they normally reserve this treatment for democratic women and barack obama
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) January 17, 2023
Seems as though Ron DeSantis is not the 2024 candidate the Republican elite would’ve chosen. But, at the present moment, he’s the best alternative to TFG they’ve got… and, that being so, Politico will join the work crew dedicated to reshaping his public image. Sorta. While carefully preserving a level of ‘ironic’ deniability, just in case:
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — When a couple hundred major donors to Gov. Ron DeSantis’s inauguration arrived at a candlelight dinner to the sounds of a solo saxophonist the night before his swearing-in last week they found a pair of surprises waiting for them.
In a departure from the pedestrian fare found at most political banquets, DeSantis, a food-lover with Italian roots, flew in the crew from Carbone, the trendy, New York-founded restaurant chain that moved to Miami last year, to both make a point about companies relocating to Florida and to offer a treat to contributors who gave at least $25,000.
Yet what was even more of a thrill to the donors than Carbone’s signature spicy rigatoni was what happened during the dinner: DeSantis and his wife, Casey, went table to table greeting and thanking the attendees.
Such a gesture would hardly be noteworthy for most politicians. But the early rap on DeSantis from his fellow Republicans is that, for all his smarts and shrewdness, he lacks charm, and is either unwilling or unable to submit to the longstanding rituals of retail politics.
So the mere fact that he table-hopped at a dinner in his honor — and that more than a few of his contributors were thrilled enough about the personal touch to recount it to me after the closed-press fete — is revealing.
The governor’s glad-handing illustrates that he’s absorbed the critique about his aloofness and is making an effort at rebutting it. The delighted response about an unremarkable show of gratitude demonstrates how little of it he’s done to date; and the relish with which his glancing interactions were recalled indicates how low the expectations bar is for DeSantis and what it means to an important constituency when he clears said bar…
Counterargument, from Lulu Garcia-Navarro in a NYTimes op-ed — “Republicans Are Getting It Wrong About DeSantis and Florida” (unpaywalled ‘gift’ link):
… The case for Mr. DeSantis… isn’t just that he looks comparatively sage next to Mr. Trump. It’s also that he spoke out early against lockdowns and has overseen a growing economy. Florida now has the fastest-growing population in the country, a factoid that Mr. DeSantis’s spokesman, Jeremy Redfern, immediately touted after it was announced. “People vote with their feet,” he said. “We are proud to be a model for the nation, and an island of sanity in a sea of madness.”
Most criticism of Mr. DeSantis’s national electability has been centered around his lack of charisma, which Mr. Trump crystallized by giving him the cumbersome nickname Ron DeSanctimonious. But focusing on personality and style obscures the governor’s real failings: Florida is not a model for the nation, unless the nation wants to become unaffordable for everyone except rich snowbirds.
While my home state’s popularity might indeed seem like good news for a governor with presidential ambitions, a closer look shows that Florida is underwater demographically. Most of those flocking there are aging boomers with deep pockets, adding to the demographic imbalance for what is already one of the grayest populations in the nation. This means that Florida won’t have the younger workers needed to care for all those seniors. And while other places understand that immigrants, who often work in the service sector and agriculture, two of Florida’s main industries, are vital to replenishing aging populations, Mr. DeSantis and the state G.O.P. are not exactly immigrant-friendly, enacting legislation to limit the ability of people with uncertain legal status to work in the state…
While Mr. DeSantis has been busy limiting what can be taught in schools, flying immigrants to Northern states and punishing “woke” Disney, working-class Floridians are being priced out of many Florida cities. Miami now surpasses Los Angeles and New York City as the least-affordable city for housing in the United States, and joining it in the top five is the once working-class South Florida Cuban-American bastion of Hialeah. Miami is also second in income inequality, with levels roughly comparable with Colombia’s and Panama’s. Rents are soaring across many other parts of the state as well. And health care costs are unbearably high compared with those in other parts of the country because workers in the state have to shoulder a higher percentage of premiums.
