Some conservatives worry about Ron DeSantis use of government power to implement his agenda

The End of the Trump-DeSantis Showdown: Campaigning for a Republican Presidential Campaign in the Electoral Convergence

Multiple sources told CNN that DeSantis will orchestrate a legislative session full of conservative priorities that he can carry into a GOP presidential primary. Republicans won a super majority in both chambers of the Florida legislature Tuesday, allowing DeSantis to make good on promises to further restrict abortion and make it easier to carry a firearm in public.

DeSantis’ proven ability to galvanize Republican voters and simultaneously appeal to a majority of independents is what makes him capable of winning both the GOP presidential nomination as well as the general election, should he choose to run next year.

Georgia Lieutenant Gov.Geoff Duncan told CNN that there was no way to deny that Donald Trump had been fired. “The search committee has brought a few names to the top of the list and Ron DeSantis is one of them. I believe that Ron DeSantis will be rewarded for doing a new thought process with Republicans.

One long-time Republican fundraiser with knowledge of the operation told them to build anticipation. “I think DeSantis controls the time frame. As much as everyone anticipates things You want to move quickly, he’s calling the shots now.

The intrigue surrounding a potential Trump-DeSantis showdown reached the White House on Wednesday. President Joe Biden commented that it would be enjoyable to watch the two Republicans take on each other.

The legislative session will be “as red meat as you can possibly imagine,” a GOP consultant said. The proposal will be passed and it will become law.

Another Republican fundraiser close to the governor told CNN that there is concern DeSantis is going overboard with “anti-woke stuff” but added: “You’ve gotta win the primary first.”

It has already proven it can raise money at a rapid rate and that is just the beginning for the political operation that will continue to build. State campaign finance reports show that his reelection effort took in more than $200 million for his two committees and shattered national records for all gubernatorial campaigns. As of November 3, those committees had $66 million in unspent cash. CNN previously reported that DeSantis’ political team has explored how to transfer the unused money into a federal committee that could support a presidential campaign. That remains the plan, sources confirmed.

He is also expected to continue political travel outside the state to raise money and grow his brand. After avoiding public events outside the state for most of his first term, Ron DeSantis held rallies in support of Republican candidates in some of the most important races for governor and the US Senate. He continued to travel up until 10 days before the election.

New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday that right now DeSantis would probably win the Granite State’s GOP primary. Sununu, who told Bash he’s considering his own White House bid in 2024, also took a swipe at Trump’s demeanor and the size of his event, which was an address to party activists rather than one of his seething rallies in a state where he won the 2016 GOP primary.

The influential right wing leader in Iowa told CNN that he brings up Scott Walker when people want to talk about the candidate who was an early favorite.

“If in fact you go into a presidential primary with Donald Trump and think you’re going to kick his ass, you got another thing coming,” one Republican consultant in Florida told CNN.

There are lots of questions surrounding the candidacy of Ron DeSantis. How will he deal with the scrutiny and attacks of other candidates, notably Donald Trump? NPR has repeatedly requested an interview from DeSantis. Up to now, he’s mostly avoided interviews with mainstream media, preferring instead friendly appearances on Fox News and other conservative outlets.

I am not sure if he is running. I think if he runs, he could hurt himself very badly,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News Digital. I believe he would make a mistake. I think the base would not like it – I don’t think it would be good for the party…I would tell you things about him that won’t be very flattering.”

Trump later downplayed Tuesday’s election results, noting he received “more votes” than DeSantis in Florida in 2020. Presidential races usually have much higher turnout than midterms and Trump’s margin of victory over Biden was about 3 points.

There was also something jarring about a former president who tried to steal the last election – and incited an insurrection to try to cling to power – campaigning and being embraced by supporters as if nothing happened.

There is also a clear sense that Trump believes he is owed the Republican nomination and feels that certain sections of his party are not sufficiently grateful for his turbulent one-term presidency.

Trump’s musings about loyalty also recall his attack on evangelical leaders earlier this month, whom he said showed “disloyalty” by refusing to support his 2024 bid so far despite his delivery of a generational conservative Supreme Court majority. The comments were a reminder of Trump’s transactional view of politics – and also that a man who dumped aides, staff and Cabinet members at a fearsome clip in office often tends to view loyalty as a purely one-way allegiance.

DeSantis’ pugilistic style has become a frequent topic of debate among free-market conservatives who believe the government shouldn’t interfere with businesses. DeSantis has often intervened if he accuses a business of running afoul of his vision of freedom. He instigated a standoff with the cruise line industry during the pandemic over their vaccine policies, banned businesses from requiring masks and vaccines, and championed a bill that restricted how businesses train workers around topics such as race and gender.

