It was Donald Trump who called for “law and order” following Black Lives Matter protests last summer.
But it was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who successfully pushed through an “anti-riot” bill that chills civil disobedience and that civil liberties groups say is likely to put peaceful protesters behind bars.
It was Trump who cast doubts and told lies about mail-in ballots and the safety of U.S. elections.
It was DeSantis (with help from the Republican-controlled Legislature) who made it harder for Floridians to vote by mail.
It was Trump who picked a fight with tech companies after he was banned from Twitter and Facebook for inciting violence in the wake of the Capitol attacks on Jan. 6.
It was DeSantis who signed a law that fines social-media platforms that ban political candidates without warning up to $250,000 per day.
To DeSantis’ unsuspecting critics, these actions might seem like an attempt to air grievances on behalf of the former president, whose endorsement catapulted DeSantis from an unknown congressman three years ago to governor of the nation’s third-largest state.
But DeSantis has proven he’s more than a faithful disciple.
In the 2 1/2 years he’s been in office, DeSantis has advanced the Trump brand more successfully than Trump. That’s largely because DeSantis works with a Legislature that’s also in lockstep with his agenda while the former president dealt with the constraints of a deadlocked Congress.
The 42-year-old governor finished ahead of Trump himself in a straw poll of 30 potential 2024 presidential candidates taken at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver over the weekend. Respondents were asked to choose all the candidates of whom they approve for president. Of the 371 answers, 74% favored DeSantis and 71% chose Trump. DeSantis also polled far ahead of third-place U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (43%), former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (39%) and Donald Trump Jr. (25%).
Straw polls are far from being scientific, but these results offer a glimpse at the effectiveness of DeSantis’ strategy ever since Trump carried the Sunshine State in 2020 by a larger margin than in 2016.
DeSantis has carefully orchestrated his official actions this year — from signing the elections law on Fox News while prohibiting other media outlets from attending, to his announcement last week that he will send Florida law enforcement officers to the southern border — as a dog and pony show for conservative media.
To the benefit of DeSantis’ potential presidential aspirations — and to the detriment of Florida — it’s working. He deserves credit for his political astuteness but he also reaps the benefits from the lack of an organized Democratic opposition in a state that’s still considered “purple” but often acts as deep red.
While Democrats try to figure out why they can’t win statewide elections and spend energy fighting within their own ranks (as happened in the Florida Senate when they ousted Minority Leader Gary Farmer three days before the end of the legislative session), DeSantis and the rest of the GOP are in lockstep. They have been disciplined in fighting culture wars (i.e. the recent ban on Critical Race Theory at public schools) and passing laws that don’t address Florida’s pressing needs, but that play well on Fox News and far-right online platforms such as One America News Network (i.e., the ban on transgender female athletes). They have also passed laws that are good sound bites for DeSantis but haven’t done much. An example is the bill passed last year that requires governments and their contractors to use E-Verify to screen for undocumented workers but has little teeth and hasn’t generated penalties, the Orlando Sentinel reported last week.
Could DeSantis’ Trump 2.0 brand — same inflammatory policies minus the inflammatory tweets — be the future of the Republican Party? We have three years to find out. Until then, Florida will continue to be DeSantis’ experimentation lab.
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