Meatball Ron, We Hardly Knew Ya

Governor Ron DeSantis speaking with attendees at the 2021 Student Action Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Commons

As David Thornton wrote yesterday, Ron DeSantis, once touted as the great white hope to prevent a Trump nomination, has bowed out of the race before the first primary. This makes it all but certain that Trump will be the nominee.¹

I must admit to being somewhat unmoved by the news. Not just because Trump’s victory has seemed inevitable since day one. But because I’ve soured on almost everyone in the Grand Trump Party tent, especially DeSantis.

If you’d told me that a few years ago, I’d have been surprised because I actually kinda liked DeSantis. He was conservative but reasonable about it. For example, he supported making Spanish-language ballots available to voters, streamlined Florida’s unemployment insurance system and was relatively moderate on abortion. He’s kept Florida’s economy strong and kept schools open during the pandemic (although it is worth noting that the actual performance of Florida’s kids tracked national trends anyway).

The reason my enthusiasm turned to opposition was because, in his pursuit of the nomination, DeSantis pursued a course of legislation and policy that tickled the fancies of the very online but was ill-advised, constitutionally-dubious and sometimes outright terrible. That agenda included:

• Not content with bucking the trend on COVID policy, he appointed crackpot and serial liar Joseph Ladapo to be surgeon general, making Florida an epicenter of COVID and vaccine lies.
• He passed a law forbidding social media companies from “discriminating” against supposed conservative voices, a blatantly unconstitutional law that the 11th Circuit Court struck down.
• He passed a “Don’t Say Gay” law that gave individual parents veto power over district LGBT policy and resulted in books being stripped from school bookshelves because there weren’t enough specialists to review them all for unacceptable content. He then called these stories a “hoax” despite photographic evidence that they were real. And after saying he only wanted to restrict discussion of LGBT issues from younger children, he then expanded the ban to grade 12.
• He engaged in a ridiculous legal war with Disney because they had the temerity to criticize the Don’t Say Gay policy after it passed and indicated their desire to back out of Florida politics. At times, this war got extremely petty. Disney has now sued the state and DeSantis is trying to find a way to back down.
• He passed the “Stop WOKE ACT” which banned certain teachings about race not only in Florida schools but in higher education and in private business. A judge struck it down as unconstitutional and ridiculously vague. No word on how banning college professors from talking about race is consistent with his supposed support of free speech.
• After years of supporting a more moderate 15-week ban on abortion, he signed a six-week ban.
• He offered cash bonuses for police to move to Florida, resulting in cops with histories of violence taking up the call, coming to Florida and committing crimes.
• In a bizarre incident, he had Florida pay to fly migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, which he is now being sued over.
• In addition to the aforementioned attacks on free speech on campus, he tried to block professors from testifying against a voter law and appointed crackpot Chris Rufo to head New College of Florida, which is going about as well as you’d expect.
• He tried to force through a ridiculously gerrymandered Congressional district map that would have given Florida a 3-1 GOP/Dem split in its House delegation despite being nearly 50-50 in the vote. A court has now struck that down.

I could go on, but you get the point. Since getting the White House in his sights, DeSantis has had to weigh in on every Culture War spat, every Fox News tantrum and every conservative bete noire. His actions have attracted the attention and rebuke of some very conservative courts but he has persisted because … well, that’s what the GOP wants. None of these things are going to advance the classical conservative causes of smaller government, balanced budgets and strength abroad. In fact, most of them weaken those principles. But they do pursue the principle of the Grand Trump Party: be angry about everything, constantly attack, do anything that makes “liberals” cry.

What DeSantis hoped to do was to triangulate a solid governing record with Trumpish inchoate rage against “the Left”. To be Trump with competence instead of baggage. He had plenty of policy accomplishments, however dubious. He’s a navy veteran and a family man who staunchly supported his wife through a bout with cancer. And he won reelection easily. That used to carry weight with the Republican Party. But the Republicans are now less of a political party than they are a knock-off Taylor Swift song.² They don’t want policy achievements. They don’t have strength of character. They don’t even want to win. They want to be angry about things. There is no audience in the GOP base for a solid governing record, only for the rage. Given a choice between the Bride of Trump and Trump, the voters, unsurprisingly, chose Trump.

All of which makes DeSantis’ final parting shot at “the establishment”, supposedly embodied in the person of Nikki Haley, pathetic. My dude … you WERE the establishment candidate. You were the guy the establishment turned to as an alternative to Trump. Hell, I would have changed my registration back to Republican to vote for you over Trump. It was only when you floundered like a Falcons linebacker on a play-fake that “the establishment” — i.e., Republicans who actually want policy accomplishments — turned to Haley. The only reason Trump would have to pick you as VP is to get the establishment on board.

In the end, the epitaph of DeSantis is that he burned most of his principles for nothing more than a maybe hope of being tapped as a running mate. And I expect his current sucking up to Trump to work out the way these things always do: with DeSantis being stabbed in the back, called a loser and tossed on the heap with Mike Pence, Bill Barr, Rex Tillerson, James Mattis, Nikki Haley, John Kelly, Elaine Chao and a hundred others.

The problem with making a deal with the Devil is that his checks bounce. And I suspect this is the beginning, not the end, of a process that results in him slinking back to Florida, tail between his legs, to watch the Courts strike down the edifice of bad laws he erected to try to win Trump’s base. And when it comes to 2028, assuming Trump doesn’t run again, he’ll be an afterthought.

It couldn’t be more deserved.

1. Although, to be fair, that became a near certainty when the Republicans spinelessly acquitted him in the second impeachment.
2. “Oh our former President is a criminal? Guess we’ll have to nominate him again. Look what you made me do. Oh, we have a border deal? Guess we’ll have to vote against it. Look what you made me do.”