Stupid Is As Stupid Does. Ron DeSantis Edition

You know, back about 147 years ago, when Saturday Night Live premiered, they came up with a cute tag line for themselves. They referred to themselves as the not-ready-for-prime-time-players. The punch line was that their show was airing in a prime time weekend spot on a national network. Cute.

And so, when Florida pipsqueak Governor Ron DeathSantis announced, without actually announcing his 2024 presidential run, the first question that sprang to the mind of almost every media reporter and pundit that actually covers politics, and knows something about it was, Yeah, but is he ready for prime time?

A fair question. After all, Pissantis got into the US House in the Tea Party wave of 2010 in a safe red district, whereafter he pretty much disappeared. Many GOP House members, along with almost all Democratic House members didn’t even know he was in the building. His sole priorities seemed to be self aggrandizement at home, and fundraising.

In 2018 Pissantis decided to launch a long shot run for the Florida Governor’s spot. For a long time, DeSantis needed a miners helmet to find himself in the polls. But then, like a lamprey, he attached himself to the bloated carp that was Trump, and rode Traitor Tot’s endorsement over the finish line, although in a razor thin win in the general election.

And at the start, Pissantis was like every other GOP slob who found himself in over his head. He primped his image and confined himself to using his super majority legislature to pick on easy targets. But then something changed.

What changed was Trump. El Pendejo Presidente lost in 2020, and Pissantis saw his window of opportunity. First, DeSantis had to get reelected in 2022 to giving himself a launching pad for his 2024 run. DeSantis continued to play patty-cake with Trump and won an easy reelection against a sacrificial lamb Democratic candidate.

And then the diminutive despot went to the mattresses. He used his bovine legislative majority to ram through laws covering every red meat issue he could think of heading towards 2024.

He engineered the disastrous WOKE! campaign that has turned into a national joke. He went to war with Disney, the state’s largest employer over their resistance to his Don’t Say Gay school law. He shipped Texas asylim seekers to Martha’s Vineyard in a stunt to embelosh his anti immigrant street creds. He formed a totally useless voter fraud police squad that hasn’t actually convicted anybody yet. Every law he signed was meant as fodder for the 2024 primaries.

And you know what? This schmuck still. isn’t. ready. for. prime. time. All of that sh*t he pulled in Florida stayed in Florida, it didn’t move the national needle when he tried to use it. And the more that DeSantis got out on the trail, the more he proved my point, to know Ron DeSantis is to not want to know Ron DeSantis. But Pissantis is a dead man walking for a much more practical reason, and I can prove it.

Let’s just say that somehow every GOP presidential candidate suddenlly succumbs to Ebola, and DeSantis is the nominee. He’s still dead in the water, for one very simple reason. The critical feature of a successful national political campaign is a finely tuned national media advertising campaign.

And when it comes to television advertising, Ron Pissantis is the Roslyn Village Idiot. Look, I have no idea of who DeSantis’s advertising guru is, but whoever it is, he should be hauled into court for criminal advertising malpractice, and banished to Tibet. Here are four examples to show what I’m talking about;

• In his 2018 campaign for Governor, DeSantis disgracefully actually pimped his own wife and family to slobber all over Trump in a campaign ad. His wife did the lead in, and Pissantis used his own kids as props. The ad showed him sitting on the floor with his toddler, surrounded by oversize blocks, and saying, Come on, let’s build that wall! Next it showed him in a chair with the toddler in his lap, reading a bedtime story, And then Mr Trump said, You’re Fired! I love that part. The ad closed with the couple putting the toddler down for the night, clad ia a MAGA onesie. I have no words
• In his reelection campaign, these idiots came up with another piece of infantile doggerel. The ad splash title was Top Gov!, and had the runt strutting out of a concrete building onto a military aircraft parking ramp, wearing a fighter pilot jacket and Tom Cruise shades. The narrative was something like, As a Governor, I’ve learned that you never preemptively attack. But if you’re attacked, then you respond with withering fire and take no prisoners. This from a guy who would need to sit on a phone book in a fighter cockpit. Write your own comments
• In the late stages of the campaign, worried that he wasn’t sufficiently felicitous to the Evangelical wingnut crowd, his kiddie kampus rejects came up with an ad with overpowering religious tones. With black and white pictures of DeSantis rotating in the background, a deep baritone voice gravely intoned, And God looked at his creation and said, “I need a hero>” And so he created a warrior, a man who will get up early, leave his family, and go out to fight the good fight. Followed by the DeSantis campaign logo.
• And now, in a campaign ad running in Ioa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, showing Tiny Dancer riding around in a military helicpoter, spouting out rubbish about his immigration policies, and promising to Take no prisoners. Geez, channeling your inner Putin much?

See what I mean? Right now what we need most is for the Hollywood writers strike to get over with, so that the late night talk show hosts can go back to roasting DeSantis over an open fire. Each of the first three DeSantis commercials I listed were cheap cannon fodder for the late night talk show hosts.

And that’s the problem, isn’t it? A national political campaign advertisement is meant to inspire the masses, or put forth a compelling political message. It’s not to give the late night talk show hosts fodder to rake you over the coals for the stupidity of your advertising.

Look, there was JFK’s catchy Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy ad in 1969, with letters JFK splashed across the screen. Reagan’s inspirational Morning in America ad, Bush’s disgusting Willie Horton ad, and Obama’s inspirational Yes we can theme. All of them struck a fundamental chord in the electorate. But when the end result of your advertising campaign is to have late night television hosts getting into fist fights over humiliating you. You’re doind something wrong. DeSantis isn’t just not-ready-for-prime-time, he isn’t even ready for a 3 AM public broadcasting slot. One nice thing. The longer he’s on the road, the less damage he’s doing to Florida.