The new book by Ron DeSantis is a warning to the US electorate

When did Rick DeSantis Get His Kicks? Against Trump, Rubio and the Future of the Florida Fla. Relatively Unpopular

It was widely considered a shot across the bow at DeSantis when the Florida rally was planned. Trump first announced last week his intent to hold a rally for US Sen. Marco Rubio in South Florida, leaving DeSantis noticeably out of his plans. Rick Scott, the junior senator in the state, is one of twelve elected officials and candidates from around the state who have signed up to be guest speakers.

He is also expected to continue political travel outside the state to raise money and grow his brand. After avoiding public events outside Florida for most of his first term, DeSantis in August took the calculated gamble to hold rallies in support of Republican candidates in some of the country’s most contested races for governor and US Senate. He was travelling up until 10 days before the election.

“We have two very stubborn, very type-A politicians in Florida that are at the tip of the spear for the GOP,” said one Republican official who asked not to be named. They both have their own political operations, which is what you’re seeing. It is already hard to talk about.

DeSantis recently endorsed Republican businessman and Colorado Senate candidate Joe O’Dea, as O’Dea vowed in October to “actively campaign” against Trump.

Trump followed up by sharing a clip of former Fox News host Megyn Kelly predicting GOP voters would remain firmly in Trump’s camp if DeSantis decided to challenge the former president in a Republican presidential primary. CNN reported Friday that Trump could launch his next presidential bid as soon as this month.

In the first of his three events on Sunday, DeSantis made no mention of Trump or the “Ron DeSanctimonious” nickname, choosing instead to criticize President Joe Biden and the so-called “woke” left.

When it came to the question of whether to open the state or ban the coronaviruses vaccine, there was no shortage of criticism from medical experts and DeSantis said he was a fighter who stood up against them.

The biggest applause the governor got was when he recounted how he arranged for Florida to send over 50 people from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, which has faced scrutiny and legal challenges.

A Red Wave in Florida: Donald Trump’s Fourth Presidential Campaign in Miami-Dade County, Ohio, and Where the Red Tsunami Came

If they go head to head in a primary, the two may be on the same financial footing. DeSantis has raised $200 million this campaign cycle through his two political committees and has spent just over half, leaving about $90 million in potential seed money for a Super PAC. The data shows that at the end of October, Trump had more than $101 million between his three active funds.

According to CNN, Trump wants to launch his third campaign for the White House. During his visit to Iowa on Thursday, Trump told voters to prepare for his return as a presidential candidate. Trump stopped in Pennsylvania on Saturday – home to the tight Senate race between his endorsee, Republican Mehmet Oz, and Democrat John Fetterman – and he’ll spend election eve in Ohio, where the former president endorsed Republican J.D. Vance in the Senate race against Democrat Tim Ryan.

The decision to hold the rally in Miami- Dade County came as Republicans were optimistic that they would win back the one-time Democratic stronghold. In recent elections, investments by Republicans in Hispanic neighborhoods have paid off, as the party sees a wave of enthusiasm that is turning the state into a red state. Republicans will hold an advantage in voterREGISTRATION on the day of the election, which is the first time in modern political history.

According to the announcement, the president delivered a “historical red wave” in Florida in the last election with his slate of endorsed candidates up and down the ballot. Florida is now an America First Red State thanks to President Trump.

“Biden touches it and turns into something much worse than (gold),” DeSantis said. It is frustrating for a lot of people that the country has not seen its best days. They think that we’re clearly on the wrong track. I believe that Florida gives the blueprint that other states can follow.

Glenn Beck, the right-wing talk radio host, was half-joking when he made this suggestion the day after Tuesday’s elections, but he voiced a longing that a number of Republicans had after the midterms: a hope to linger with the visions of a red tsunami that wiped out Democratic power across the country. The reality that the party had a poor showing was too bad to linger on.

For one Republican, though, the night got better and better as it went on. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis won reelection by a strong margin in the night that saw the state turn red. As Republican losses piled up over the course of the evening, it became clear that he would not have to share the spotlight – and that anyone on the right looking for a beacon of hope would have to turn their eyes to Florida.

DeSantis, seen as a potential 2024 presidential contender, did not reference that race during his lengthy address. However, he did define himself as a leader of not only Florida but the country as a whole, detailing what he saw as his “courage to lead” in a political environment when others are afraid to “step out and fight back.”