While DeSantis is a formidable potential candidate on paper, he would have to develop the capacity to defend himself from Trump’s fearsome debate stage broadsides, as well as a rhetorical nimbleness that he hasn’t yet shown. The part of the GOP that still believes in the former president will have to fight off Trump without alienating them.

He is in New Hampshire, and he gives a very boring speech. The response we have received is, he read his teleprompter, he stuck to the talking points, he went away,” Sununu told Bash. “So he’s not really bringing that fire, that energy, I think, that a lot of folks saw it in ’16. It was a little disappointing to some people. He will need to earn it, but a lot of people understand he will be a candidate. And that’s New Hampshire.”

Trump is not yet ready to acknowledge that reality, according to his remarks about the two individuals. Though his decision to visit an ice cream parlor late in the day in South Carolina was an unusual foray into retail politics and first-person contact with voters.

Trump appeared Saturday to understand that his two years of fury over the 2020 election, which he still falsely says was stolen from him, may have turned off voters in 2022, when many of the election-denying candidates he promoted in swing states lost – potentially costing the GOP the Senate.

“This campaign will be about the future. This campaign will be about the issues. At the South Carolina State House Saturday, Trump said that he would ensure that Biden doesn’t get four more years because he put America on a path to ruin.

But he hasn’t abandoned all of his standard rhetoric. He called into a rally on Sunday evening for one of his favorite election-denying candidates, which was failed Arizona governor nominee and falsely claiming to have won in November. And earlier on Saturday, in New Hampshire, the former president – who is facing criminal investigations by the Justice Department and a district attorney in Georgia over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election – could not resist taking aim at institutions that are revealing the true course of events in 2020.

Trump signaled that he would use his campaign and potential second presidency to try to thwart Justice Department efforts to enforce accountability over his election-stealing activity.

We will stop the weaponization of our justice system. There’s never been a justice system like this. It’s all an investigation according to Trump. And he branded his resistance to such probes as more proof of the very quality that many Republicans embraced in 2016 and that helped propel him to the White House.

He said that there is only one president who has ever challenged the entire establishment in Washington and he will do it again with your vote next year.

In Defense of DeSantis, Republicans Can’t Just Say Free Enterprise unless You Were Trying to Make America Work For Good Educational Practices

Florida state lawmakers handed new authority over Disney World to the man in charge after the company opposed a measure restricting certain classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Sununu, who is considering a run for president, said he is a free-market conservative. “For others out there that think that the government should be penalizing your business because they disagree with you politically, that isn’t very conservative.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a right-of-center First Amendment group that argued for White nationalist Richard Spencer’s right to speak on a Florida campus, has joined DeSantis in opposing diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs. Nevertheless, the group has repeatedly criticized Florida’s heavy-handed approach to forcing conservative beliefs on universities and is suing the state over the Stop WOKE Act, a DeSantis-backed measure that legislated how professors teach certain topics.

“You cannot censor your way to freedom of expression,” said Will Creeley, FIRE’s legal director. “You cannot trade one orthodoxy for another. What we’ve seen recently in Florida is a troubling willingness to do just that.”

“Corporatism is not the same as free enterprise, and I think too many Republicans have viewed limited government to basically mean whatever is best for corporate America is how we want to do the economy,” the Florida governor said at a speech last year at the National Conservatism Conference. “My view is, you know, obviously free enterprise is the best economic system, but that is a means to an end.”

While the record DeSantis is building is almost sure to play well with many GOP primary voters, a sense of concern is palpable, particularly on matters of race, among some Republicans who are supportive of the governor.

A Republican supporter of DeSantis said that being perceived as being racist was not a good place for him to be in the long term.

The supporter pointed directly to the fight over an Advanced Placement course on African American studies and DeSantis’ quarrel with the College Board, saying the governor could alienate some voters who would otherwise be supportive.

But Republicans voters have yet to be introduced to many potential contenders for the party nomination. The Club for Growth and the Americans for Prosperity both plan on getting involved in the primary.

The remarks to the Club for Growth were reported by Fox News. Spokespeople for the group and DeSantis did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

“I am kind of a live-and-let-live kind of girl, but I am a genuine libertarian,” she said. She said she has no problem with candidates holding personal beliefs that are strong on social issues, but she doesn’t like what he did to his state with his socially conservative views.

“DeSantis is always talking about he was not demanding that businesses do things, but he was telling the cruise lines what they had to do,” former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a fellow Republican, said of DeSantis last year. Hogan is critical of the Florida governor as he weighs entering the mix for the Republican nomination.

There are ways in which South Dakota Gov. Noem has compared her record against DeSantis to that of Florida, which is what suggests that the state is too hands-on. Noem said Friday that she was the state that set an example of freedom by refusing to shut down. The state of Florida which has been called a “Citadel of Freedom” restricted economic activity early in the pandemic.

