What’s DeSantis Known For?

By Michael Brendan Dougherty

Thursday, April 20, 2023

 

The other day I wrote about Sarah Longwell’s essay at the Bulwark, about how GOP voters don’t want to go back to the party as it was before Trump. I think that’s understandable. There was one other interesting section where Longwell outlined that only Ron DeSantis seemed to be playing the game of politics. She wrote:

 

He has remade Florida in his image, becoming America’s premier culture warrior. He is notable primarily for:

 

* Taking stands against vaccines
* Hiring quack doctors for public health positions
* Yelling at college kids
* Demonizing gays and lesbians as pedophile groomers
* Making it illegal to discuss race in schools
* Attacking Disney’s corporate status because the company’s cartoons are too “woke”
* Shipping refugees to Martha’s Vineyard

 

More than any other politician in America, DeSantis has labored to turn himself into a mini-Trump.

 

I thought that was a funny list. “Yelling at college kids” was a throwback. It refers to a moment when, with a little exasperation, he told a group of college students they didn’t need to wear cloth masks, that those masks didn’t work and were “Covid theater.” Given that they were all wearing non-respirator masks, DeSantis was merely articulating the same thing that White House adviser Dr. Leana Wen had said months earlier, when she disparaged such masks as “little more than useless face decorations.”

 

I think Longwell’s list is willfully obtuse. Even a feature writer for the New York Times could acknowledge the reasons why DeSantis became prominent in the first place. “With his early bet on reopening and his concede-nothing posture, DeSantis has plainly won the political argument on Covid,” wrote Matt Flegenheimer. “The economic advantages and day-to-day freedoms of his hands-off approach were undeniable, and state-to-state virus statistics are rarely as clean as his opponents would like.”

 

Here’s an alternative list off the top of my head:

 

·         Opened Florida earlier than other states, without the predicted disasters, and avoided the worst economic fallout experienced by other states.

·         Protected senior-citizen homes and care facilities, by pursuing the opposite of the policies tried in New York State by Governor Andrew Cuomo, which resulted in thousands of deaths.

·         Stopped a moral panic around ever less effective vaccines from ripping up the social fabric of his state.

·         Caused any of your relatives who became annoyed by public-health bureaucracy over the last several years to at least muse about moving to Florida.

·         Drove liberals so insane they started rooting for Hurricane Ian to kill more Floridians.

·         Rebuilt bridges destroyed by Hurricane Ian in record time.

·         Kept public schools open longer than in other states, thereby averting the learning loss suffered by kids in other states, and taking Florida up the national rankings in education outcomes.

·         Banned material from schools that would designate certain races as “oppressors.”

·         Banned sexually explicit material from schools, or material that would invite children eight years old or younger to dwell on their sexual identity.

·         Pursued Covid policies that made Florida a top destination for inward migration and inward tourism to the United States.

·         Passed a comprehensive school-choice bill.

·         Passed a law restricting abortion after six weeks, with exceptions, while expanding aid to pregnant mothers in need.

·         Invested 3.5 billion dollars to protect the Everglades.