RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/desantis-legislative-record-florida-2024-education-crime-abortion-fa175ac2?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has a reputation as a cultural brawler, ready and willing to throw a right hook at Mickey Mouse, the College Board, the national press. To many GOP voters, it’s part of his appeal. But as Mr. DeSantis readies a 2024 presidential campaign, what deserves to get more attention is the agenda he recently helped usher through Tallahassee.

Mr. DeSantis is blessed with Republican supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature, so he can’t claim total credit. Some planks of his platform are controversial among conservatives, and others could prove politically unpalatable to a national electorate. Yet there’s no denying that Mr. DeSantis gets things done. “The way we run the government, I think, is no daily drama, focus on the big picture, and put points on the board,” he once said.

Here’s an assessment of what the Governor has been touting lately:

• Taxes and spending: Florida has no income tax, but it does have a 6% sales tax, and there are new exemptions for such “family-focused” items as “diapers, wipes, children’s clothing, cribs, and strollers.” The state’s latest $117 billion budget is up about 6%, which is far from tight-fisted, and Mr. DeSantis’s office is boasting about $1 billion for Everglades restoration and water protection. But the state fisc is sound because revenue is flush from rapid economic growth.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/vivek_in_iowa.html

The NYT hates Vivek Ramaswamy. What could be a better recommendation?

If elected President, Vivek Ramaswamy would be historic.  He would be the first Jesuit high school graduate elected to the highest office in the land.  (See what I did there?)

Since this author and the candidate were both beneficiaries of a Jesuit high school education, I asked him how this influenced him.  He gave me a fascinating answer.

The Jesuits speak of magis; Latin for more.  Vivek said that he learned that magis means striving to do more and to be better.  As a country, we have ideals but we will fall short.  But both personally, and as a country, we continue to keep seeking perfection.

Vivek is not Christian, but he believes in God.  He became pro-life at his Jesuit high school.  One of the Jesuit’s precepts is to see God in all things.  Vivek put it this way, “God resides in all of us.”

My other question was about a negative New York Times story about him this week.  He said he’s not a whiner and was somewhat glad for the attention.  He expects to take hits during the campaign as part of the vetting process.

The main thrust of the NYT piece was that the president doesn’t have the executive power to take certain actions such as abolishing the Department of Education.  We know that.  But that claim is shorthand for the direction Vivek would take.

He deviated from his stump speech after an impressive recitation of part of the Declaration of Independence by a group of young people.  It was a brilliant impromptu riff.  Vivek’s favorite president is Thomas Jefferson.  No surprise there as they are both Renaissance men.

Jefferson’s original draft used the words “we hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.”  Ben Franklin changed it to “we hold these truths to be self-evident.”  I know that this is accurate.

Vivek’s point was that what our country was founded on was not at all self-evident at the time.  The rest of the world was mostly under authoritarian rule.  We were a new beginning.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/05/12/trump_desantis_descend_on_iowa_longshots_have_never_left_149225.html

The mutual combatants in the Republican Party’s most consequential rivalry find themselves in the same theater of action Saturday. Playing to type, populist anti-hero as Donald Trump is the anticipated headliner at a sure-to-be-raucous rally in Des Moines, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is set to speak at a Sioux City fundraiser.

It’s not the head-to-head confrontation many Republicans are anticipating, but Saturday’s near miss highlights the different strategies being employed by the two men who currently stand at the top of the class of 2024 GOP presidential contenders. Both have visited Iowa once in the past month – DeSantis attended a panel in Davenport to promote his memoir, and Trump for a speech on education policy two days later – but Saturday will mark the first time the two have competed simultaneously in the first state to choose convention delegates.

It’s not quite the triumphant return their respective loyalists had hoped for. Each man will take the stage Saturday amid significant shifts in the political landscape – and his own political fortunes.

When Trump visited Iowa in March, DeSantis seemed to be his main worry, barely outpacing the Florida governor in a buzz-worthy favorability poll by the Des Moines Register. Trump arrives in the state Saturday under different circumstances: first, a criminal indictment in New York City that has, if anything, united Republicans; but second, this week’s $5 million jury verdict in a civil case brought by a woman who says Trump once assaulted her in a New York department store dressing room three decades ago.

Nonetheless, DeSantis has watched as polls show him losing touch with the frontrunner. Neither the governor’s extended book tour, nor a recent global sojourn designed to demonstrate foreign policy chops have prevented him from sliding in the polls. Meanwhile, after DeSantis all but declared a victory in his culture war forays against the Disney Co. last month in Davenport, the high-profile skirmish has spun into a protracted bout of legal tit-for-tat that’s reportedly sown doubt among key potential GOP donors.

https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/11/house-republicans-highlight-the-importance-of-protecting-political-speech-in-u-s-elections/

Republicans on the Committee on House Administration held a hearing Thursday highlighting the importance of political speech and Americans’ confidence in U.S. elections.

“Our Founding Fathers enshrined the First Amendment in the Constitution. Unfortunately, in our highly politicized, political culture, and climate, the First Amendment has been under attack through the use of misinformation czars and cancel culture,” said Chair and Wisconsin GOP Rep. Bryan Steil. “As a result, many Americans have grown concerned that their voices will be suppressed or that their beliefs will be weaponized against them.”

