Psychologically speaking, what is true requires no protection, and never becomes negative when challenged. On the other hand, what is false almost never stops trying to protect itself, which it does by finding fault with whatever or whoever challenges the false image behind which it always hides. – Guy Finley
Don’t know if my vote got counted. Doesn’t matter.
We have an open border, migrants pouring in – Republicans are fleeing the upper 49 like frightened lemmings.
It’s all floating downhill. Ergo, this is a red state.
Even better, I live in the same Congressional district as The Villages.
Confederate flags fly in my gated golfing community. 55+.
We decorate for Halloween, but we prohibit trick-or-treating.
Our Covid death rate is twice the national average.
It could be worse.
Sooner than later.
Who Would The Villages Back In A Trump-DeSantis Clash?
The world’s largest retirement community has long been a Republican stronghold.
By Hannah Critchfield for the Tampa Bay Times.
If they talked about politics at all, Sherri Lake knew that most of her neighbors voted like her: enthusiastically and down the line Republican.
It made the day after Donald Trump launched another White House run unnerving.
“I supported him when he ran the last time, and I supported him throughout his presidency,” Lake, 77, told her friends while standing among the golf carts outside her local clubhouse. “But I’m not going to vote for somebody who’s gonna lose.”
“I’m waiting to see how he conducts himself,” said Jo Ann Burkett, 73.
“He calls Ron ‘Ron DeSanctimonious!’” said Ismay Czarniecki, 70, of Florida’s governor. She is a member of the Republican Federated Women of The Villages club. “If that’s how he’s starting off…”
“He’s got diarrhea of the mouth,” added Lake. She paused. “But I have hopes for (Gov. Ron) DeSantis.”
’Hold your nose’
With square footage larger than Manhattan, The Villages, a sprawling retirement community in Central Florida, has long been considered a Republican stronghold.
The retiree haven increasingly reflects Florida’s changing politics. It isn’t a purple battleground — 75% of its voters are registered Republicans.
But with Trump’s campaign announcement and DeSantis emerging as a likely presidential contender in 2024, Republicans in The Villages are staring down what may be a contentious primary — one where they must choose between a former president they vehemently loved and a current governor who seems ready-made for national office.
“Ron has the same policies as Trump,” said Debbie Fleming, a Villages resident in her 50s. “And he’s just such a nice guy.”
On Nov. 16, the day after Trump announced his third presidential campaign, the Tampa Bay Times spoke to 25 Republicans in The Villages about whom they would back in a primary showdown between DeSantis and the former president.
From tennis courts to town squares, retirees in the conservative enclave, which had strongly supported both candidates in past runs for public office, were torn.
Five said they would stay loyal to Trump. Five were undecided. Fifteen said they’d choose DeSantis over Trump.
All had voted for Trump in past presidential elections and were pleased with his policies while in office.
It was the former president’s conduct — from attacks on fellow Republicans to his association with the violence of Jan. 6 — that raised doubts among some seniors about whether he would be the strongest candidate in 2024.
The interviews are anecdotal. But the sentiments shared by seniors in the retirement community mirror early polls among older Floridians statewide.
A recent survey conducted by Spectrum News and Siena College found that 56% of adults who were 65 or older viewed DeSantis favorably. In contrast, just 49% of Sunshine State seniors said they approved of Trump.
In a hypothetical 2024 match between Biden and DeSantis, DeSantis leads 48% to 42%, another October poll from Florida Atlantic University found, compared to Trump, who leads Biden 45% to 41%.
Each Villager said they’d nevertheless vote for Trump if he became the Republican nominee.
“Sure, hold your nose, vote for Trump,” said Mike Poynor, 56.
“But I don’t want him to run again,” echoed his friend, Steve Giardina, 70. “I liked what he did, but he’s got too much baggage now.”
‘I wish he would go away’
Seniors in scarlet baseball caps and blazers flooded into The Villages M.A.G.A. Club rally, the way Alycyn Culbertson had expected Republican voters to overtake the polls during the previous week’s midterms.
“This was supposed to be a red wave party,” said Culbertson, 72, while accepting tickets for the event in her Let’s Go Brandon shirt.
Roughly 70 people gathered at the Sterling Heights Pool and Recreation Center that evening, clad in equal parts “Trump 2024″ and “DeSantis 2022″: Stay free Florida!” memorabilia.
“Fox News is now against Donald Trump,” a speaker declared at one point, eliciting groans from the crowd.