The fact is, Florida is having many of the same problems as its liberal archnemesis California, and its Republican-led State Legislature is doing little to help less-affluent families thrive. More than 76 percent of Floridians live on the coasts, but in an era of fierce storms due to climate change and rising sea levels, many can’t afford or even qualify for insurance for their homes, especially those who live in older buildings or in low-income areas. Lawmakers in Tallahassee ended the year giving insurance companies a huge bailout but doing little to reduce insurance costs for homeowners…
For the average Republican voter, presumably, ‘turning the whole country into a banana-Republican paradise divided between an elite kleptocracy and a vastly larger population of serfs’ would be a feature not a bug. But it certainly gives us Democrats a stick with which to beat him!
remaining pretty bullish on the idea that trump might not be able to win a primary but he can make damned sure desantis loses the general
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachi) January 16, 2023
yeah man voters are totally gonna think a reedy-voiced religious culture warrior is the candidate of the center https://t.co/Kjns9tpddr
— knife-wielding hemophiliac (@NickTagliaferro) January 16, 2023
Romney 2012 was the tamest possible version of a candidate being brought down by pandering to evangelicals and fiscal conservatives and you think leaning into it is going to go better?
— knife-wielding hemophiliac (@NickTagliaferro) January 16, 2023
mAkE iT uP iN tHe CeNtEr pic.twitter.com/tdlwciLaOS
— Pomodoro (Dad Joke Era) (@ilpomodoro2) January 16, 2023
And, of course, TFG might not be able to clinch his own candidacy, but he most certainly can bloody up any alternative candidates…
Trump today on Desantis: “I got him elected, pure and simple. And there was no reason to go wild about endorsing him .. So, now I hear he might want to run against me. So, we’ll handle that the way I handle things.” pic.twitter.com/rBBYyUtnNW
— Ron Filipkowski ???? (@RonFilipkowski) January 16, 2023
schrodingers_cat
Not to be petty but the 60s called and they want the Jackie O cosplay outfit back. That color looks terrible on her. It completely washes her out.
Kay
Always makes me sad. It isn’t that hard to create and maintain a middle class. You just can’t be greedy pigs who take everything that isn’t nailed down and leave a wasteland of really rich people and really poor people.
There is PLENTY for EVERYONE. If the lower rungs do better so will everyone else. It can all be positive.
lollipopguild
I keep waiting for desantis to get a law passed in Florida making covid-19 vaccines illegal. FREEDUM!
MattF
Also, an obstacle to moving to Florida is the problem of buying a home. I’d think twice (or even more frequently, with reflection) about, e.g., buying a condo, particularly a condo near a beach in Florida. Standards are toughening and insurance is getting much more expensive. Buyer beware.
Kay
A couple of years ago my daughter and her husband were looking to relocate. They’re both in high demand jobs in health care. I was looking at various places online with them – “starter houses” -and I looked at Florida because 20 years ago Florida had affordable entry level housing and I just assumed it still did. I was shocked at the prices.
They ended up in NY. The starter house was as expensive as those in Florida (nearly unaffordable for younger people and would have been unaffordable without me and my husband’s help) but the pay was much better.
lollipopguild
@Kay: You are 100% correct but our friends on the right want a country with a large rich class a very small middle class and a very large poor class that they can use and abuse.
Matt McIrvin
@lollipopguild: A small rich class that they’re in is fine.
Gin & Tonic
Where’s eemom to go apoplectic about this? She hasn’t been around in a long time, huh?
raven
@Gin & Tonic: \
I can’t quit you baby So I’m gonna put you down for awhile
I said I can’t quit you baby I guess I gotta put you down for awhile
Said you messed up my happy home
Made me mistreat my only child Yes sir you did!
Dan B
DeSantis just decreed that no Florida government entities could invest in woke funds or companies. Since ESG (environmental, social, and governance) is a part of nearly all funds on Wall Street it’s gonna be a shitstorm. Apparently the state pension fund lost $200 million investing in Russia it already was.
SiubhanDuinne
Since it’s a Republican Politics Open Thread…
WaPo is reporting that George Santos has been assigned to two House committees: Small Business, and Science/Space/Technology.
I don’t know much about either one. Neither is especially flashy, AFAIK. So I guess the idea was to park him where he can do minimal damage?
Kay
@lollipopguild:
It’s kind of amazing the bullshit FL is able to pull. The national crime panic is a good example. Florida has a ton of violent crime, yet for some reason all the reporting was on Chicago, NY and (oddly) San Francisco.
How do you look at this country objectively and just ignore crime in every huge southern city while doing breathless fearmongering reporting on crime in every northern city and California? It’s nuts, but it happened. It’s like DeSantis and the rest of the southern governors wrote the script.