As an example, Steil cited the IRS’s targeting of conservative organizations during the Obama administration. About 10 years ago, it was revealed the IRS intentionally delayed applications for “tax-exempt status from right-of-center organizations” leading up to the 2012 election. Numbering in the hundreds, these groups were “improperly subjected to baseless investigations, invasive and improper demands about their donors, and lengthy delays in processing routine paperwork.”

The Department of Justice ultimately settled with dozens of these groups over the scandal in 2017.

In order to uphold the First Amendment and boost voter confidence in elections, Steil said he is focused on introducing the American Confidence in Elections Act (ACE Act), which he claims is a “federalist approach” to increasing integrity and confidence in elections. According to Steil, the bill would “prohibit the IRS and any other federal agency from asking for an organization’s donor list, creating ad-hoc standards, and applying them to ideologically opposed groups.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/05/the-2020-race-obsession-haunts-democrats/

The ‘defund the police’ and BLM rhetoric that thrilled in 2020 has become a political albatross.

In the early summer of 2020, Americans emerged from lockdown starved for social contact, commonality, and purpose. They were provided relief when the arrest-related murder of George Floyd ignited a social movement, and some of the most aggressive enforcers of the Covid-lockdown, social-isolation regime inexplicably endorsed joining that mass movement in the streets. What followed was a campaign of occasionally violent revolutionary agitation, in the name of Black Lives Matter. In that year, the “anti-racist” ideology that drew its strength from that movement made a variety of demands on Democratic lawmakers; those elected officials often consented to the demands. Today, they’re still paying for that lapse in judgment.

For example, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a bill in September 2020 creating a commission composed of “a colloquium of scholars” to study the prospect of paying reparations to California’s black residents. Newsom contended at the time that Donald Trump’s presence in the Oval Office forced his hand. But he endorsed the measure because BLM activists demanded it, and he believed that his political prospects depended on their support. This week, the bill for Newsom’s acquiescence came due.

In its final recommendations, the California Reparations Task Force advocated direct cash payments (no grants or credits) to every black resident of California as compensation for a variety of alleged racism-related harms. Offenses for which African-American residents can seek restitution include housing discrimination, “over-policing and mass incarceration,” disparate health outcomes, and a variety of other manifestations of racial prejudice, both real and debatable. The task force imagined that little scrutiny would be applied to potential applicants for remuneration. Theoretically, the payouts could amount to well over $1 million apiece for some applicants, and satisfying the task force’s deeply unpopular demands might cost the state more than twice its total annual operating budget. It’s hardly surprising that the commission’s unrealistic proposals rapidly dampened Newsom’s enthusiasm for the project.

https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/poll-2024-reelection/2023/05/07/id/1118904/

President Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign is going to have to overcome some difficult numbers, including a record-low approval rating (36%), a majority doubting his mental acuity (63%), and strength by his GOP challengers, according to the latest ABC News/The Washington Post poll.

Biden had led former President Donald Trump throughout ABC News/Washington Post polling before the 2020 election, but Trump is up 6 points (44%-38%) on whom voting-age adults would “definitely” or “probably” vote for in 2024.

Most alarmingly for Biden’s reelection hopes, a large majority (63%) say Biden, 80, lacks the mental sharpness to serve effectively as president, which is up from 43% in 2020 and 54% a year ago in the poll. Also, 62% say Biden is not fit physically to be an effective president.

https://thespectator.com/politics/donald-trump-joe-biden-dreadful-choice/?utm_source=Spectator%20World%20Signup&utm_campaign=7488d67d9f-

“What a revoltin’ development this is.” That catch phrase from the 1950s sitcom The Life of Riley succinctly describes America’s political morass today. It sums up Washington’s diddling over the debt ceiling, the administration’s inability to close the southern border and, most of all, the dismal quality of the two presidential frontrunners.

The phrase, “what a revoltin’ development,” was Chester A. Riley’s description of his woeful situation at the end of each episode — sitting on his front steps, bemoaning his fate over the consequences of some bad decision or ill-conceived scheme. Then, we sympathized as viewers. Now, we identify as American citizens, looking at the country’s leadership.

Let’s begin with the sitting president. Joe Biden’s physical and cognitive deficiencies are painfully obvious. The only ones silent about them are the legacy media, imitating the fairytale crowd who pretended to see nothing as the naked emperor walked down the street. Biden’s shortcomings are just as obvious — and just as unspoken. White House correspondents surely know them but won’t say the silent part out loud. Such is journalism today. Partisan commitments outrank honest reporting.

If the media says little, Joe himself says even less. His only public events are carefully scripted. The reason is evident as soon as he veers off script. Last week, for instance, a child asked him about the last country he visited. Joe couldn’t remember. Another child correctly answered, “Ireland.” This was the president’s much-touted trip to his ancestral homeland.

Joe was never the sharpest pencil in the drawer, but that’s not the issue today. The issue now is about the cumulating effects of age on his cognitive capacity. Those problems were already evident in 2020 and helped shape his campaign strategy. They will do so again this time.