Many remained confident that Trump was the Republican party’s best chance of winning the presidency in 2024.
“He’s got a real job ahead of him,” said club member Suzanne Zimmerman, as Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” played on the speaker.
“But if anybody can do it, Trump can,” said Zimmerman, noting she believed Trump-backed candidates saw mixed results during midterms due to a lack of fundraising and campaign experience.
“DeSantis can learn — he’s quick. But we need the teacher in office.”
Other conservative Villagers had their doubts.
“He just seems to be toxic to the party,” said resident Larry Hawkins, 72, outside one of the community’s golf courses that morning. “DeSantis isn’t as controversial. He has an excellent military background and family — and I don’t know if that would work nationally, but it sure worked here in Florida.”
“I am terrified,” said Nancy Mitchell, 74, while sitting down for a game of Catch Phrase with her husband and two friends at a nearby tennis court. “I wish (Trump) would go away. I think he is irrational — and I remember what it was like here in The Villages last time he ran. People did some really crazy things…
“I feel like our governor got us through the pandemic,” she added.
“It’s going to come down to the two of them. But Trump should not say bad things about DeSantis,” Fleming said before entering a local country club. “It’s not funny to us.”
“A lot of people didn’t vote for Biden in the last election — they voted against Trump,” added Rick Stried, 76. “There’s an awful lot of no-Trumpers.”
“I thought he did a very good job when he was president,” said Jeff Watson, 73. “I just wish he would chill out a little bit. Ronald Reagan had something he called the 11th commandment: ‘Thou shalt not talk ill about your fellow Republicans.’”
‘I care about results more than words’
Some conservative Villagers doubted whether their perspective accurately reflected the feelings of Republican and swing voters nationally.
Florida emerged as an outlier in this year’s midterms. DeSantis and Sen. Marco Rubio beat their Democratic opponents by double-digits and Republicans attained super-majorities in both chambers, leading many to mark the elections as a final nail in the coffin of the state’s purple status.
Other states, including those with far-right candidates endorsed by Trump, didn’t see the red wave some anticipated.
Many Villagers, particularly those who strongly favored the governor for 2024, also worried that living in Florida gave them an outsized sense of DeSantis’ importance.
“I’m concerned about whether he has the same level of support nationally as Trump,” said Watson. “If I had to choose, I would choose Donald Trump. Because I care about results more than words.”
Others saw this as the governor’s strongest advantage — believing DeSantis could attract voters who would never dare pick Trump.
Take Keith Barron. The 65-year-old and his wife, Suzanne Barron, 62, are Democrats. But the couple considers themselves “fringe-y.”
“This historically has been Trump Town,” he said. “But I voted for Biden last election. Trump is an (expletive).”
He inhaled briefly. “That being said, I think I would probably vote for DeSantis over Biden. He’s very pro-environment and pro-business.”
‘Very pro-environment and pro-business’ is one of those Virgin Birth-level beliefs that have become increasingly popular.
Like ‘clean coal’ and ‘very good people on both sides.’
First time I warned you folks about Donald, it was 1989. But did you listen?
First time I warned you about Ronald was when he ran against that crack-smoking black guy under Federal investigation, who was clearly the lesser of two evils. Eight weeks in rehab plus weekly therapy, we’d had ourselves a servant of the people. Instead we got El Douche.
Ron DeSantis Is An Optical Illusion
He’ll be sold as a paragon of reason. Don’t buy it.
By Frank Bruni Contributing Opinion Writer for the New York Times and Wild Dog. 12/01/2022
Elon Musk is a geyser of gibberish, so it’s important not to make too much of anything he says. But a recent Twitter thread of his deserved the attention it got, if not for the specific detail on which most journalists focused.
They led with Musk’s statement that he would support a Ron DeSantis candidacy for the presidency in 2024. That obviously disses one Donald Trump, though it should come as no surprise: Magnates like Musk typically cling to the moment’s shiniest toys, and DeSantis, fresh off his re-election, is a curiously gleaming action figure.
But how Musk framed his attraction to the Florida governor was revealing — and troubling. He expressed a desire for a candidate who’s “sensible and centrist,” implying that DeSantis is both.
In what universe? He’s “sensible and centrist” only by the warped yardsticks of Trump, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kari Lake and the like. But those yardsticks will be used frequently as various Republicans join the 2024 fray. And therein lies real danger.