Kay
Ooof. +12. Democrats should invest some in figuring out Florida. It’s too big to give up on. Look at it like buying at the bottom of the market for Dems. It can only go up :)
Dangerman
Desantis looks sage compared to Trump? Any one of my toes looks sage compared to Trump (maybe not the one that wee wee wee’d all the way home; kinda concerned about that one). But it’s either Trump or Desantis or one of the crazy fuckers (my money is on Trump, if he isn’t in jail or deceased).
Miki
@Kay: “We all do better when we all do better.” Paul Wellstone
Kay
@Miki:
I told my daughter “you’re a cold weather person. We don’t belong down there. We’ll melt” :)
Ksmiami
Oh god…true story the guy bloviating/tweeting that RDS will win the center was my neighbor.. he’s a fat Rt freak who pretends to be a “moderate Republican…”
El Cruzado
Florida may be “underwater demographically” but if we wait a couple decades it will also be “underwater geographically”
Anyone who buys property anywhere near the Florida coast with no intention to flip it immediately is setting themselves up for a big fat zero in their investment value.
lollipopguild
@Kay: Also blue states are overrun with homeless people but Texas and Florida have NO homeless people.
eclare
@Kay: The ancient Romans even knew this, bread and circuses.
Ksmiami
@Kay: there are no services in FL.. zippo investment in actual people. When we had the opportunity, we fled to Michigan and couldn’t have been happier
Ohio Mom
@Kay: We did try in Florida. There was that massive push to change things so that people who had served their jail time could vote — that is to say, Black people.
It passed. Then the Florida Republicans said, “Vote? Not so fast. Pay up first.” “How much, for what?” “That’s for us to know and for you to find out, Lol.”
And that was that.
JML
The good thing for democrats in 2024 if DeSatan is the nominee is that we don’t need to win FL to win the presidential. Republicans are in deep deep trouble without it (they’d need to win both MI & PA, as well as AZ and an EV in either Maine or NE with NH or getting NV). He doesn’t make them more attractive in the midwest, northeast or southwest which are where some of the swingiest states are.
I also think Politico and the usual bobos in the DC media “elite” drastically underestimate just how much crazy any GOP primary candidate needs to shovel out there and how far to the right they have to go to secure the nomination. You can’t just pivot away for the general and pretend that nothing you said in the spring matters.
That said, the democratic party needs a real renaissance in FL. It can be brought back around…but there’s an argument that time, money, resources, and focus are better spent in GA and NC. Both are states that are growing and are becoming more democratic over time with the kind of democratic voters that will stick for a national election.
eclare
@raven: Hahaha…nice cut from Led Zep I.
Kay
@lollipopguild:
Exactly right. Just baffling to me. Of course they have a homelessness problem- low wages, expensive housing and it’s warm. Yet for some reason it just isn’t mentioned.
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: I think that outfit is only half Jackie O, the white gloves and the bouffant hairstyle. The cut of that dress — how tight it is — and that off-the-shoulder cape, that is Melania.
Which makes sense, the DeSantises want to take the place of the Trumps.
I agree, that mint green is atrocious.
The Moar You Know
This incompetent stubby fucker and his ghastly wife will be president of nothing save for the one run and out club.
Brachiator
Alternative to Trump?
More like Trump’s mini-me.
Interesting. Trump is the (kinda broke) rich guy with terrible taste. DeSantis is the faux populist with elitist tastes.
In any event, it is sad to see any media kissing DeSantis’ ass and trying to make him look acceptable.
Kay
@Ohio Mom:
I think they have to just keep hitting it. They can’t ignore high growth states. The nice thing about “high growth” is that means change. Republicans may have a lock now but that’s a huge diverse state and it’s a moving target. Dems need to find people who know what they’re talking about in the state, aren’t gross rip-off grifters, and then invest in their suggestions. They’re in such bad shape they can be really creative instead of returing to Crist over and over or “I used to be a cop”- they have nothing to lose.
+12 R is worse than Ohio. My God. Did we ever screw FL up, politically. Whoever we paid should get fired.
Kay
@The Moar You Know:
Oh, I hope you’re right. He’s just loathsome. The sheer nastiness of these people. It’s bad for our national conscience.