Donald Trump is the only one Ron DeSantis is like, only without the charm. And that charmless demeanor seeps through his latest book, “The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival,” a grievance-laden tome written in advance of a presumed bid for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election.

The Florida governor defended his actions against corporations and Wall Street before a conservative audience. He criticized CEOs as being “just weak” for giving in to what he described as the “woke mob” that pushes environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) policies, among other “leftist” issues.

The Democratic Party in Florida is in crisis, unable to support candidates and organize voters. And Florida has a specific mix of Latino voters that is unlike most other states, weighted heavily toward immigrants from Cuba and Venezuela who respond favorably to DeSantis’s attack on Democrats as socialists.

Then there is the issue of fellow Florida resident Donald Trump. The Dump Trump crowd, though bigger at the moment than at perhaps any time since 2016, does not seem to fully understand how deep and unquestioning the cult of personality around Trump still is within parts of the party.

The party issued a statement of loyalty to Trump just two years ago, after failing to pass a policy platform. After Trump’s election loss, the party elites were forced to part ways with him, because of the insurrection that followed. The majority of Republicans in the House voted to overturn the election and the vast majority of Republican voters still believe that the 2020 election was stolen.

“There’s no way to deny Donald Trump got fired Tuesday night,” Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican who has been critical of Trump, told “CNN This Morning” on Thursday. “The search committee has brought a few names to the top of the list and Ron DeSantis is one of them. I think Ron is being rewarded for taking a new approach with the Republicans.

But later in 2022, Griffin touted DeSantis’ “tremendous record” in an interview with Politico and suggested he would back the Florida governor in the GOP primary for president.

One long time Republican fundraiser with knowledge of the operation said to build anticipation. I think that DeSantis controls the time frame. As much as everyone anticipates things He called the shots when you wanted to move quickly.

The legislative session will be “as red meat as you can possibly imagine,” a GOP consultant said. They will pass whatever he proposes, 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.”

One Republican consultant in Florida told CNN that if they went into a presidential primary with Donald Trump, they would have another thing coming.

“I don’t know if he is running. In an interview with Fox News Digital, Donald Trump said that he thought he could hurt himself very badly if he ran. “I think he would be making a mistake. I think it wouldn’t help the party and I would tell you things about him that aren’t 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.

The Dean Obeidallah Show on CNN: The History of the Loss of a Cool Star: Covid-19 Enforcement, Education and School Choices

Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” Follow him @[email protected]. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

Lake failed in her bid to become the governor of Arizona, and commented “I pity the fool who runs against President Trump” on his first campaign event.

In front of a crowd, Lang said he would not fight the champ if he didn’t want to.

For instance, the ex-president honed in on one of the strongest areas of the DeSantis record for many conservative voters – his frequent fight against federal Covid-19 restrictions and recommendations. But Trump accused the DeSantis team of trying to “rewrite history” over his pandemic record. “There are Republican governors that did not close their states,” Trump told reporters. “Florida was closed for a long period of time.”

In response to the rapid spread of the H1N1 swine flu, the governor of Floridaissued an executive order closing bars and nightclubs, and called for people to follow CDC guidelines limiting gatherings on beaches to no more than 10 people.

But he also chastised the “biomedical security state” that required Covid-19 vaccines and vowed to permanently ban mandates related to coronavirus mitigation, an outlier position that helped DeSantis emerge as a conservative star during the pandemic.

Every facet of the culture wars have been touched by DeSantis, including: restrictions on abortion, the availability of concealed firearms in public, and universal school choice. There are bills targeting drag shows, liberal protections and so-called “woke”-banking.

When the Rocky III Film Fails: Why Rubio and Smith can’t stand to challenge Trump in the 2020 presidential nomination contest if Trump is indicted

But any potential run inevitably means a face-off with Trump, who is, as yet, the only Republican to have formally announced in the race. 40 years after its release, the film “Rocky III” could be a topic of debate in the GOP nominating campaign in 2024.

There was a scene in the film that I thought of when considering a possible Trump vs. DeSantis confrontation. That’s the scene where Clubber Lang, having lost his boxing title, trash-talks Rocky in an effort to goad him into a fight.

A recent poll shows a certain Trump fatigue among many voters in his party that would rather someone else be the GOP’s nominee, and if the former President is not an underestimated contender in the nomination contest, he is on the ropes.

