Did you ever notice that however good a remake is, it just never quite meets the challenge. The remake of Nightmare on Elm Street was great, filling in the personality of Freddie Krueger, but not quite good enough. The remake of The Fog was terrific, but still just didn’t quite surpass. And I think that’s what Trump clone wanna be Ron Pissantis is about to find out.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ infatuation with being Trump without the baggage isn’t new. After all, he pimped his own wife and kids with references to Trump when he ran for Governor. He has studied and imitated Trump’s mechanisms of speech and body language. And he’s about to mimic himself right out of contention.
In DeSantis’ first term, his entire executive order and legislative agenda was totally geared towards feeding his ravenous Trump shared base. And he did it with precision. All of his laws and orders only affected minorities and LGBTQ and Trans communities, making him aces with Trump’s racist base. When Traitor Tot got bounced in 2020, Pissantis geared his reelection to solidify Trump’s base. He cruised to reelection.
But apparently DeSantis doesn’t study political history any more than he studies public speaking. Trump rode a far right populist 3 million vote loss to the White House thanks to Vlad the Imp. But because he’s a political imbecile Trump committed the cardinal sin. He tried to turn a bunch of far right propaganda promises into actual federal law.Â
Not in this lifetime, pal. Trump had one of the smallest inauguration crowds of all time, followed the next day by the largest global protest in history. Every dan thing he tried to get done, from the Muslim ban to border separation were met with massive protests. And that protests turned to activism. The GOP lost 40 seats in 2018, and personally got trounced in 2020. Only a moron doesn’t realize that you don’t rule like you campaign.
And Pissantis is now rapidly falling down the same rabbit hole. After spending four years cuffing around minorities and the LGBTQ community, he’s accelerating that process to cuff around everybody else. The agenda for the new Florida legislature;
- Expands the Don’t Say Gay law in schools from 3rd grade up to 8th grade
- Places new restrictions on state university curricula on courses dealing with race relations, sexual inclusion, and gender equality
- Proposes a new restrictive six week abortion ban for the state
OK, there’s more, but let’s stop right there. Because that’s all we need. DeSantis is about to learn a hard and bitter lesson. Nationally speaking, bases don’t win elections, moderates and independents do. Pissantis isn’t totally brain dead, just warped. You’ll notice that he didn’t propose any of this insane bullshit before he got reelected in 2022.
Here’s why. In a new poll released today from the University of North Florida, even GOP voters think that DeSantis has lost his frigging mind. In the poll results;
- 63% of all Floridians, including a plurality of GOP voters disapproved of Pissantis tailoring any school, but especially upper education schools from removing fact based content on racism, history or gay rights
- 72% of Florida voters, including again a plurality of GOP voters oppose Pissantis’ attempts to scrub gander identification and same sex identification from schools
- And a whopping 77% of Florida voters, including 63% of GOP voters oppose his proposed 6 week abortion ban
On one issue DeSantis already realizes that he’s stepped on his crank. DeSantis loves to promote his free state of Florida, but even Pissantis realizes that banning books from libraries and pulling books from classroom shelves has nothing to do with freedom. And now he’s busy turning himself into a pretzel trying to rationalize how he isn’t banning books.
But here’s where DeSantis is about to do a Traitor Tot, and fall flat on his face. In his craven effort to pick up portions of Trump’s far right base, he’s using the Florida legislative agenda to show what a straight shooting hard ass he is. But he’s forgetting that he’s running for President now, and he isn’t just talking to the redneck yokels of Florida, he’s talking to the whole country. Including moderates and independents who don’t like this shit.
DeSantis has just narrowed his path. Trump is in for good, or at least until his trial starts. Alleged GOP moderates in the field like Haley, presumably Pimpeo, and Pence will hammer DeSantis on the campaign trail and in debates for his far right extremism, hoping to glom moderate and independent voters. And Biden and the Democrats will happily pile on Pissantis for his extremism, hoping to set up a general election between Biden and Trump, which would be pretty much a foregone conclusion.
DeSantis is in over his head. He got elected in a safely gerrymandered GOP district, and then rode Trump’s coattails and mystique to get elected Governor. But because DeSantis has never run outside the borders of Florida, he has no idea that what may be honey on toast for the rustics may be rat poison for the rest of the country. This is going to be interesting.
From extensive experience with a pathological narcissist, I don’t see any way trump ever backs down no matter what. He’s the proverbial black knight in Monty Python’s King Arthur and the Holy Grail. King Arthur wanted just to cross a bridge but the knight only would say YOU SHALL NOT PASS! After a swordfight, where king Arthur cuts off his arms, his legs, and his head, the black knight’s head kept saying, as it lay on the ground, COME BACK AND FIGHT YOU COWARD!!! Meatball ron,(trump’s one positive contribution to American culture), doesn’t realize the shitstorm frumpy can and WILL proceed with. Next thing you know, we’ll hear Meatball’s wife is a transvestite, and his children are bastards brought in to simulate a family. No telling. But that head on the ground will keep taunting.
At this point, it hardly matters if he backs down. He loses either way: either annihilated by pursuing a suicidal course or showing the whole world his weakness by attempting to walk it back. Neither will get him closer to his goal.
Would that folks who never got their Trump trauma treated could figure this one out about DeathSantis. Then again, maybe they do and are in denial about such.
I’m reminded of the only really good sequence in Hitchcock’s Sabotage, scripted by no less than Dorothy Parker. In it, the wise, blind man points out how the police MUST exaggerate the capabilities of the criminals they chase to make themselves look good/brave. So which sounds like a more worthwhile opponent: an invincible, evil mastermind or a moron whose obviousness is going to land him in that brick wall sooner or later?
Murph,
I know your typos are legendary and usually not worth mentioning, but then there’s the occasional classic, like:
“attempts to scrub gander identification … ”
Because when it comes to gander identification, “What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”