Candidates matter, issues matter and results matter most of all.
What accounts for the Florida shift?
Gov. DeSantis has embraced the culture war. He’s taken on everything from indoctrination in schools to child sex mutilation to illegal migration in creative and innovative ways.
And he’s also governed in ways that people in the state really like. That’s been my takeaway every time I’ve been to Florida. There’s a growing anti-DeSantis constituency in California, but not a particularly vibrant one in Florida. DeSantis took a marginal victory last time around and transformed the state’s politics. But he did it by picking up popular support from the way he ran the state.
The Miami-Dade numbers, the huge Latino inroads, including among the Puerto Ricans who were supposed to turn the state blue, is a direct result of that.
At a time when a lot of the country is unhappy, people in Florida feel secure with his leadership.
The secret isn’t simply virtue signaling. Anyone can do that. Any number of Republicans ran against Democrats by picking up the culture war issues. And the results were varied. DeSantis has been effective on the culture war, but he’s never forgotten that it’s the little things, dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s, that makes people actually want to keep you in office locally.
Walking and chewing gum is hard. It means doing two different things. DeSantis has been the non-ideological guy who makes the state work and the ideological guy who frames his arguments in terms of fighting for families and regular people. The latter wouldn’t work nearly as well without the former.
Most people want results. The lesson of Florida is that conservatives can transform states into strongholds with solid planning, good governance and winning over a majority by showing that they can run cities and states better.
You know how else he did it? By refusing to allow the feds to march into his state yesterday to “monitor” the election.
DeSantis is a team player, as he learned in the Seals. Assemble a good team and put it to work.
Like those WW2 analyses of combat performance the psychologists discovered, it was the loyalty of the members of the small units to each other that was the key factor.
Muslim Jihadists are loyal to other team members unto death, 9/11 is proof. Communists are loyal to other team members unto death, they’ve gone to the electric chair together; the Rosenbergs. The Manson Family members were loyal team members to Manson. Can anyone doubt the Nazis were loyal to Hitler unto death?
Loyalty can be great, but loyalty to what? Loyalty is potentially great or potentially evil. Loyalty to rational moral principles is a heroic virtue. Loyalty to irrational beliefs and irrational men is not.
He was in the Navy’s JAG Corps as a legal advisor to the Seals.
They could if that’s what they wanted to do.
2 words: states rights.
As i have stated before that is what truly scares liberals and that is where we need to take the power back from. People need to get more involved with state level politics. How many people even know who their state reps are? How many know what they stand for? How many have taken a moment to write them and voice your opinion to them?
I’ve tried, but I get nothing but doublespeak.
i inow who mine ate and I wouldn’t want to meet them in a dark alley or anywhere
“Most people want results.”
That can be a problem. Most people want a cake that only Capitalism can produce but can’t be bothered to find out the necessary conditions and ingredients that are required to bake a Capitalism cake and vote for Socialism, or just a little bit of Socialism — the welfare state. But the welfare state by its nature and logic eventually grows into full-blown Socialism. Or worse, they do find out the necessary conditions and ingredients required to bake a Capitalism cake and are filled with fear and loathing for Capitalism.
They want to have their cake and eat it too.
“The law of identity does not permit you to have your cake and eat it, too. The law of causality does not permit you to eat your cake before you have it.” – John Galt, “Atlas Shrugged”
Governor DeSantis has been a true leader in every sense of the word. Give him credit for making Florida a great place to live, work, raise a family., start a business, or be a law enforcement officer. He cleaned up the election mess in Florida and many dishonest people who were stealing elections as well as voter rolls. First the good guys have to get in power, SO THEY CAN CLEAN UP THE MESS THAT LIBERAL WOKE DEMOCRATS LEAVE AS THEIR LEGACY.
Congratulations Florida! I’m sure the rest of the country voted right along side you but got frauded out. How could Kari Lake lose? How could Gretchen Witmer win? How could Kathy Hochul win? THEY COULDN’T, THAT’S HOW. You were the only state to weed out voter fraud and now don’t have a single Democrat in State office. Don’t believe for a minute the rest of the country is any different or voted any different than you. And you better PRAY Ron DeSantis never runs for President.
Wait, why pray he never runs?
FDR described Douglas MacArthur and Huey Long as the two most dangerous men in America.
MacArthur went to the Philippines.
Long went to heaven.
Kari Lake didn’t lose.
Take my Governor,Holcomb (RINO, IN)—please!
IN Republican officials enjoy their overall state dominance, but generally provide little value to their voters, other than not being Democrats. The major positive exception was Mitch Daniels as Governor, who ran a very tight ship and even got the BMV to purr.
DeSantis’s state is more than a beacon of hope. It’s a roadmap to success. Great article FPM, thanks.