No time for DeSantis

President Trump's second term needs him, though

The presidential campaign of any Republican not named Donald Trump ended on August 24, 2023, when the sheriff of Fulton County, Georgia, released a mugshot of Trump. The look of defiance told everyone the indictment was (and still is) bullshit and the only way to stop Democrats and RINOs from their fascism is to boot them out by re-electing him.

Timing is everything in politics and comedy. Better luck four years from now.

I was hoping for a battle between Trump and DeSantis for the nomination but as Mick Jagger sang, “You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well, you might find you get what you need.”

It is not my favorite Stones song (that would be Can't You Hear Me Knocking) but it suits my needs here. Sorry, Can't You Hear Me Knocking, but a song about satin shoes and cocaine eyes is a poor fit today.

And so it is with DeSantis 2024. Better luck in 2028.

The press is having a good old time burying him but his dreams of a presidency are neither foolish nor likely. They fall in between, which serves us well because it gives him just enough hope to continue to try.

DeSantis has instincts as a governor that could save a nation struggling to survive a behemoth of a federal government that rules, not serves.

The New York Times ran a bitchy little piece — “How Ron DeSantis Lost the Internet” — that actually was aimed at his spokeswoman Christina Pushaw because she won’t return their phone calls. The power of the press meets the power of the unimpressed.

NYT (reprinted in the Seattle Times) huffed and puffed, “Pushaw has become well known for her extremely online approach to communications, including a scorched-earth strategy when it comes to critics and the press. As the governor’s press secretary, she frequently posted screenshots of queries from mainstream news outlets on the web rather than responding to them and once told followers to drag — parlance for a prolonged public shaming — an Associated Press reporter, which got her temporarily banned from Twitter.”

Hmm. The real story is Twitter booted an AP reporter, but NYT never said why. It never named her. Twitter also removed NYT’s badge because it kept disseminating misinformation and disinformation. Since restored, NYT is still pissed. The story failed to mention this too.

Douglas MacKinnon, a veteran of the Reagan administration, blames a disdain for campaigning for DeSantis’s fate.

He wrote, “By most accounts, the Republican governor is a nice guy, a good husband, and a loving father. Unfortunately for him, and those who support him, he also seems to be a lousy campaigner.”

He made a good case for this and pointed out, “The DeSantis win [in the primary] against the presumed favorite, Putnam, was mostly because Donald Trump endorsed DeSantis at the time. And that’s also why he beat Gillum, the former Tallahassee mayor, three months later.”

That 2018 general election campaign was a proxy war between Trump (DeSantis) and Obama (Gillum). Both presidents identified with their candidates. After the election, we learned that in addition to be a black Democrat, Gillum also is a homosexual meth head. I am not saying another word. I will just sing my song about satin shoes and cocaine eyes.

McKinnon wasn’t impressed by the record of DeSantis as governor but he was more than worthy of Reagan’s tenure as governor. No offshore drilling bans were imposed and the only abortion law signed limited it.

DeSantis kept the state open during the pandemic panic (although he did shut it down for spring break as businesses did not want to risk an outbreak of covid).

He stood up against teachers who want to groom children into homosexuality and transsexualism.

When the state’s largest private employer took up the LGBT side, he took the company on too. And won.

DeSantis dared to eliminate a black-only congressional districts as he complied with the 14th Amendment’s ban on racial discrimination. If you believe a colorblind society is racist, you are the bigot — not me.

He picked up on Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s fly-the-illegal-aliens-to-sanctuary-cities plan, shipping 50 or so illegals to Martha’s Vineyard. It got headlines and quenched my thirst for liberal tears that month.

DeSantis also arranged to fly hundreds of Americans stranded in Israel after the savage rapes and savage murders by savage Palestinians. He is not stopping there.

Politico reported, “Florida’s university system chancellor, responding to a push by Gov. Ron DeSantis, directed state universities Tuesday to disband campus groups with ties to the national Students for Justice in Palestine organization, marking the first punishments handed down to colleges here amid the Israel-Hamas war.

“In a memo to school leaders, the state ordered a ‘crack down’ on campus events led by the pro-Palestinian organization that the DeSantis administration claims amount to ‘harmful support for terrorist groups’ like Hamas, which attacked Israel in early October. Florida, under Republican presidential candidate DeSantis, has staunchly supported Israel during the ongoing war and was monitoring college protests that have since ignited.”

You can figure out what the liberal reaction was to cracking down on those who support rape, torture, hostage taking and beheading.

One voice of insanity wrote, “On its face, the policy proposed by DeSantis and his lickspittles would effectively ban any program or activity on campus. In practice, it will be used to shut down anyone who disagrees with Chris Rufo about anything.”

So much for hate has no place here.

Give DeSantis his due. He is fighting for himself and if a man won’t fight for himself, how do you expect him to fight for you?

Last week he told an audience in South Carolina, “You also need a nominee who can win. And I think the way you win is to focus the election on Biden’s failures. And our positive vision for the future.”

He also said, “If the election is about all these other issues, then it’s going to give the Democrats a huge advantage. It’s going to give the media an ability to drive that in, and they will do that, they’ll change their tune on all this, you watch, if the former president is the nominee.

“So we want it to be an election on Biden and us as the positive just like it was for Reagan versus Carter in 1980.”

I am all in on Donald Trump and likely DeSantis won’t be the hot ticket in 2028. But the man deserves respect — and a place in Trump’s second Cabinet.