DeSantis has built his political persona around protecting freedoms. The budget he dubbed his “Freedom First Budget” and the one this year was called the “Framework for Freedom”. He has a slogan for tourism that is “Vacation to Freedom” and “Freedom over Faucism” in his speeches. He stood victorious on election night in front of a podium that had a sign that said, “Freedom Lives Here.”

His approach has included more government programs, like the creation of an office to pursue voter fraud, a new program to conduct missions to surveil, house and transport migrants from border states to Democratic states, and restrictions on bank lending practices.

“I’m troubled by this trend, because what I think the interpretation will be is that this is working,” Katherine Mangu-Ward, the editor-in-chief of the libertarian magazine Reason, said in a recent podcast episode centered around DeSantis’ tactics. DeSantis is getting more recognition every single week. He is putting himself in a better position to potentially win the presidency. He is using indiscriminate state power to get his goals, but also to score points.

Rufo was appointed to the board of New College, a small liberal arts school, by the governor, who wants the school to become a more conservative university.

Rufo said the complaint about using state power to correct ideological corruption in public universities is ridiculous. “Amounts to ‘the people can’t regulate the state.’”

The governor did not appreciate the fact that he went after Disney’s tax status. “It can be portrayed or feel or look like retaliation. I think that people who serve our nation need to rise above these moments in time.

Donald D. DeSantis During the 2018 Florida Midterm Elections: A Weathered Champion for Citizens in the 21st Century

Editor’s Note: Justin Sayfie has served in the administration of three Republican presidents and was a top adviser to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. Sayfie is a partner at the lobbying firm and publisher of SayfieReview.com, a website dedicated to Florida politics. His views are his own and they are expressed here. CNN has more opinion.

The 2018 midterm elections were terrible for the Republican Party. The GOP lost 41 seats in the House of Representatives, and Democrats beat GOP candidates by more than 10 million votes — the largest raw vote margin in a House midterm election ever. Democrats gained seven governorships that year.

Out of more than 8 million votes cast, Republican Ron DeSantis beat Andrew Gillum by 0.4% in the Florida governor’s race.

He became a hero to millions in 2020 when he filled a leadership vacuum because of a global crisis and uncertainty.

Vulnerable older adults in Florida were told to avoid hospital transfers of patients with the coronaviruses because he prioritized health and safety over safety. Parents of Florida schoolchildren witnessed how he focused on keeping schools open, so students wouldn’t fall behind in their learning. Small-business owners witnessed how he battled to get and keep businesses open, so they and their employees could continue to feed their families during the pandemic.

DeSantis’ governance style during the pandemic not only earned him respect from many around the country, but it also became a weathered template for other battles he has fought.

Step 1: Take decisive action. It is more important for the leader to be decisive than it is for the decision to be popular. Voters do not want weathervanes for leaders. They prefer a leader that takes bold action and gets things done than one who constantly puts a finger in the wind, unsure of what to do next.

In September, DeSantis flew migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, where three municipalities had adopted sanctuary policies limiting local law enforcement from enforcing federal immigration laws. While editorials as well as local officials representing those sanctuary jurisdictions heaped scorn on DeSantis’s decision, DeSantis was tapping into widespread national concern about the failure of border enforcement.

More than half of Americans think the United States is experiencing an incursion at the southern border, with Republicans and independents holding this opinion, according to an NPR/Ipsos poll. Meanwhile, 59% of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independents say border security should be very or somewhat important, and almost 4 of 10 Democrats say that increasing deportations is very or somewhat important, according to a Pew Research poll. This widespread bipartisan dissatisfaction on border enforcement provided a vast political space for DeSantis’ decision to relocate migrants.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/02/opinions/ron-desantis-florida-recipe-success-sayfie/index.html

How popular is Ron DeSantis in 2020? Why does he think that 2024 is a golden age for the megastate of Florida?

The bill that was supported by DeSantis prohibited classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity. The hosts of the Oscars made fun of the bill on national TV after Disney opposed it.

A New York Times- Siena College poll in September found that the majority of Republicans were against the bill, while 42% of Democrats were against it. More than 70% of independent voters strongly or somewhat opposed the idea of teaching gender identity to children in elementary school.

The NCAA declared Lia Thomas the winner of the women’s 500-yard freestyle final after Emma Weyant, a Florida native, was declared the winner. Just like the other issues DeSantis has taken on, Republicans and independent voters were strongly in favor of DeSantis’ position, while Democrats were split almost evenly, according to a NPR/Ipsos poll.

In today’s “cancel culture” environment, DeSantis has uniquely channeled the emotions of what former President Richard Nixon called the “silent majority.” That term is more politically potent now than it was then, because those voters who consider themselves part of this group – regardless of whether they are a majority – feel more silenced than ever.