At first, Rubio didn’t attack Trump directly. With a “do or die” moment, that changed, as he was in third place behind Cruz and Trump in the delegate count, little time to make up ground before the March 2016 Florida primary.

That’s when Rubio finally took the gloves off, calling Trump “an embarrassment” and a demagogue. It wasn’t enough, as he ended up dropping out of the race the next day after losing the Florida GOP primary.

Wearing a flight suit and seated in the cockpit of a fighter jet as the “Top Gov,” DeSantis revealed his “rules of engagement,” declaring, “No. 1 — don’t fire unless fired upon, but when they fire, you fire back with overwhelming force.” He continued: “No. 2 — never, ever back down from a fight.”

Perhaps DeSantis is waiting to see if Trump is indicted in order to not have to deal with him on the field of battle. Just last week, Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis told a judge that “decisions are imminent” in her investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to interfere in the 2020 election in Georgia.

Jack Smith, the special counsel, is investigating Trump and the trove of classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago that might lead to charges. Even if Trump is indicted he can still run for president, but it would be a huge problem for the election.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/29/opinions/trump-ron-desantis-rocky-iii-obeidallah/index.html

Why did President Trump Come to New Hampshire to Steal the Last Presidential Election? The Case Against DeSantis and the Pseudogap

To prevail, you have to put up a fight. There could come a time when GOP voters view DeSantis’ refusal to defend himself and punch back as a sign of weakness.

The longer he is silent in the face of Trump’s barrage of punches, the more likely people will ask themselves, as Rocky’s nemesis did: If he ain’t no coward, why won’t he fight?

It was strange that a former president who tried to steal the last election was embraced as if nothing happened by his supporters.

It’s obvious that Trump thinks he’s owed the Republican nomination and that a lot of parts of the party don’t like him.

Trump said that evangelical leaders were disloyal because they refused to support his bid, despite his delivery of a 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.

“He comes to New Hampshire, and, frankly, he gives a very mundane 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. … So I think a lot of folks understand that he’s going to be a candidate, but he’s also going to have to earn it. That is New Hampshire.

Judging by his remarks about DeSantis and evangelical leaders, Trump is not yet ready to acknowledge that reality. His decision to visit an ice cream parlor late in the day in South Carolina was unusual, but it was also an attempt to get to know voters.

If the election of 2020 was stolen from him, the voters may not have bothered to cast their ballot in 2022, a year when many of the election-denying candidates he promoted in swing states lost.

The campaign will be about the future. This campaign will be about issues. Joe Biden has put America on the fast track to ruin and destruction and we will ensure that he does not receive four more years,” Trump said at a small event Saturday in the South Carolina State House.

But he hasn’t abandoned all of his standard rhetoric. On Sunday evening, he called into a rally for one on his favorite election-denying midterm candidates – failed Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, who is still falsely insisting she 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’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. This is the first justice system of its kind. It’s all investigation, investigation,” Trump said. His resistance to such probes was more proof of the quality of the Republicans who embraced it in 2016 and helped propel him to the White House.

“There’s only one president who has ever challenged the entire establishment in Washington, and with your vote next year, we will do it again and I will do it again,” he said Saturday.

DeSantis has built his political persona around protecting freedoms. He dubbed his 2022 spending plan the “Freedom First Budget” and rebranded this year’s financial blueprint as the “Framework for Freedom.” He mentioned the slogan “Vacation to Freedom” in his speeches and it was a constant applause line. He stood in front of a podium adorned with a sign, “Freedom Lives Here.”

As Florida state lawmakers met earlier this month to hand DeSantis new authority over Disney World – punishment for the company’s opposition to a measure restricting certain classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity – Republican Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire took a shot at the power grab.

“I’m a principled free-market conservative,” said Sununu, who is also weighing a bid for president. “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.”

Last month, DeSantis said he would defund diversity, Equity and inclusion programs at state colleges and universities. These policies and programs are created to promote representation for people who have historically faced discrimination because of their race, ethnicity, disability, gender, religion or sexual orientation.

Progressive leaders need to draw the line at approaches that seek to silence criticism, including through demonization and stigmatization that make the cost of raising questions too high. Conservatives have to reject an approach that has out and out government censorship. Florida education officials should educate and incentivize college administrators, principals and teachers on how to maintain a classroom open to all ideas, rather than responding to the exclusion of views they like with laws prohibiting those they don’t.

