Is anyone at all standing up to DeSantis?

Fuck this asshole. The only good thing about Trump is that he’ll turn his vitriol on Desantis. I hate them both but rooting for Trump to humiliate him.

No one is. Not a soul

You really have to work hard to understand what animates him. How does a Yale and Harvard Law graduate get to be so extreme? Combined with his Navy service has his sense of self become so inflated that he is doing these things that are just crazy (objectively truthful!). Does he hold Floridians in such contempt? The small-town politicians that populate the Legislature I understand, but his worldview is truly scary.

[quote] Is anyone at all standing up to DeSantis?

Yes. The ground. It’s the Florida law — but damn he’s a fatass.

troll thread

He has a Nazi mentality.

The Bulwark never Trumpers and liberal pundits are very critical of him, but do they matter? People like Pompeo are hoping Trump destroys DeSantis followed by his death by apoplexy, opening up the field for Haley, Pompeo, Cruz, etc. Yippee. What a bunch of chodes. There is "hope" that DeSantis will alienate suburban Republican women and lose the nomination, but that's a pretty slim reed. It's disgusting to see how gutless these allegedly powerful people are. Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney, God help us, seem to be the only ones with a moral compass, however terrible their other policy positions may be.

We can all agree that he’s a bit

Chubby

No, they all have pussies and he has a dick. Albeit a small dick but a dick nonetheless.

Let me fix that for you, R9:

... and he is a dick. Albeit a big, fat dick, but a dick nonetheless.

There's really something wrong with him and I think the knives haven't come out quite yet.

DeSantis is a big fish in a small pond.

Miss Rhonda is hoping he can win on an anti-“.woke agenda.” Too bad for him that he can’t win any cities with that platform.

Trump also has the same problem. Actually all the Republicans have this issue. No one wants them in power except hillbillies.

Floridians voted for him and his enablers in the Legislature. Systemic evil like this isn’t easy to shut down. His government will be sued to death, of course, but the courts aren’t really designed for handling this kind of massive fuckup by the electorate. But it’s just as well that he shows all of his cards right now. Unlike Trump in 2016, DeSantis will have a comprehensive record that he won’t be able to run from.

OP? Doesn't seem like it.

But you have to understand, here in FL, the laws on the books are applied very selectively or ignored completely. Or, as I've said many times, nobody here cares what the law is. People do whatever they want regardless, and very few suffer any consequences.

Mark Halperin, who, admittedly, has been consistently very bearish on DeSantis's presidential viability, didn't have much good to say about the Florida governor's big speech over the weekend at the Reagan Library:

"If DeSantis can’t get it up politically for a speech at that august venue, it isn’t clear what he is waiting for.  No matter where else he speaks in 2023 (the Detroit Economic Club, American Enterprise Institute, St. Anselm College, the Iowa State Fair), there will arguably be no location more symbolically resonant than the Simi Valley citadel where DeSantis spoke this weekend.

It might have been an even more important moment than his expected formal announcement speech.

As readers of this newsletter know, in the upper reaches of the Republican Party, even among some sharpies who desperately want DeSantis to be the nominee, there is a view that the man on a three-year rocket ride is personally odd/diffident, uncomfortable with retail politics, not a great speaker, and without humor, nuance, or genuine emotion when it comes to giving speeches, doing interviews, or talking to voters (or donors).

You can watch the full speech here, starting at about the 8-minute mark.

Overall, if you watch the whole thing, look for moments of writing or delivery that seem elevated beyond what one might throw off at a routine Kissimmee photo op; for anything surprising or delightful; for anything that makes you stop short and say, That man has a true sweeping vision for what this nation needs!

You will notice that from start to finish, DeSantis acts like, since all of his audience knows him from Fox News, that he doesn’t have to introduce his bio or explain how his bio informs his vision for the nation and policy. Like, he doesn’t do that thing that people running for president for the first time generally do.

For those of you who don’t have time to watch the whole cliché-filled and Fox-News-greatest-hits speech, here are the three moments I recommend to you:

A. 8:50 to 9:45: Note the comedy styling of Ron DeSantis as he blandly tells a joke older than Joe Biden and Donald Trump combined.

B. 52:25 to 53:32: See how you rate DeSantis’ capacity to end his remarks on a stirring and uplifting note.

C. 53:40 to the VERY end: Watch how DeSantis exits and listen to what the announcer says.

*** Can DeSantis win the nomination if his national stage performance level is on par with what he produced on Sunday?

Maybe.

But there are reasons to doubt that."

Hopefully we'll see more of this

^^^ More litigation, I mean. Not more pain and suffering.

