The press assumes Florida’s governor is just playing to the base, but no, he really is just that unhinged
Ron DeSantis, the arch-conservative Republican governor of Florida, graduated from Yale University and Harvard Law School. Due to these elite credentials, he has long enjoyed the presumption of phoniness in the mainstream media. The far-right authoritarian politics DeSantis touts are treated almost universally in the press as evidence he’s trying to win over the MAGA base rather than a direct reflection of his own fascistic worldview.
„Everything he does is about what can further his own career ambitions,“ one Florida activist, quoted by the Associated Press, said of DeSantis‘ efforts to ban all acknowledgment of LGBTQ people in public schools.
The New York Times argued the „don’t say gay“ law is a way for DeSantis to be „more of a warrior figure to his political base.“
People like DeSantis continue to benefit from the rarely-questioned assumption that no one who went to Harvard or Yale can really be a serious authoritarian.
In writing about DeSantis’s embrace of draconian censorship laws, Greg Sargent of the writes, „DeSantis probably calculates that this would serve his short-term political interests,“ because it „will bolster him among GOP primary voters.“
There’s probably some truth to the idea that DeSantis hopes hardcore culture war antics will help distinguish him from Trump, whose interest in hating LGBTQ people has always seemed perfunctory and who was more focused on silencing his critics than banning books with sex in them. But there’s substantial evidence that DeSantis is motivated just as much, and likely more, by his own longings to be a petty dictator guided by an entirely sincere ideology of hate.
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Vox legal reporter Ian Millhiser tweeted a story about meeting Desantis a few years ago in the green room at CNN. „After his segment, he spent at least 30 minutes in the makeup room, ranting to no one in particular about a conspiracy theory involving Hillary Clinton and Russia,“ Millhiser wrote, affirming that DeSantis is an authentic right-wing nut, even when the cameras are turned off.
Other indicators have popped up, as well. There’s the time DeSantis had a meltdown at a bunch of high school students who chose to wear masks. It not only cut against his false claims to support „personal choice,“ but it was so vicious that even the biggest pandemic-denying Karen was likely grossed out by his behavior. Then there was his recent signing of a near-absolute ban on abortion in Florida. DeSantis is aware that abortion bans are bad politics, which is why he signed the bill in the middle of the night in a failed attempt to sneak this one past the voters.