“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.”

The Social Issues of DeSantis and the Challenges of Running for the GOP Candidate in the 2016 Florida State Convention and High-Tc Politics

Being perceived as racist is not good for him to be in the long term, said a Republican supporter of DeSantis, speaking candidly about an area of rising worry.

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 Americans for Prosperity, which are outside groups, intend to be involved in the primary.

There is great interest in DeSantis but he has become too heavy-handed in his pursuit of hot-button social issues, according to a member of the Club for Growth. DeSantis is one of six Republicans invited to a Club for Growth donor summit in Florida as the conservative organization distances itself further from Trump. The people who are invited are former Vice President Mike Pence, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, and former South Carolina Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

“I’m a genuine libertarian; I’m kind of a live-and-let-live kind of girl,” Levin told CNN. She said she has no problem with candidates espousing strongly held personal beliefs on social issues but said she objects to DeSantis “putting the power of his state behind 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 has remained critical of the Florida governor as he weighs entering the mix for the Republican nomination.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem has compared her Covid19 record to that ofRonDeSrean in an attempt to suggest that Florida was too hands-on. Noem said Friday it was her state, not Florida, that “set an example of freedom” by refusing to shut down at all. Florida, which is also known as a Citadel of Freedom, closed schools, bars and theme parks early on in the Pandemic.

The Rise and Fall of the Governing Council: How Governor Christopher DeSantis has been accused of using state power to manipulate the public education system

His approach has often included more government programs, including an office to pursue voter fraud, a new program to surveil, house and transport migrants from the border states to Democratic jurisdiction, more regulation of bank lending practices, or flexing government power in unprecedented manners.

DeSantis’ allies have pushed back against the growing chatter. Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contended on Twitter recently that the governor was using his power as an elected leader – a job he was reelected to with a historical 19-point victory in November.

New College is a small liberal arts school that the governor is targeting to become a more conservative university and he has appointed Rufo to the board.

“The complaint about using ‘state power,’ meaning constitutionally-mandated democratic governance, to correct the ideological corruption of public universities, i.e., state institutions funded by taxpayers, is ridiculous,” Rufo tweeted. The people are not able to regulate the state.

And even where there is apprehension among allies, DeSantis has not necessarily lost support. The billionaire hedge fund owner said he was troubled by the governor’s action against Disney.

DeSantis has also sought to shut down a drag show, citing a 1947 legal precedent banning “men impersonating women.” The landmark Supreme Court decision on libel is being challenged by him.

To escape this escalating tit-for-tat battle of assaults on speech will demand leadership. University presidents need to stand up and insist, and ensure, that all viewpoints – left and right alike – get a fair hearing on campus. They also need to resist intrusive legislation that micromanages curriculum and undercuts academic freedom.

DeSantis is not wrong to point out that progressive orthodoxies can sometimes stifle opposing views. To apply free speech protections only to the ideas he supports is something that DeSantis now seems to be bent on using his office to do.

In pushing back against what he says is wokeness run amok, DeSantis has embraced the very tactics he once decried, placing the weight of government power behind efforts to offend him and his supporters.

Black privilege and censorship: an apology to Negy for his performance of the “Black Privilege” attack on the University of Central Florida

The autonomy of adolescents, pronouns and sports are just a few of the questions that have been raised because of the new visibility of trans and non-binary identities. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 spurred new steps to root out racism in schools, colleges and companies. These are positive developments, vital to bringing about a more inclusive and equal society.

In some cases, though, efforts to promote equity cross over into censoriousness. Just last week Roald Dahl’s publisher announced plans to scrub beloved works like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “Matilda” of references that could be construed as offensive to the overweight, wig-wearers or people with horse-like features. In 2015, a student performance of “The Vagina Monologues” by Eve Ensler (now known as V) was cancelled on the basis that the play itself was transphobic because the script failed to acknowledge that not all women have vaginas.

Some curricula and programs offer simplistic, monolithic or flat-out illiberal ideas about racial issues, dismissing challenging questions or alternative perspectives as rooted in racism, reeking of undeserved privilege or otherwise beyond the pale.

The University of Central Florida fired Charles Negy in 2020 after he used the phrase “Black Privilege” in a social networking post. While the university claimed he was guilty of misconduct, an arbitrator found no just cause for his determination and ordered him reinstated. The incident seemed to form part of a broader pattern at the University.