I don’t forget that you were right about Biden and no one else was willing to bet on that publicly here :)
SpongeBobtheBuilder
Besides the obvious problems with the cape dress (already mentioned) the gloves are inappropriate, AND your partner should be wearing a tux if you are dressed that formally.
Mike in Pasadena
In the photo up top, Rhonada Sandtits is trying to look pious but actuallly looks like he’s on the throne trying to pinch off a painful loaf. Sanctimonious fake religiosity.
Delk
Pretty nice cape you got there sure would be a shame if something happened to it.
Kay
@Mike in Pasadena:
One thing in our favor IMO is Florida still has real newspapers. They don’t seem to be afraid of him- the only entity that doesn’t.
Maybe we’ll get the due diligence we didn’t get w/Trump.
SiubhanDuinne
@Ohio Mom:
“The sea, the snotgreen sea, the scrotumtightening sea.”
lgerard
Lady DeSantis has a Bride of Frankenstein thing going on in those pictures
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0026138/mediaviewer/rm2551068929/?ref_=tt_md_11
Mike in NC
Our friends in Tampa will put their house on the market next week and cannot wait to get out of Florida forever.
geg6
Most of my friends who moved to FL back in the 80s have moved back or are working on leaving. It has just happened over the last few years. Some have directly stated that the state has turned into an expensive, low service shithole. And completely unaffordable homeowners insurance, if you can even get it. I try real hard to sympathize and not say I told you so way back when. I don’t always succeed.
mrmoshpotato
When other Rethuglicans think you have all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile…
Betty Cracker
Great Value Jackie O is as cynical, corrupt and power-hungry as her grotesque husband, so no one should feel bad about trashing Ms. DeSantis. She’s not just married to an asshole; she’s an asshole in her own right.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: we had a whole thread devoted to this yesterday
schrodingers_cat
@Ohio Mom: Good observations. That color is a difficult one to wear for almost anyone. I could see a blouse or shirt that’s mint green with a navy blue skirt or pants. But head to toe mint green makes you look pallid.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: I must have missed it.
Frankensteinbeck
@Ohio Mom:
If Dem voter turnout dropped by 20%, maybe DeSantis’s barely fig-leafed threat to arrest black people for voting worked.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: it was a good one
cope
At around 2 PM on 12/29/22, my wife, dog and I drove our packed Honda away from Central Florida, toward our new home in Western Colorado. We didn’t quite get out of the state that day (Tallahassee) but did the next. We have no desire to go back. All of us (the dog included) are already so much better off for it in every imaginable way. We did, indeed, vote with our feet, all 8 of them.
Elizabelle
@cope: I am very happy for you.
Kay
I know they’re busy vanquishing woke kindergarten teachers with their manly speeches at podiums, but it does seem they have to fix the property insurance problem. Are people just like “oh, well, I can’t buy insurance but at least Critical Race Theory has been eradicated”.
I would care about the insurance. But Texas residents don’t care about an electric grid, so maybe being uninsurable is a minor annoyance.
Betsy
@The Moar You Know: Thank you for that. 😂
I can’t stand his swollen earlobes or fat nose or rubbery lips. They seem turgid with spite and nastiness.
Gvg
@lollipopguild: Do you mean that sarcastically or ironically? Florida has plenty of homeless people and I expect we always will. People can survive outside in the winter. They migrate down here. We seem to have another surge right now and as usual it provokes a mean spirited backlash that doesn’t solve anything.
My sister went to med school with someone whose family was homeless for a few years and they camped in the Ocala State forest. Still managed to go to school apparently.
we will always have some homeless including from colder areas, we need to face it and try to come up with merciful solutions not indulge the ogres tantrums.
Mike in NC
Mrs. DeSantis is the Kari Lake of Florida, a shallow former TV personality with a lot of ambition.
sdhays
@Kay: They assume, whether they consciously think about it or not, that the Federal government will make them whole if anything happens to them.
That’s what feeling entitled is all about.
lollipopguild
@Gvg: Most states have homeless problems, but the press tends to focus on the blue states and cities while ignoring the homeless problems in red states and cities. If a lot of people pack up and move to Florida they end up creating many of the same problems that people left behind in the old state including homelessness.
TriassicSands
Ah, Florida governor Kim Jong Ron. My favorite.
Matt McIrvin
See, I’m unconvinced that the general public will find DeSantis unlikeable, because I hate him, and usually people I hate are “the ones you want to have a beer with” to most Americans. So this is hard for me to gauge.
