DeSantis Unafraid to Stand Up to Progressive Bullies

If Donald Trump tires of politics, Florida governor Ron DeSantis is a compelling alternative candidate. DeSantis gets the mood of the electorate.

Some see Mike Pence as the “shadow frontrunner.” Pence checks all the right, conservative, boxes and has Republican primogeniture in his favor.

Full disclosure, I served as president of the Draft Pence for President independent SuperPAC in 2012. Then, Pence shrewdly decamped to run for governor of Indiana instead.

Mike Pence is a sure enough conservative. And … a Hoosier.

Lovely people, Hoosiers.

Decent. Polite.

Indiana chose water as its official state drink.

Milk, most states’ choice? Too … edgy.

Maine chose Moxie soda. Alabama, moonshine whiskey.

Nothing wrong with water. Yet voters are riled up, craving something higher octane.

Thomas Peterffy, a Hungarian who fled communist oppression for the sweet taste of American freedom, recently introduced DeSantis at the Common Sense Society:

“When I was in college it was compulsory to study Marxism and Leninism. The first tenet, paraphrased, the Communist Party and its cause is sacrosanct, it represents the interests of the people and any act or word that could be construed to be against it must be crushed and punished immediately. … We lived behind the Iron Curtain like zombies covering our eyes and ears reciting meaningless slogans in unison that none of us believed.”

So.

Communism pioneered and perfected Wokeness. DeSantis indicts:

“This Wokeness, it's a religion of the left and it's infecting a lot of institutions …. It, wokeness, is a form of cultural Marxism.”

“Cultural Marxism.”

DeSantis is affable. But tough.

Those who know him say that he is also quietly gifted with intellectual curiosity. And a big brain.

That’s something we have not seen much of in politics since Jack Kemp left the building. Kemp’s supply-side brainpower powered the Reagan Revolution, pushing the Dow from 814 to, eventually, 35,000, slowly but steadily leading to the doubling of real per capita GDP, and growing world GDP from $11T/year to, now, $94T/year not adjusted for inflation or population but bringing a billion people out of abject poverty.

Big stuff.

By recognizing Wokeness as “cultural Marxism” DeSantis declares an American cultural counterrevolution.

Big stuff.

As I wrote, in 2016, in Obama, the Great Bathroom War of 2016, and The Cultural Revolution:

“We do not have a ‘culture war…’ War merely implies a struggle between opposing groups. Rather, what is happening is a cultural revolution, a far more intimate and radical thing. … Revolution means redefining the very basis of society. …The left is following the playbook of a brilliant, too little known, figure: Antonio Gramsci. … As summarized at the University of Michigan’s Nutshell Biographies #2: ‘One of Gramsci’s ideas was the concept of ‘hegemony,’ or ideological domination. When one ideology, or world view, dominates, it suppresses or stamps out, often cruelly, any other ways of explaining reality.… These consist of a culture’s way of seeing and believing, and the institutions that uphold these beliefs, like religion, education, family, and the media. … This is how hegemony is created and maintained.’ Sound familiar? It should. This is a long and powerful game. The right is not even on the field.”

Until, that is, now.

Enter Ron DeSantis, calling out the left’s purpose precisely and passionately:

“The goal is to delegitimize the founding of this country, the principles that the founders relied on, our institutions, our constitution, to tear basically at the fabric of our society. And they want to replace it with effectively left-wing ideology.…”

He unflinchingly declares his current mission and that of his future presidency:

“I can tell you this. In Florida, every single thing we've done to make this state successful we earn the wrath of the woke left time and time again. And we beat them time and time again. And we're going to continue to do that. So, our goal is to make sure you're standing strong. Do not back down. Nothing that is worth achieving is going to come easy. We are going to have to fight for this country. We're going to have to fight for our freedoms.”

DeSantis is a brawler, unafraid to stand up to progressive bullies. He counterpunches.

His rhetoric is reminiscent of the words of Tom Paine, author of the original Common Sense that launched the American Revolution, writing in The Crisis:

“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered.

Bring on the cultural counterrevolution, Ron DeSantis!