Here’s another bit of recent Ron DeSantis political theatre:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) this week filed a complaint against a Miami restaurant after a video of children attending a drag show at the establishment was posted by the popular right-wing social media account LibsofTikTok and shared thousands of times.
DeSantis in the complaint filed Tuesday against R House, which hosts drag brunch events, alleges the restaurant violated state law and cites a 1947 state Supreme Court ruling that “men impersonating women” in a “suggestive and indecent” fashion constitutes a public nuisance.
In hosting drag performances in the presence of young children, the restaurant has also violated a state disorderly conduct statute and a separate statute prohibiting the operation of a business “for the purpose of lewdness,” according to the complaint.
On a slighly less topical note, this is a New Yorker Profile on RD about five weeks ago. Hoping they’re offering a “five free viewings” thingie if it’s paywalled. If it doesn’t, well, while I’m at it - a couple bits…
Those who work closely with him say that he is unique among elected officials in his disregard for public opinion and the press. “Ron’s strength as a politician is that he doesn’t give a fuck,” a Republican consultant who knows him told me. “Ron’s weakness as a politician is that he doesn’t give a fuck. Big donors? He doesn’t give a shit. Cancels on them all the time.”
In February, DeSantis appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference, held at the Rosen Shingle Creek Hotel, a sprawling resort near Orlando. The convention halls were filled with the Party’s new vanguard, which was, on the whole, poorer and angrier than the bankers and golfers who led the G.O.P. a generation ago. The panels ranged from outraged to vengeful. A health-care panel was called “Obamacare Still Kills.” A discussion of covid -19 policy was titled “Lock Downs and Mandates: Now Do You Understand Why We Have a Second Amendment.”
From the main stage, DeSantis flashed a smile and tossed baseball caps into the crowd. In a twenty-minute speech, he described an America under assault by left-wing élites, who “want to delegitimize our founding institutions.” His job as governor, he said, was to fight the horsemen of the left: critical race theory, “Faucian dystopia,” uncontrolled immigration, Big Tech, “left-wing oligarchs,” “Soros-funded prosecutors,” transgender athletes, and the “corporate media.” In Florida, he said, he had created a “citadel of freedom” that had become a beacon for people “chafing under authoritarian rule”; he cited disgruntled citizens of Australia, Canada, and Europe. (He didn’t mention the Russian invasion of Ukraine.) “We’re not letting Florida cities burn down,” DeSantis told the crowd. “In Florida, you’re not going to get a slap on the wrist. You are getting the inside of a jail cell.” He offered no new policies, though he did mention that he was requiring high-school seniors to pass a civics exam.
In person, he often comes across differently. “Ron is at his best on paper,” a Florida political leader who knows DeSantis told me. “Then you meet him and you say, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ ” People who work closely with him describe a man so aloof that he sometimes finds it difficult to carry on a conversation. “He’s not comfortable engaging other people,” a political leader who sees him often told me. “He walks into the meeting and doesn’t acknowledge the rest of us. There’s no eye contact and little or no interaction. The moment I start to ask him a question, his head twitches. You can tell he doesn’t want to be there.” (DeSantis’s office declined requests for comment.)
Nearly everyone I talked to who knew DeSantis commented on his affect: his lack of curiosity about others, his indifferent table manners, his aversion to the political rituals of dispensing handshakes and questions about the kids. One former associate told me that his demeanor stems from a conviction that others have advantages that were denied to him. “The anger comes more easily to him because he has a chip on his shoulder,” she said. “He is a serious guy. Driven.”
Table manners? What - is he like Bluto?
I asked [Ron Sr.] what Ron was like growing up. “He was stubborn,” DeSantis said. “If he set his mind to something, you couldn’t shake him.” DeSantis pointed into the street, where he and his son used to play catch; there were ball fields nearby, where he had coached Ron’s Little League teams. “I tried not to favor him, and Ron didn’t like that,” he said. Early on, his son had read “The Science of Hitting,” by Ted Williams, the baseball great, who advised young hitters to take care in choosing pitches to swing at. “I must have thrown a half million pitches to Ron, and I think he swung at about five hundred of them,” he said. “I wish he would have never read it.” In 1991, when DeSantis was twelve, his team made it to the Little League World Series.
The young DeSantis attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School and then Dunedin High, where he was a star outfielder. He was focussed and motivated, his father said, adding, “He didn’t get that from me.” DeSantis scored in the ninety-ninth percentile on his SAT and was accepted to Yale…
Some recalled that DeSantis was so intensely focussed that he wasn’t much of a teammate. “Ron is the most selfish person I have ever interacted with,” another teammate told me. “He has always loved embarrassing and humiliating people. I’m speaking for others—he was the biggest dick we knew.” But the same teammate praised DeSantis’s intellect. “This is the frustrating part. He’s so fucking smart and so creative,” he said. “You couldn’t even plagiarize off his work. He’d take some angle, and everyone knew there was only one person who could have done that.”
“Fucking smart and creative”?
