Recent polls among Republican voters are finding that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a serious contender against Donald Trump for 2024. DeSantis hasn’t officially entered that race but even the left-leaning media envisions his entry.
The Florida governor has been the most active Republican in opposing the country’s shift to the hard Left. While Republicans in Washington condemn the shift, DeSantis actually takes action against it. “Florida is where ‘woke’ goes to die.” As he famously says. His battle cry has been featured on tee-shirts and taken up by many on the Right. If DeSantis does throw his hat in the ring, you can be sure the line will become his national theme – move over MAGA!
There can be little doubt that the whole ‘woke’ movement is getting on the nerves of a growing number of Americans – Republican, Democrat, and independent. It began as empathy for victims of racial, gender, and sexual discrimination. But it morphed into a wholesale bashing of Euro-Americans, wild historical revision, and a cultural revolution. Groups that comprise less than 15% of the U.S. population have cornered the media market and found allies in the Democratic Party, academia, and corporate America. That’s quite an array of power sectors that run our society. Even the U.S. military is going ‘woke’ in training and mandated diversity.
Our interest in DeSantis stems in part from his Italian ethnicity. We have Italian Americans on both sides of the political spectrum as well as on the ‘woke’ issue. But it’s safe to say that many who follow the Italic Institute and most of the major organizations are conservative by nature (and culture) and are waking up to the true meaning of ‘woke’. In that regard, who represents our values better: Nancy Pelosi or Kevin (Palladino) McCarthy; former NY governor Andrew Cuomo or Ron DeSantis?
Both Pelosi and Cuomo, no doubt share our cultural values but they did not fight to defend them when they had power, rather they became agents of the ‘woke’. In comparison, DeSantis appears to align his politics with his values. Moreover, he has shown the courage to confront the cultural revolution.
He stared down the Disney Corporation in Florida when it attacked his legislation to prohibit teaching sex and gender studies to students K through 3 (8-year-olds!). He further threw Disney into a tale-spin for interfering in state politics – it replaced its CEO and is now relinquishing its 56-year self-governance of central Florida. “There’s a new sheriff in town.” proclaimed DeSantis, “I will not allow a woke corporation based in California to run our state.”
Turning his attention to academia, DeSantis vetted the proposed Advanced Placement course in African American history for Florida high schools and found it politically tainted. Like Disney, the College Board backed down and deleted the provocative sections.
In his struggle against the cultural revolution, DeSantis has relied on fellow Italic Christopher Rufo, an expert on exposing academic shenanigans. Together they recently called out the New College of Florida in Sarasota, part of the state university system, for its DEI abuses (diversity, equity and inclusion) which propagate racial and gender strife. The college had even eliminated student grading. DeSantis put Rufo on the school’s board which promptly fired the college’s president and replaced her with a former state education commissioner.
By his uncompromising actions, DeSantis has made himself more of an enemy of the Left than Donald Trump is. An op-ed in last week’s NYTimes warned of DeSantis’s threat with the headline “Liberals Can Learn Something From DeSantis”. To wit: Trump may have some college smarts, but DeSantis was an Ivy League magna cum laude. Trump dodged military service, DeSantis was a Navy officer. Covid cost Trump his job, DeSantis defied Washington and rejected mandates and closures. DeSantis’s decisiveness with Disney, academia, and even busing illegals to Martha’s Vineyard have replaced Trump’s allure among Whites and Hispanics.
DeSantis is in the trenches fighting for traditional values; and he has the courage to charge across ‘no man’s land’. The Left understandably fears him, but his bigger enemy may be an envious Donald Trump. -JLM
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