Biden’s successful 2020 campaign was based on a shrewd decision. Stay in the basement, shut up, and make the election all about Donald Trump.

https://dnyuz.com/2023/05/06/its-beginning-to-feel-a-lot-like-2016-again/

The post It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like 2016 Again appeared first on New York Times.

Around the time that Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign, there was a lot of chatter about how anti-Trump Republicans were poised to repeat the failures of 2016, by declining to take on Trump directly and letting him walk unscathed to the nomination.

This take seemed wrong in two ways. First, unlike in 2016, anti-Trump Republicans had a singular, popular alternative in Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose polling was competitive with Trump’s and way ahead of any other rival. Second, unlike in 2016, most Republican primary voters have now supported Trump in two national elections, making them poor targets for sweeping broadsides against his unfitness for the presidency.

Combine those two realities, and the anti-Trump path seemed clear enough: Unite behind DeSantis early, run on Trump fatigue, and hope for the slow fade rather than the dramatic knockout.

But I will admit, watching DeSantis sag in the primary polls — and watching the Republican and media reaction to that sag — has triggered flashbacks to the 2016 race. Seven years later, it’s clear that many of the underlying dynamics that made Trump the nominee are still in play.

Let’s count off a few of them. First, there’s the limits of ideological box-checking in a campaign against Trump. This is my colleague Nate Cohn’s main point in his assessment of DeSantis’s recent struggles, and it’s a good one: DeSantis has spent the year to date accumulating legislative victories that match up with official right-wing orthodoxy, but we already saw in Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign the limits of ideological correctness. There are Republican primary voters who cast ballots with a matrix of conservative positions in their heads, but not enough to overcome the appeal of the Trump persona, and a campaign against him won’t prosper if its main selling point is just True Conservatism 2.0.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/team-desantis-were-about-action-not-beltway-chatter

There’s no doubt Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) has fallen far behind former President Donald Trump in the 2024 Republican nomination polls. In the last days of February, Trump had a 12.8 percentage point lead over DeSantis in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls, with all the other Republican challengers and likely challengers way, way back. Now, Trump’s lead over DeSantis is 29.2 points, with all the other GOP candidates still farther behind. DeSantis is actually closer to the bottom of the field than he is to Trump.

That has led to a lot of criticism of the DeSantis campaign and talk that they’re just not up to the job. “The DeSantis people are rookies,” one veteran of New Hampshire Republican politics, Fergus Cullen, told Politico recently. Reams have been written about DeSantis himself not being particularly skilled at the kind of schmoozing and glad-handing required of presidential candidates dealing with the public and donors alike.

The loudest critical voice, of course, comes from Trump, whose ratings have soared amid a politicized indictment in New York and a politicized rape lawsuit in New York. Trump has used the increased support to launch a relentless series of attacks on DeSantis. The latest comes this week from top Trump campaign officials Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, who released a memo titled “DeSantis is Burning Through Cash Just to Slide Further In the Polls.”

LaCivita and Wiles accuse the DeSantis campaign of wasting millions of dollars on ineffective advertising to “fill the vacuum of leadership the governor left in Florida while campaigning (horribly) overseas in Europe.” Doing so amounts to defrauding donors, the Trump team says: “What you are witnessing is a fleecing on an epic scale. Tens of millions of donor dollars spent, while poll numbers … drop.”

Such concern trolling is obviously an irritant for the DeSantis camp. But they have a simple response: While Trump is campaigning (and fighting off legal actions), DeSantis is … governing. And DeSantis is governing in a distinctly conservative way, a way that embeds conservative principles in the laws of the nation’s third-largest state.

https://nypost.com/2023/05/03/vivek-ramaswamys-vision-is-america-first-even-more-than-trump/

While Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis are busy tearing chunks out of each other, there is an unlikely sleeper candidate in the Republican race who is quietly winning hearts and awakening hope across the country with his sunny version of America First.

Vivek Ramaswamy, 37, the woke-busting entrepreneur, son of Indian immigrants from Ohio and the GOP’s first millennial presidential candidate, is rising steadily in opinion polls, just 10 weeks after announcing his candidacy on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show. 

In one CBS poll this week, he managed to tie with former VP Mike Pence in third place among likely Republican voters, ahead of establishment figures such as Nikki Haley, Chris Christie, Tim Scott and Asa Hutchinson.

He’s pitching himself as a more energetic but less divisive version of Trump, as “the outsider that doesn’t just talk about draining the swamp,” he said in New Hampshire this week. “I’m going to get the job done . . . I see an opportunity to do in 2020 what Ron­ald Reagan did in 1980, win a landslide election.”

He preaches that it is not enough merely to point out the hypocrisies of the left’s “secular religions” of “racial wokeism, gender ideology and the climate cult.”

These are just symptoms of a national identity crisis, he says, caused by turning away from the founding values of the country, from success by merit and adherence to the rule of law, values that wooed immigrants like his Indian engineer father and psychiatrist mother to Ohio.

“Faith, patriotism, hard work, family, these things have disappeared,” he says, and he wants to “fill that void with a vision of American national identity that dilutes this woke poison.”