College Board educators insist that they were not being influenced by the demands of the governor when they removed edgier topics from the AP African American History curriculum. But the mechanisms of censorship are insidious – threats and intimidation cause people to shift their views, choose their words and stay away from certain topics without even recognizing that they are doing so.

Students and faculty at New College of Florida are planning to demonstrate when their board of trustees meet on Tuesday.

In January, DeSantis replaced six of the 13 members on the college’s board of trustees with conservative allies, including Christopher Rufo, who has fueled the fight against critical race theory. The new board forced out the college’s president and appointed DeSantis ally Richard Corcoran as interim president. Corcoran will earn a base salary of $699,000.

The New College of Florida has seen its student population decline and has too much focus on diversity and inclusion.

Leffler said that New College of Florida has always encouraged free academic thought. Lawmakers, he said, are trying to strip away that freedom by telling students what they can and can’t study.

The bill, filed by a Republican lawmaker last week, would put board of trustee members in charge of faculty hiring; defund diversity, equity and inclusion programs; eliminate majors or minors related to critical race theory or gender studies; and authorize boards of trustees to review tenure of faculty.

The bill was praised by Rufo, who said on Twitter that it restores the “principle of colorblind equality in higher ed.” Rufo is the director of the initiative on critical race theory at the Manhattan Institute.

Some students and advocates believe that the college syllabus will be changed in order to make it more politically correct for DeSantis to be elected President of Florida in four years.

People pursuing graduate degrees might opt for schools in other states that support academic freedom, Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, told CNN earlier this month.

Mulvey said the consequences for students were enormous. “They are denied the opportunity to learn and grow, students are denied the opportunity to hear important perspectives. That’s the real tragedy.”

Born and Me: Jay Parini’s Journey Through Scotland with Jorge Luis Borges and the Electorate Michael DeSantis

Jay Parini is a poet and novelist. His recent memoir, “Borges and Me,” is an account of his journeys through the Scottish Highlands of Scotland with Argentina’s renown author,Jorge Luis Borges, in 1971. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more opinion articles on CNN.

That is unlikely. Only fans or parties who are actively searching for someone to back in 2024 will read the book, and within a few months unsold copies will be lying on the tables.

These books are rarely good and I’ve read a number of them. DeSantis takes the dullness to a new level and redefines what cliché writing can sound like. It’s one thing to offer the public a bit of wood prose, but it’s another thing to own an entire lumber yard.

The book can be approved by the governor before it’s published. We have to assume that the ideas and “ideals” in this book belong to him.

So, if “The Courage to Be Free” is a sign of things to come, DeSantis will likely hang his presidential campaign on efforts to find what he calls the “pressure points” in the system, finding ways to “leverage” his authority to advance his agenda. He was educated at the Harvard Law School and is a lawyer. If the book is any guide, he’s going to use his lawyerly skills to dismantle our heritage and, in his Orwellian manner, he’s going to proclaim that he’s freeing us by doing so.

The narrative offers a lot of resentfulness, but hard-heartedness is a core part. During his undergraduate years at the Ivy League school, he had never seen a limousine, much less a limousine liberal. The students who were the most vocal in their leftism were from the most privileged background. He has been on the right side since he felt leftism on the campus.

One can sense his rage at political correctness everywhere in the book. He sees the woke agenda permeating nearly every level of life in America.

In DeSantis’ mind, a dire phalanx of “woke” fanatics is led “by the likes of Dr. Anthony Fauci,” who is seen as public enemy #1. He devotes a whole chapter of this book to railing against Dr. Fauci and people who used the powers of the federal government to implement “heavy-handed public health ‘interventions’” during the Covid-19 pandemic. These measures did little, in the governor’s opinion, to slow the course of the disease — rather, they “destroyed livelihoods, hurt children, and harmed overall public health.”

When it comes to his own free speech, Ronis shows little interest in the First Amendment. He seems not to have heard the great words of Thomas Jefferson, who wrote: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” Jefferson understood that we each have a right, even a patriotic duty, to speak without permission from the authorities.

Instead, DeSantis rails against the “legacy media” — by which he means The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and so forth. These are “the praetorian guard of the nation’s failed ruling class, running interference for elites who share their vision and smearing those who dare of oppose it.” (I suspect he would, no doubt, wish to exempt Rupert Murdoch’s media empire from this judgment.)

