Here’s an election dream for 2024:  Republican Governor Ron DeSantis vs Democratic Senator Joe Manchin.  Both Italian American conservatives with no utopian flights of fancy.

DeSantis may have aspirations for the White House, but Manchin (orig: Mancini) seemingly has none.  They each have shown an integrity rooted in pragmatic politics and common sense.  Manchin has almost singlehandedly frustrated the ultra-leftist plans, in Congress and the White House, to transform our republic into a welfare state.  He stands firmly against fellow Democrats with a calm dignity, despite public denunciations and presidential arm-twisting.

DeSantis is a Republican in the Trump mold – a man who questions federal diktats and media narratives – without idolizing the former president or invoking his mantras.  He has trod his own path in dealing with the China Virus in Florida.   Schools and businesses have remained open without mask mandates or lockdowns for nearly the whole of the pandemic.  Yet, Florida’s per capita death rate from Covid (277 per 100,000) approximates states like Massachusetts (275), New York (290), and New Jersey (315) where lockdowns and mandates for masks and vaccines are applied vigorously.  DeSantis has made Florida a medical and cultural alternative to the ultra-left.  Even Critical Race Theory is banned in Florida schools.

Has the media treated these men honestly?  FOX News and the NYPost have made DeSantis their fair-haired boy and elevated Manchin to beatification, if not sainthood, for gumming up his party’s utopian Left.  However, the left-leaning media, including the NYTimes and TV nightly news, consider DeSantis the anti-Christ and Manchin a disloyal hypocrite from coal country (WV).

The Left likes to claim that our acute political divisions are not a culture war.  They point to reactionary states or to Trumpism as the real threat to bipartisanship.  They gloss over the fact that the so-called “moderate” Democrats they sold to the 2020 electorate have been snatched by utopian pods, if I may use a Halloween metaphor.  Joe Manchin hasn’t been replaced by a utopian pod yet and refuses to nod off to accommodate the transformation.  He is the true moderate, unlike aliens Pelosi and Biden.

Recently, Manchin recounted how he was called into Biden’s office to air his grievances on the $3.5 Trillion “reconciliation” bill.  He immediately asked his fellow Democrats in the room: ‘who thought of that crazy idea for the banks to report all $600 transactions to the IRS?’  No one took credit or defended it.  The proposal was summarily dropped.  At that point, Manchin suspected he was dealing with a lot of ignorant people who had no idea where they were taking our republic.

Call him “Manchin the Delayer”, after the famous Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus.  The Roman was nicknamed Cunctator (the Delayer) for his guerrilla strategy against Hannibal.  Refusing to fight a pitched battle with Hannibal, who had annihilated Roman legions throughout Italy, Fabius instead wore down his Carthaginian opponent.  Manchin has driven Pelosi, Schumer, Biden, and the utopian Left to distraction by whittling down the $3.5 Trillion bill by more than half with his incessant Lt. Columbo “Oh, there’s just one more thing…” routine.  Surprisingly, it is no longer Manchin who is holding up a vote on the still-exorbitant bill.  It’s actually Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (aka AOC) and her 100 utopian Democrats who feel that the mutilated bill is no longer revolutionary.  Remember, their true goal is to make the U.S. a socialist nation in one fell swoop, with open borders and cradle-to-grave welfare for citizens and illegals alike.  Historically Black universities were to get $45-Billion under the original bill, now they are slated for only $2-Billion – shouldn’t we call that reparations?

This utopian revolution is not just a problem for us in the USA.  European nations, including Italy, are fending off their own AOCs in the European Union.  By the terms of EU membership, Brussels can dictate social policies like gay rights and immigration.  They enforce their will by denying member countries federal money.  The law is behind them.

Italy’s right-wing politician Matteo Salvini will go on trial in December for “kidnapping” and violation of EU’s human rights laws.  His crime: he refused to take in illegal immigrants while he was Italy’s Interior Minister.  A Spanish ship with 150 illegals rescued from the Mediterranean sought to discharge the illegals in Sicily.  EU law required Italy to accept them.  The prosecution has a celebrity witness:  actor Richard Gere, who visited the ship for 12 hours, to testify to the pain. 

With utopians, there’s plenty of pain to go round. -JLM