Ron DeSantis climbs another rung up the presidential ladder By Andrea Widburg
It’s currently unclear whether Donald Trump wants to run for President again in 2024 or whether he’ll content himself with playing kingmaker. In the latter case, lots of people are looking at Florida’s Ron DeSantis, whose refusal to bow down to leftist shibboleths is catching conservatives’ attention. His latest pronouncement that Critical Race Theory is “a bunch of horse manure” will only raise his profile with all sensible Americans.
Most people living outside of Florida weren’t paying attention to Florida governor Ron DeSantis before 2020. However, in 2020, DeSantis showed himself to be a different kind of leader. While governors across America, especially Democrat governors, were turning their states into totalitarian dictatorships with broken economies, DeSantis increased protections for the elderly and other vulnerable people in Florida, and then allowed life to continue pretty much as usual – no masks, no lockdowns. (I should add that many conservative states successfully resisted the extreme COVID mask and lockdown madness that Democrat governors showed. None, however, were as large as Florida or as entirely resistant to masks and lockdowns.)
DeSantis’s constitutional, liberty-oriented approach to dealing with COVID has driven leftists around the bend. What’s been especially irritating for them is that mask- and lockdown-free Florida had significantly better COVID outcomes than states with comparable populations, such as California and New York. That’s why outlets such as 60 Minutes have been reduced to using blatant dishonesty to attack DeSantis’s competence and honesty.
Not only did DeSantis manage COVID in his state with courage and intelligence, but he also has willingly signed or promised to sign legislative bills protecting citizens in his state from physically or ideologically dangerous leftist policies and practices: To that end,
- He signed an anti-riot bill that, among other things, gives civil immunity to drivers who act in self-defense by pushing through mobs blocking roadways, and enhances penalties for crimes committed in the course of violent protests.
- He signed a bill holding that, if businesses can prove they followed guidelines to prevent disease transmission, they cannot be sued for someone allegedly catching COVID on the business’s premises.
- He’s promised to sign the Transparency in Technology Act headed for his desk, which fines tech companies that censor politicians, and he has urged the legislature to pass other bills protecting consumers for tech tyrant depredations.
- He’s promised to sign an election bill increasing election security (limited drop boxes and mail-in ballots, mandatory vote ID), as well as to sue the federal government should Congress enact H.R.1.
DeSantis is also a straight shooter in speech. On Thursday, he launched a full-throated attack against Critical Race Theory. This is the pernicious leftist idea that race is the ultimate determining factor in every person’s life and that the U.S. is a “systemically racist” country that invariably operates to harm Blacks, a problem that can be remedied only by actively discriminating against Whites.
The Biden administration is currently trying to incorporate CRT into American K-12 education. DeSantis, however, has called out CRT for what it is:
Speaking to Fox News’ Laura Ingraham during a GOP governor’s town hall on Thursday, Governor DeSantis did not hold back when asked for his take on “this proposition that we are a systemically racist country.”
“Well it’s a bunch of horse manure,” De Santis replied, “I mean, give me a break. This country has had more opportunity for more people than any country in the history of the world and it doesn’t matter where you trace your ancestry from. We’ve had people who have been able to succeed and all.”
“And here’s the problem with things like critical race theory that they’re peddling.,” he continued. “They’re basically saying that all our institutions are bankrupt, and they’re illegitimate, okay so how do you have a society if everything in your society is illegitimate. So it’s a very harmful ideology and I would say really a race-based version of a Marxist-type ideology. So we’ve banned it in our schools here in Florida, and we’re not going to put any tax dollars to critical race theory. And we want to treat people as individuals and not as members of groups.”
DeSantis shows why governors are preferable to senators in the White House. Senators can talk well, but they’re not individual actors. They are, instead, committee members.
A governor such as DeSantis can prove that he not only talks the talk, but he also walks the walk. He’s shown with his Florida governance that he was willing to act on his principles for the benefit of the almost 22 million people he governs. Even the most well-meaning, principled Senators (e.g., Ted Cruz or Josh Hawley, both of whom fight for conservative principles) lack the individual power to put their money where their mouths are.
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