TriassicSands
Today, if people vote with their feet and they go to Florida, I can only conclude that voting with their feet was necessary due to their having no brain. To move there now, it seems like you have to love humidity and fascism.
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom: That whole look is so, so bad. It looks like she got it off an end-of-season sales rack at J.C. Penney. Everything about it is bad.
The color is part of why it’s atrocious, for sure. When we moved into our house here in PGH, each of the second floor bedrooms had been painted a TERRIBLE color. One of the rooms was painted THAT COLOR with GOLD CURTAINS and GOLD CARPET.
We had the carpet ripped out STAT, and painted every wall white. That terrible color is straight out of 1987.
Tony G
@Kay: “aging boomers with deep pockets” moving to “retirement communities” in Florida. I’m an aging boomer (67 now). I have never understood why old people move to these “retirement communities”. It just seems like hell to me — being trapped in a “community” where everyone is old. My wife and I continue to live in the neighborhood where we’ve lived for the past 33 years, and I enjoy seeing noisy kids and teenagers running around the neighborhood. I really don’t understand these “aging boomers” — and there are millions of them. They’re rigid control-freaks, and it’s understandable that someone with that mind set would be a right-wing voter, supporting freaks like Trump and DeSantis.
Tony G
@sdhays: And they’re probably correct about that. Wealthy white people never have to take responsibility for their mistakes. It’s right there in the Constitution, and in the Bible!
Evap
Much as I loath governor Kemp here in GA, DeSantis makes him look reasonable. He’s proposing giving public school teachers raises, for example.
Miss Bee
@Suzanne: I agree–straight out of 1987 or straight out of a toothpaste tube.
Narya
@Tony G: for my parents, they were able to keep doing stuff; the association put together bus trips that didn’t require driving. For me, someday, I have no kids so might need help/support. I live on the second floor, no elevator. I love my place, but my 92-yr-old dad would never be able to go anywhere. In their current place my mom can get him in the car, etc.; she’s gonna be 88 in two weeks. She has friends and groups and they’ve found the other democrats and atheists in the bunch. That is, it’s complicated. :)
Steve in the ATL
@Evap: he learned from Roy Barnes’ mistake!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Using, as I understand it, the federal emergency funds most Republicans opposed. And your comment points to why I think Kemp and the tall guy with the fleece vest from VA are gonna be stronger candidates than DeSantis
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Is this another fashion thread? I feel qualified to comment cause I’m wearing my fanciest sweat-pants
cain
@Tony G: It’s because they don’t want to pay taxes to help schools or any other thing that doesn’t directly affect them. That you have deep pockets and going to Florida tells me that they are self centered assholes as they are willing to pay more just to get out of paying taxes for schools.
Or maybe they are horney fucks and think they’ll see a lot of skins – I understand there is a lot of sex with the neighbors going on in the villages.
Bostondreams
Relatedly, Florida’s new online civics training course for K-12 teachers just launched. 3 grand stipend for completion. 5 Hillsdale professors among the lecturers, on top of folks from Claremont and other conservative Christian colleges. You can tell the ideological goals for public ed just by the speakers. Thousands are expected to take it.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
Keats? Shakespeare? Bukowski? I can’t place the poem/poetry.
Rebels Dad
@cope: Congratulations! It’s such a relief, isn’t it?
rikyrah
@Ohio Mom:
Poll Tax
POLL TAX
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: Just like Trump and Melania.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Wow, that was so bad, I just couldn’t look away. For real. Even now I’m tempted to click the link and go back and look at it again.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: I have seen women (those who have to dress up pioneerlike and wear a bonnet) wear that colour. Could be a subtle shoutout to religious wackaloons.
Paul in KY
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Is that go-go minionwear from one of Austin Power’s nemesises??
The Truffle
Where is Florida’s ACLU?
Honestly, I can see RD running for president. And I can see Former Guy turning on him.
Purely anecdotal, but I also think a lot of the people moving to Florida are extreme right/MAGA types from New York and other Northeastern states who whine that we’re too “woke.” That and the aging MAGA boomers would explain a lot.
If so, expect a lot of families to pull up stakes and leave the state. Why stay somewhere that is hostile to you?
I actually hope Disney does just that. Just get out.
Meanwhile, Florida Dems really need some rebuilding/housecleaning if they want to continue.