The rest of the article focuses on his political rise. The entire remainder is quotable, which I don’t have the time for, but nothing changed my impression of the guy being a total blockhead.
That profile pretty much makes DeSantis sound like the second coming of Richard Nixon.
I think when you consider what the GOP has become - basically just a vehicle to provide the middle finger to Democrats, librulz, “fake media”, and all things “woke” - DeSantis is probably a strong candidate to win the 2024 nomination.
We’ll see. Alot of this depends on Trump and whether he runs again. Also, the general election could be someone other than Biden from the Democratic side.
survinga:
I think when you consider what the GOP has become - basically just a vehicle to provide the middle finger to Democrats, librulz, “fake media”, and all things “woke” - DeSantis is probably a strong candidate to win the 2024 nomination.
While I readily believe that DeSantis is incurious and arrogant, I don’t think he’s dumb. And so I think his entire schtick has been to plant a track record of Trumpian bona fides for the sole purpose of advancing a 2024 presidential run. He’s vying to be the “younger, smoother” version of this Republican strongman authoritarian that the party seems to want.
He’s auditioning to be the Man of the Hour when SCOTUS takes up the case they previously decided in a different way in March 2022. This time, they will rule to grant power to state lawmakers to rig elections, with no oversight authority whatsoever by state courts:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court seems poised to take on a new elections case being pressed by Republicans that could increase the power of state lawmakers over races for Congress and the presidency, as well as redistricting, and cut state courts...
He’s just the authoritarian to get the job done. He scares the crap out of me.
Aspenglow:
He’s auditioning to be the Man of the Hour when SCOTUS takes up the case they previously decided in a different way in March 2022. This time, they will rule to grant power to state lawmakers to rig elections, with no oversight authority whatsoever by state courts:
Yes. This is horrifying even apart from the dangers posed by would-be Fuhrer DeSantis—there are many Republicans, in several states, who would love to take advantage of the decision the extremist Roberts Court seems likely to hand down.
Definitely cause for concern:
When Gov. Ron DeSantis abruptly suspended Tampa's elected prosecutor last week, it was not accomplished in a late-night sacking or buried in a 5 p.m. Friday press release. Rather, DeSantis summoned reporters and cameras for a midday media event, as...
Is it possible that Ronnie would be worse for the country than Donnie? Same dictatorial mindset, but much more experienced and effective.
Younger and more energetic, too. Could be bad news indeed.
Leaper
August 12, 2022, 2:15am
92
It all depends how much Trump’s personality and persona factor into his popularity. If it’s mostly due to policy and beliefs, then sure, all the loyal MAGAs may happily move over to DeSantis. But DeSantis certainly doesn’t act like Trump.
A bigger megaphone now?
For feces and laughter, figured I’d throw this tweet her way…
Pushaw: You are, without question, one of the most vile, disgusting, reprehensible actors in this mess. The fact that you KNOW that, but continue being this pathetic, un-American, unpatriotic fascist, makes you the most useless charlatan. And DON’T cowardly delete. OWN IT
Leaper
August 12, 2022, 11:33pm
95
Yeah, sure, but will Trump’s voters be satisfied with body language? Or do they want the type of person who’ll openly mock handicapped people, make daily personal tweets that cheapen the office, and keep classified info? I think it’s an open question.
Ron DeSantis is taking this neo-Trump persona all the way .
Frankly, as long as the Trumpistas see DeSantis enacting legislation that “hurts the right people,” they’ll be fine with him.
This article must be read - beautifully written.
I could quote the whole damn thing, it’s so powerful, but I’ll just go with these:
Still, I can’t be silent. I can’t be objective about how the history of the United States is inextricably linked with genocide, slavery, white supremacy and sexism, to name a few of our country’s ills. And I cannot be “objective” of claims that say that history does not still haunt us now and that groups of people are not privileged or oppressed based on systems that were set up centuries before.
This is patently false, and Gov. DeSantis knows it. He majored in history at Yale University. He is not acting out of ignorance. He is acting for political gain. He is willfully disregarding marginalized communities and attempting to sentence them to a future as fraught as the past. He is only governing a percentage of the citizens in this state where he took an oath to serve us all.
Sad / infuriating that so many voters can’t see such scumbaggery for what it is, with too many of them embracing it.
Ronnie had a big announcement today. He wouldn’t give the media much advance notice of what it was about, but he teased major news in Broward County (where Fort Lauderdale is located).
Drum roll please…
The state had made 20 (count ‘em: that’s Two and Zero) arrests, across the entire state, over that big bugaboo, voter fraud .
He explained they had been convicted of murder or sexual assault, and their right to vote had been taken away, but they voted anyway.
“They have been disenfranchised under Florida law,” DeSantis said.
I, for one, am grateful that the 20 million plus people who call themselves Floridians can sleep just a little bit safer tonight knowing that their vote hasn’t been diluted by a fraction of a percent. No, ma’am, not when Ronnie is on the case.
Well, that was definitely worth creating your own election police.