The conservative Club for Growth event was held at The Breakers Palm Beach resort. Some of these Republicans just sit back and let the media define terms of the debate, like potted plants. They let the left define the terms of debate. They take all this incoming because they are not doing anything to make a difference. And I said that was not what we were doing.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday, Trump claimed he was the only man who could save the planet from World War III and galvanized his followers for their final battle against communists.

We will beat the Democrats, expose the fake news media, and deal with the Republicans in Name Only. The presumptive Republican nominee told the crowd that he would evict Joe Biden from the White House and liberate America once and for all.

In four years, you did not hear a lot of drama or palace intrigue, said the congressman, who uses a punch-by-punch speaking style. You saw precision execution, what you saw was surgical. Day after day after day. We beat the left day after day after day because we did that.

Donald Trump didn’t always lay out his case in recent days. Former US ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who has already launched a campaign, and ex-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who may do so, both braved the lions’ den at CPAC, and both launched veiled attacks on their former boss.

If you want to put your trust in a younger generation, Haley said, you should look to Trump and Biden.

Similar to his cabinet colleague, who got a fairly subdued reception on the ex-president’s turf, the former Secretary of State used plausible deniability to avoid taking on Trump directly. One thing he said could be seen as criticism of the ex-president and the Democrats, who he said could not become the left because of their egos.

Asa Hutchinson was on CNN on Sunday and attacked Trump for his war of words with the Jewish community.

You don’t want the leader of the country to be involved in personal vendettas. And when he talks about vengeance, he’s talking about his personal vendettas, and that’s not healthy for America. It’s certainly not healthy for our party.’

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis: A State of the State Addressing the Disturbance and the Politics of the Future with a Future 2020 Presidential Candidate

Hogan, a potential anti- Trump GOP candidate, stated on Sunday that he was not going to run in 2024 because of the opposition to the ex-president.

“Right now, you have Trump and DeSantis at the top of the field soaking up all the oxygen, getting all the attention, and then a whole lot of the rest of us in single digits. The less chance you have of someone rising up, the more you have, Hogan said.

Laying out his top priorities for a second term and a potential platform for a presidential run, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis delivered a State of the State speech Tuesday that conspicuously avoided much of the divisive rhetoric that has fueled his political ascent but nevertheless signaled another round of cultural wars is coming in the weeks ahead.

DeSantis asserted that his landslide November victory was a “vindication” of his contentious agenda during his first term and a mandate to “shoot for the stars” and “swing for the fences” in the coming year. He encouraged lawmakers to “ignore all the background noise” as they tackle a lengthy list of priorities that are sure to enrage Democrats but animate future Republican primary voters.

“We find ourselves in Florida on the front lines in the battle for freedom,” he said. Florida is the nation’s most desired destination and we have produced historic results. But now is not the best time to rest on our laurels.

The comments laid the foundation for a frenetic push by the Legislature to win policies that could be used to launch DeSantis’ bid for the White House.

Moments before DeSantis’ remarks began, legislation was filed that would ban abortion after six weeks except in cases of rape and incest and make it illegal to send abortion medications through the mail. DeSantis nodded to support the cause of protecting life but did not give any details. He signaled that he was in favor of legislation that would follow the steps taken by his administration.

“Our schools must deliver a good education, not a political indoctrination,” DeSantis said. We cannot allow people to make money off of children’s disabilities and we should not let our children be used for science experimentation.

Many of the proposals are aimed at classrooms. In a bill addressing K-12 schools, it is not permissible for teachers to tell students that their preferred name and pronoun is not their real one, and that discussing gender identity and sexual orientation and gender identity is not allowed until high school. On college campuses, gender studies would be banned, as would diversity and equity programs, and hiring decisions will fall into the hands of board members largely appointed by DeSantis.

The Journey of DeSantis to Out-of-State Science: A Preposterous Time for an Outburst on the Road

His travel to out-of-state has increased. While lawmakers meet over the next 60 days, DeSantis is expected to spend the next couple months on the road promoting his new book, “The Courage to Be Free.” He is heading to Iowa and Nevada this weekend, before going to Alabama on Thursday.

The Republican-led legislature is expected to approve the agenda of the popular governor despite little resistance, as they appear to align themselves with him in the upcoming session.