Trump’s challengers will be defined in relation to him, casting them in a deceptively flattering light. They’ll be deemed steady because he’s not, on the ball because he’s out to lunch, enlightened because they don’t sup with Holocaust deniers. They’ll be realists to his fantasist, institutionalists to his nihilist, preservationists to his arsonist.
None of those descriptions will be true. Some will be persuasive nonetheless.
That dynamic is already doing wonders for DeSantis as he flies high over a very low bar. “Look!” say Republicans eager to take back the White House. “It’s Superman!” Hardly. But his promoters are hoping that the shadow of Trump produces such an optical illusion.
“Plenty of Americans across the partisan divide would have good reason to root for him,” Jim Geraghty, the senior political correspondent for the conservative journal National Review, wrote in a recent essay in The Washington Post that praised DeSantis. Parts of it made DeSantis sound consensus-minded, conciliatory. That’s some trick.
Geraghty added: “Given the bizarre state of American politics during the Trump era, DeSantis would represent a return to normality.” The “given” in that sentence is working overtime, and “normality” fits DeSantis about as well as “sensible” and “centrist” do.
It is not normal to release a campaign ad, as DeSantis did last month, that explicitly identifies you as someone created and commanded by God to pursue the precise political agenda that you’re pursuing. Better words for that include “messianic,” “megalomaniacal” and “delusional.”
It is not sensible to open a new state office devoted to election crimes when there is scant evidence of any need for it. That is called “pandering.” It is also known as a “stunt.”
It is not centrist to have a key aide who tweeted that anyone who opposed the “Don’t Say Gay” education law in Florida was “probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children.” Those were the words of Christina Pushaw, who was then DeSantis’s press secretary and “transformed the governor’s state messaging office into a hyperpartisan extension of his political efforts,” as Matt Dixon noted in Politico, adding that she “used the position to regularly pick public fights with reporters on social media, amplify right-wing media outlets and conservative personalities and attack individuals who oppose or challenge DeSantis.”
DeSantis’s response to her derisive and divisive antics? He made her the “rapid response director” for his re-election campaign. Because that’s the normal, sensible, centrist thing to do.
DeSantis used his power as governor to punish Disney for daring to dissent from his political views. He used migrants as political pawns and sent two planes full of them to Martha’s Vineyard. He pushed for an extreme gerrymander in Florida that marginalized minority voters. He’s a darling of the National Rifle Association.
And the signature line from his stump speech is that Florida is “where woke goes to die.” I’m with him on the destructiveness of peak wokeness, but base-camp wokeness has some lessons and virtues, which a sensible centrist might acknowledge and reflect on. Can’t Florida be where woke goes to decompress in the sun and surf and re-emerge in more relaxed form?
DeSantis himself might currently reject the labels that Musk gave him: It’s the right-wing-warrior side that promises to propel him most forcefully through the primaries, should he enter them. But he or any nominee not named Trump would likely segue to the general election by flashing shades of moderation.
In DeSantis’s case, there’d be chatter galore about his 19-point re-election victory as proof of his appeal’s breadth. But another Republican, Senator Marco Rubio, won re-election in Florida by sixteen points, suggesting that forces beyond DeSantis’s dubiously pan-partisan magnetism were in play. And Florida is redder than it used to be.
The extremists and conspiracists so prevalent in today’s Republican Party have distorted the frame for everyone else, permitting the peddling of DeSantis as some paragon of reason. Be savvier than Musk. Don’t buy it.
This just in from The Bulwark.
Just Wait Until You Get to Know Ron DeSantis
Your daily must-read from Mark Leibovich in The Atlantic:
People who know him better and have watched him longer are skeptical of his ability to take on the former president. DeSantis, they say, is no thoroughbred political athlete. He can be awkward and plodding. And Trump tends to eviscerate guys like that.
“He was standoffish in general,” the Virginia Republican Barbara Comstock, a former House colleague of DeSantis’s, told me.
“A strange no-eye-contact oddball,” Rick Wilson, a Republican media consultant, wrote on Resolute Square.
“I’d rather have teeth pulled without anesthetic than be on a boat with Ron DeSantis,” says Mac Stipanovich, a Tallahassee lobbyist who set sail from the GOP over his revulsion for Trump and his knockoffs.
To sum up: DeSantis is not a fun and convivial dude. He prefers to keep his earbuds in.
His “Step away from the vehicle” vibes are strong.
Deprogramming The Neighbors. http://www.jackdogwelch.com/?p=45849