One may be tempted to believe that such a strategy has limited appeal – but consider the following: In 2020, although Trump beat Biden in Florida, Biden beat Trump by 11 points among independent voters. Two years later, a majority of the nonpartisan voters who had supported the Republicans in the past returned to them, giving Ron DeSantis a win over his opponent by 8 points.

The recipe that has worked brilliantly in Florida is an incredibly diverse, multicultural and fast-growing megastate. Anyone who doesn’t think it can work elsewhere may belatedly regret such skepticism in 2024.

Club for Growth: What Donald Trump Did to Lose in Florida During the First Half of his 43-Year Governor’s Amendment

The conservative Club for Growth event took place at The Breakers Palm Beach resort, with the audience being told by DeSantis that he is going on offense. “Some of these Republicans, they just sit back like potted plants, and they let the media define the terms of the debate. The left is allowed to define the terms of debate. They take all this incoming, because they’re not making anything happen. I said that was not what we were doing.

How many other governors does anyone care about? There are a lot of problems when you go to California. The governor is worried about me, and what we are doing in Florida. … It’s incredible,” DeSantis said. I just know that game. If they’re not shooting that means you’re not getting anything done. That they’re coming after me, because I’m standing up for the people that I represent, I view that as positive reinforcement.”

He became well-known nationally through his appearances on Fox News where he took a hardline conservative position on issues.

“We fight the woke in the schools, he said. We fight the corporations. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob. The place where woke goes to die is Florida.

It’s not the first race battles that he’s involved in. He banned Critical Race Theory from the schools because it is not a subject found in the school curriculum. He also drew national headlines when his education commissioner said he’d prohibit the use of an AP African American studies course in Florida.

He’s taken aim at programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in the schools. He has signed a law banning abortions after 15 weeks. And he pushed through new Congressional maps that eliminated two African American voting districts. Many of these measures are now held up by legal challenges in the courts.

With his efforts to control even local policies, he’s left behind the commitment to limited government he once had as a member of the Freedom Caucus. Former Congressman David Jolly says, it’s a lesson he took from Donald Trump. Jolly says, “What Donald Trump brought to the party was to really crush that orthodoxy of small government and instead say the ends justify the means. And so, whatever it takes to achieve conservative results.”

Jolly says DeSantis used Trump to build his name recognition but after being elected, he moved on. Jolly compares DeSantis to Hall of Fame hockey player Wayne Gretzky who famously said, “I skate to where the puck is going.” Jolly says of DeSantis, “He saw it was going to be Donald Trump’s party and he skated to Donald Trump very quickly.”

The Florida Legislature is the only one having more vaccines than others in the United States, according to B.C. Ladapo and B. DeSantis

When the vaccine became available, he championed it in almost daily news conferences and in a live broadcast where a 94-year-old World War Two veteran received his shot on Fox News.

In February 2021 the approach to COVID began to change. He’d ordered reopened schools for in class instruction. He soon signed laws banning facemask and vaccine mandates by businesses and government.

After hiring a new surgeon general, he became a vaccine skeptic. He endorsed recommendations by Ladapo that healthy children under 18 not be vaccinated. Men under the age of 39 shouldn’t be receiving the vaccine, according to Ladapo and DeSantis. Public health experts say that the recommendation is incorrect.

Bill Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, claims that he politicized the public health crisis. He believes that his policies led to an increase of deaths in Florida. “If you compare it with California, New York, Massachusetts and the United Kingdom,” Hanage says Florida is “the only one to have more deaths since vaccines were available, than before. The only two of them.

According to Hanage, in Florida, more than 50% of deaths occur after vaccines are available. The number of deaths after vaccines became available are less than 40% in other places.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/06/1160724251/florida-governor-ron-desantis-president

An Analysis of Florida Sen. Geraldine Thompson’s “Dumbfounded, Blind-sided” Response to DeSantis’ “Governor’s Maps”

Republican legislative leaders pushed through the governor’s maps and they were immediately challenged in court as unconstitutional partisan gerrymanders. Florida Republicans picked up four additional seats in Congress, thanks to the maps that were in place for the election.

Democratic state Sen. Geraldine Thompson, an African American lawmaker from Orlando, says, “I was completely dumbfounded, blind-sided.” It was the first time anyone could recall a governor in Florida taking control of redistricting.

Thompson says DeSantis’ motivation in targeting black voters is clear. “I think he has an interest in making sure that only certain individuals vote. She says that some people are supportive of his agenda. “And then making it difficult for anyone who does not support his agenda, making it difficult for them to vote.”

Congressman Bean says those policies are meant to stand up for conservative principles and not be used to target groups. Bean doesn’t expect DeSantis to soften his hardline stance in a campaign for president. I think he’ll push ahead a America-first agenda and acommon-sense agenda if he goes to the next level, according to Bean.