The Leader of the Opposition

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Friday, August 05, 2022

 

By announcing the suspension of a state attorney who publicly pledged not to enforce state laws against later-term abortions or sex-change surgeries performed on minors, Florida governor Ron DeSantis confirmed once again that he is the leader of the opposition in Biden’s America.

 

DeSantis also reminded the world that he’s a very canny politician. He does that about once a month now. Hillsborough County state attorney Andrew Warren had pledged not to prosecute on matters of special privilege to the Left. This tactic of abusing discretion as a form of soft nullification has deep roots in America, but it has been taken up by Democrats fighting the culture war with more and more zest since the Obama years, when the Justice Department said it would simply ignore the Defense of Marriage Act. Florida’s laws on abortion are not nearly as protective of the unborn as those in some deep-red states, but they are broadly popular. So too are the laws against gelding boys, or sterilizing and removing breasts from girls under the Orwellian practice of “gender affirmation surgery.”

 

Defending popular laws is always good politics and will have its appeal toward the political center, where it is understood that bonds of citizenship, duty toward the common good, or simple employment constrain us to act within the rules.

 

But this move has a different meaning on the right. Among conservatives there is a well-justified suspicion that elected Republicans allow conservative governing priorities — even popular ones — to get swallowed by the soft nullification of discretion by other bureaucrats or the administrative state. While DeSantis’s suspension of Warren is fully in line with the text and spirit of Florida’s constitution on the powers of the executive, this move powerfully signals to conservative voters that he is anxious to remove the normal obstacles that frustrate conservative governance.

 

It’s also a testament to the fact that DeSantis can build one victory upon previous ones. He is reinforcing a victory for self-rule, and for social conservatism, by creating another victory for law and order. Just as a few months ago he took the win of legislating against indoctrination into gender ideology in primary school, and then reinforced it by boxing with the Disney corporation over certain legal privileges it enjoys.

 

And maybe, as the political calendar begins winding from this long summer toward the midterms and then the 2024 cycle, conservatives will look back on the last two years and longer and recognize that DeSantis was their leader even while Trump was still in office. It was DeSantis, more than any other governor, who took on the “mantle of anger” over lockdown policies and the broad closure of society. Florida was rewarded with a bigger economic bounce out of the pandemic, and inward migration.

 

Donald Trump’s currency with some conservative voters was built on his willingness to break taboos. Trump’s playing the media game by his own rules seemed to indicate that he would really deliver on a different type of governance from what was on offer from the usual Bush scions. But in many cases, he wouldn’t or couldn’t.

 

DeSantis is not a wild man like Trump, but he has been willing to take up conservative causes that other deep-red-state governors (looking at you, Utah and Arkansas) won’t touch at all. And he seems to relish the fight with the media, the corporations, or the bureaucracy — the forces that turn conservative victories into long-run defeats. When conservatives look back on the last few years, who was taking on Dr. Fauci? Or defeating woke indoctrination in schools? Or putting progressive corporate activists back in their place? And who was AWOL on all those fights because he was too busy sulking about drop boxes?