Caitlan Collins slyly tried to pin gotcha's on him the whole time after questions from the audiende

who of course were also chosen because of their questions......


But glad to see Ron was ready for all of them and responded in a perfect way back

He has clearly gotten his game !

However, it is too late.

I would like him as VP but I simply can't see him playing second fiddle to Trump.
Thinking it would be better if he waited to '28.

Nikki was ok but not her best.
Of course the lib media will take something I missed she said about NH correcting Iowa's voters,
and ignore everything else.

they both made good points about moving forward and we do not need another 4 yrs of chaos and listening to Trump's personal gripes (albeit much not his fault) .

I still like Ron #1
              Nikki #2
              DJT very close #3

not that it matters at this point
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis on CNN
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 05, 2024, 07:42:45 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqBoL0OcG_M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGbydbGgHVY

Very good in both of these.  I particularly liked his articulation on the birthright citizenship issues-- very precise and I will be using it myself.


Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis Pravda Interview
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 06, 2024, 03:24:51 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK0pKPyH8nA&t=1595s
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 07, 2024, 01:34:00 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/taxes/desantis-i-want-to-eliminate-irs-and-implement-flat-rate-in-order-to-lower-taxes-for-everybody/ar-AA1mz47E?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=aead9d9ed7424c9784c1f79fd8154913&ei=30
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on January 07, 2024, 07:42:12 AM
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/taxes/desantis-i-want-to-eliminate-irs-and-implement-flat-rate-in-order-to-lower-taxes-for-everybody/ar-AA1mz47E?ocid=msedgntp&pc=DCTS&cvid=aead9d9ed7424c9784c1f79fd8154913&ei=30

From the article:  “Obviously, I would only do it if it was lower taxes for everybody. But that is the ideal tax system,” he added.


[Doug]   I like the way he is thinking.  It would be a better system.  Unfortunately, there is no way to get there from where we are now (as the quote above reveals).  We are deeply entrenched in the progressive tax rate system.  40% of American households pay no federal individual income tax at all, 72 million households with zero federal taxable income after deductions and exclusions.   

A flat tax works by getting everyone in, every dollar of income.

We need to shrink the size, scope and cost of government, get more people to be productive and self supporting before there will be any lightening of the burden.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-brackets
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 07, 2024, 08:13:27 AM
This seems to be a pivotal moment for his campaign.

I just made a donation.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on January 07, 2024, 06:36:42 PM
This seems to be a pivotal moment for his campaign.

I just made a donation.


Good idea, I will too.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on January 08, 2024, 07:11:22 AM
This seems to be a pivotal moment for his campaign.

I just made a donation.

Good idea, I will too.

I created a new email account for my email required donations,
donotreplytoDoug@gmail.com
They did not require a phone number.

I noticed from past activism they do not protect your information.  I have hesitated to help for this reason but conservatives and Republicans are often getting outspent by 14:1 and people on our side need to step up or get used to losing.

Trump builds his lists off his rallies.  People sign up for free tickets and they have your info forever.  They don't limit the issuing of tickets.  They love to see crowds outside that couldn't et into an overflowing event.
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: ccp on January 08, 2024, 08:25:35 AM
probably best to wait till after Iowa.

if he does not do well there then some are saying he will drop out anyway.

I would donate too but....
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on January 08, 2024, 10:15:56 AM
probably best to wait till after Iowa.

if he does not do well there then some are saying he will drop out anyway.

I would donate too but....

Yes, it all appears to be too little, too late.  He bet hard on Iowa but Trump has a connection with a majority of Republicans that can't be broken and the massive attacks from the Left just make it stronger.  Polling says that is playing out in Iowa and DeSantis is further behind in NH and SC.  He for sure needs to beat expectations in Iowa, whatever that means.  If not, I suspect he will pause his campaign rather than take an even worse outcome in the rest.

DeSantis is polling no better than Trump in the general election.  We expected the opposite.  He has received a lot of incoming attacks himself, with everything in Florida mischaracterized, even though the people love it.

Still, these candidates, when you find a good one, give their life to what we believe in.  I can give something.

No individual donation makes a real difference.  It is the flow. DeSantis doesn't have deep pockets and lost big pac money when he lost momentum, so the individuals donations keep the lights on.

I don't see it as his fault.  He's doing all the hard work and putting out the right message in my view. 

I agree with your ranking. 1. DeSantis  2. Trump  3. Haley

From that point of view, it doesn't move anything forward for RD to drop out.  It doesn't make Haley win and we probably aren't better off if she does.

On present course it is over now, and it is really over after Super Tuesday, March 6, unless something (big) changes.

Might as well let the primary voters have their say and not just the pollsters.

After Trump clinches, watch Biden close the general election polling gap.  Uggh.
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis FOX town hall
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 10, 2024, 04:11:46 PM
Due to a storm we had no internet last night, but this is what I found today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHclwsI1bUU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yQZox1Pd9A

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTdyV2H4heQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioi0fGkB3Ns





Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis FOX town hall
Post by: DougMacG on January 10, 2024, 08:11:45 PM
Thanks for posting this.  What did you think?
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis: Dreams of our Founding Fathers
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 13, 2024, 06:57:59 PM
https://www.amazon.com/Dreams-Our-Founding-Fathers-Principles/dp/1934666807
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis looks to protect FL National Guard from Biden
Post by: Crafty_Dog on January 27, 2024, 05:25:59 AM
https://twitter.com/djuric_zlatko/status/1750968049899872563?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Title: Too bad DeSantis is ineligible if Trump is the candidate
Post by: Crafty_Dog on February 19, 2024, 04:37:15 PM
https://www.oann.com/newsroom/poll-desantis-the-top-choice-for-trumps-vice-president-pick/

OTOH this lays the foundation for DeSantis should something knock Trump out.

Title: Re: Too bad DeSantis is ineligible if Trump is the candidate
Post by: DougMacG on February 20, 2024, 05:17:17 AM
"OTOH this lays the foundation for DeSantis should something knock Trump out."


I agree, he finished the race as second place to Trump, in the best position to follow him, until there is a VP pick. Then it gets more complicated.
Title: Gov. Ron DeSantis sings property rights bill to end squatting scam
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 27, 2024, 02:52:00 PM
https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/27/desantis-signs-property-rights-bill-in-florida-that-ends-squatting-scam/
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis sings property rights bill to end squatting scam
Post by: DougMacG on March 28, 2024, 06:56:04 AM
https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/27/desantis-signs-property-rights-bill-in-florida-that-ends-squatting-scam/

Wow!  A state sides unapologetically with property rights?

(Our delray beach values keep going up.)
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: Crafty_Dog on March 28, 2024, 07:15:24 AM
DeSantis is rather awesome IMHO.

Note how frequently he promptly responds to problems with solutions!
Title: Re: Gov. Ron DeSantis
Post by: DougMacG on March 28, 2024, 08:43:12 AM
DeSantis is rather awesome IMHO.

Note how frequently he promptly responds to problems with solutions!

Yes.  Also having a legislature that is so on-the-ball - didn't happen by accident.

Florida was a swing state when RD was elected.  We remember Bush Gore 2000.  Obama won Florida twice.  Suddenly this is a state that has its act together like no other.

Florida has 3rd largest population, a LOT of major cities, and barely over 50% white non-Hispanic population, and a lot of those are east coast liberal northerners.  Now it is Republican.
https://www.florida-demographics.com/cities_by_population
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Florida

One of my proudest moments was beating their top 55 and over doubles team at Nationals.  )

We weren't wrong to hope what was happening in Florida could happen for all of America.