I have a friend married to a Jewish UES Republican who swears DeSantis is going to save America. As much as he loves, supports and works in Israel, I will never understand completely how things like literal Nazis shouting at random Jews on the streets of Florida doesn't phase him

Apparently Florida has a resign to run law. Trump will sue him to resign the minute he announces. They don't even know if the law requires someone to resign just to run in a primary.

It would be lovely if DeSantis ends up unemployed at the end of this.

Op only Trump

I hope and pray this is real--that someone actually handed him this snowflake--and it is not photoshop

^ He has a creepy smile.

Let

Them

Fight

He was stationed at Guantanamo, a center that was built for torturing people. What kind of person is at Guantanamo? The type of person who’s all-in on torture and swaggeringly brags he spent xxx amount of time aT “Gitmo, man. The big G. Yeah, you can thank me for protecting america from terrorists. You’re welcome!”

Phase ≠ faze.

Learn the difference stat!

Trump is a proto-fascist (if only out of his cowardice from going full-bore) and DeSantis is illustrating himself to be at least on some level, really fascist (embracing of fascist policies with only the barest excuses). They're both scary. But their infighting is good, because an actually unified far-right in the USA, while still far from gathering support of even a small majority of the USA in the coming years (especially with the inclinations of Millennial and Gen Z generations besides more specific bigoted cohorts), it'd be large enough to potentially severely harm the whole country and the international order for up to decades. Their incompetence and competition is always in their way, even when they get their way on matters.

The danger is if the supposed infighting is a farce and its all cooperation behind the scenes. At that point you have a threat that's exponentially worse than 2016, Jan 6, all that stuff. There's seriously unhinged people and groups that salivate for actual national chaos, and even if Trump or DeSantis wanted to leash them, eventually they wouldn't be able to - theoretically.

everybody is a pussy when it comes to this guy

"How does a Yale and Harvard Law graduate get to be so extreme?"

Never mind that shit. How does a Yale and Harvard Law graduate get to base his whole political career on attacking "the elites?" With a straight face, no less!!!

^^^

Lies

And Fox

Is anyone at all standing up to DeSantis? Yes, OP:

Trans surgery ban for children is 'close to sinful', says Joe Biden

“What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, close to sinful. It’s just terrible what they’re doing,” Mr Biden told The Daily Show.

Yes, Joe. Your Irish Catholic mother who was born in 1917 would have supported trans child surgeries.

Mike Pence?

[quote] I'm a limited government conservative, and I believe in private property, free enterprise. My concern more broadly was just simply about taking action against a company in the wake of a political dispute, where the company had taken a different position than the state.

[quote] I have concerns about that in Florida. I had the exact same concerns about California, pulling a $54 million contract from Walgreens because Walgreens announced that they'll not be distributing the abortion pill in 20 states where it would be illegal to do so. To me, it's the same kind of government activism — one on the right, one on the left, and both are wrong.

[quote] I think there's also First Amendment issues. Businesses have the right to take the stance that they take without fear of retribution from government entities. I think it's a worthy debate in the country today that as we're dealing with a lot of these large issues that bear upon the culture of the country that impact, in particular, traditional conservatives and families — I think we ought to vigorously take those debates to our school boards, to our state legislatures, to the halls of Congress.

Trump interests - himself and money. DeSantis - controlling the world.

Sarasota Herald Tribune

DeSantis releases graphic video showing trans surgeries after Biden calls governor’s policies ‘cruel’

DeSantis says, 'It is not "sinful" to prohibit the mutilation of minors'

I think a fair few of the laws he's helping to pass are mostly ruled on, like the new abortion law.

The most outrageous stuff seems like it's proposed but not actually passed. He's a political shock jockey first, and then a wannabe fascist.

I haven't heard about a legal challenge to the CRT stuff but I can only imagine that's very much in the works/pipeline.

America has a unique habit of raising up this type of 'savior' only to turn on them once they actually have a chance at power. For all his noise middle America really isn't that aware or focused on 2024 yet. The bully boy tactics and the promise of yet more chaos will hopefully turn off the majority. Years and years of Trump, Covid, Inflation, etc. and I think (hope) we will want calm, stability, sanity. but then i could be wrong

R37. I think you're right.

I suspect that was what strongly turned people off Trump last time. He's fucking exhausting and Desantis will be even worse.

They rely on fear and anger and you can only spend so long in a sort of hypervigilant state like that before you want to take a nap.

I HOPE I am

[quote] The ironic wrinkle is if Trump supporters block roads around Mar-a-Lago to prevent police from arresting trump, Ron DeSantis signed a law in 2021 making peaceful protests that block roads a FELONY. He did this to target BLM protests.

MAGA taking down DeAnus would be oh so delightful