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HURRICANE IAN Biden visits Florida ... DeSantis cracks under the pressure of his first real crisis 
A Democratic president bonds with a Florida cracker and a Florida blonde. While a Republican robot stands there wondering what it’s like to be human. Original article: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/6/2127383/-DeSantis-cracks-under-the-pressure-of-his-first-real-crisis Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess | ||
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DeSantis cracks under the pressure of his first real crisis
TheCriticalMind ... Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.) Thursday October 06, 2022 · 7:30 PM EDT Ron DeSantis is an intelligent guy and a calculating politician. He graduated from Yale, manga cum laude— where he was on the baseball team — and from Havard Law School, cum laude. He had a successful military and legal career before being elected to Congress in 2012. In 2018 he ran for Florida Governor and greased his skids with some A-1 ass-kissing. It worked. Trump backed him - and he won the GOP primary. Then he eked out a general election victory over Andrew Gillum. As Governor, he pushed all the right GOP buttons. He was pro-gun and anti-immigrant. He signed laws making it harder to raise taxes and for citizens to launch successful ballot initiatives. He introduced a so-called anti-riot law, the Combating Public Disorder Act, criminalizing many protests. He restricted Medicaid. And he made political hay by attacking the LGBTQ+ community in schools and playing on racial fears with an irrelevant ban on CRT. However, unlike many of his fellow reactionaries, he has not been absolutist on abortion and he eschewed the almost total bans in other red states. Florida did limit the procedure to the first 15 weeks of gestation. However, the law still allowed abortion after that to save the life of the mother. Which by Republican standards is almost liberal. He managed to thread the needle by being a well-regarded conservative without the independents thinking he was an out-of-control loon. But the first sign that things were not going to plan was when he shipped undocumented immigrants from Texas to Matha’s Vineyard. Questions followed. Why did it cost so much? Was it a sop to a political donor? Why were Florida taxpayers paying to fly people from Texas? Just how badly did he lie to the people he was relocating? Even Texas Governor Greg Abbott — who bused immigrants to DC — thought the stunt was a bit off. Then Hurricane Ian exposed DeSantis as perhaps not ready for prime time. His actions raised more questions about his competence. Was he too consumed by a possible 2024 race to focus on his home state as a massive storm headed toward the Gulf Coast? Why did he wait until one day before Ian struck to warn the residents of Lee County to evacuate? DeSantis claimed that the models showed that Ian would hit further North in Tampa. But two days before Ian came ashore, the models had Lee County, with the towns of Fort Myers, Sanibel, and Cape Coral as a likely landing spot for the hurricane. Now Lee has the highest death total of any county in the state. And they are not done counting. DeSantis had the opportunity to rise to the occasion. He did not. He peevishly pointed out that the number of fatalities will be far less than a 1928 hurricane that killed a record 2,500. That is a toddler defense. “We were not ready. But do not worry, the death total will not come close to the record.” That must be cold comfort for the families who have lost a loved one. Then DeSantis went to the next page of the whiner playbook. He blamed the media. When asked by CNN national correspondent, Nadia Romero, “Why do you stand behind Lee County’s decision to not have that mandatory evacuation until the day before the storm?”
WTF does where the media reported from have to do with anything? They were not elected to run a state. He was. And if he does not want to do that, he should execute a Sarah Palin and quit. Then he made the weird decision to wear white boots. It is a small matter. But sartorial choices have ramifications. As Mike Dukakis discovered after his tank-borne Disney character impression. DeSantis is not a gifted retail politician. People have accused Joe Biden of being too touchy-feely and unaware of personal space. But he comes across as a decent man with empathy to spare. DeSantis has no idea how to act when not standing behind a microphone reading prepared remarks, or offering rehearsed answers to questions no one asked him. Pictures of him with Biden show the contrast between a warm human being and a robotic humanoid. It is way too soon to predict what will happen when DeSantis hits the campaign trail. And he still has to win an election this year. But his situation reminds me of Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani in 2008. Both had outstanding name recognition. One was “America’s Mayor” and yet to expose himself as a demented drunk. The other was an ex-Senator who was well-liked for his avuncular, folksy, but incisive DA role on Law & Order SVU. Those campaigns collapsed without a trace. Some might say that if Trump runs in 2024, DeSantis should wait until 2028. But Ron realizes that if Trump does regain the White House he may never leave. And Republicans will fall in line to keep him there. However, it is the pre-season and no one has yet lost a game. We will have a better idea at how 2024 will turn out when the regular season starts — in three months. --------------------------------------------------- White House signals it may support new arms embargo after Saudi moves to boost Putin
| The text being discussed is available at | https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/10/6/2127383/-DeSantis-cracks-under-the-pressure-of-his-first-real-crisis and |