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DeSantis's Long Game, Brought To Us By Koch and Assorted Oligarchs
"Ron DeSantis Likes His Culture Wars for a Reason" by Jamelle Bouie, Jan 24, 2023As a congressman, serving three terms from 2013 to 2018 (when he ran for governor), DeSantis was one of the founders of the House Freedom Caucus, the most hard-line and conservative faction in the House Republican conference, now in the spotlight because of its leadership battle with Speaker Kevin McCarthy and its driving role in using the debt ceiling to force spending cuts on an unsuspecting public...
DeSantis believes, according to his 2011 book, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama,” that the framers of the Constitution “strived to construct a system of government that prevented government-mandated wealth redistribution.” Turning his attention to the Affordable Care Act and the federal bureaucracy, DeSantis condemns both as “administrative despotism” that have exerted “stifling constraints on the whole of society.” And while he doesn’t take direct aim at the New Deal and its offspring — the whole book is framed as an attack on the Obama administration — his arguments against redistributive policy should apply as much to Social Security as they do to Obamacare. It is not for nothing that Florida is one of 11 states that has not adopted the Medicaid expansion...
The upshot of all this is that DeSantis’s opponents should, as much as possible, refuse to play his game. You don’t have to confront him on his terrain. You could instead force him to acknowledge or account for his other, more unpopular political commitments. Interestingly, this is the approach that Donald Trump might take to rebuff DeSantis in a Republican primary contest. “One area in which Trump and his allies smell that kind of weakness in DeSantis is on Social Security,” Rolling Stone reports. Trump, it should be said, used this strategy to great success against his Republican opponents in 2016.
It might be too much to ask liberals and Democrats to take a lesson from the former president, but here they should. The best way to neutralize DeSantis as a political force might be to spend less time on cultural conflict and more time making the clear case that if given the chance, he would slash what’s left of the safety net and use the proceeds to help the rich stay rich.
DeSantis believes, according to his 2011 book, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama,” that the framers of the Constitution “strived to construct a system of government that prevented government-mandated wealth redistribution.” Turning his attention to the Affordable Care Act and the federal bureaucracy, DeSantis condemns both as “administrative despotism” that have exerted “stifling constraints on the whole of society.” And while he doesn’t take direct aim at the New Deal and its offspring — the whole book is framed as an attack on the Obama administration — his arguments against redistributive policy should apply as much to Social Security as they do to Obamacare. It is not for nothing that Florida is one of 11 states that has not adopted the Medicaid expansion...
The upshot of all this is that DeSantis’s opponents should, as much as possible, refuse to play his game. You don’t have to confront him on his terrain. You could instead force him to acknowledge or account for his other, more unpopular political commitments. Interestingly, this is the approach that Donald Trump might take to rebuff DeSantis in a Republican primary contest. “One area in which Trump and his allies smell that kind of weakness in DeSantis is on Social Security,” Rolling Stone reports. Trump, it should be said, used this strategy to great success against his Republican opponents in 2016.
It might be too much to ask liberals and Democrats to take a lesson from the former president, but here they should. The best way to neutralize DeSantis as a political force might be to spend less time on cultural conflict and more time making the clear case that if given the chance, he would slash what’s left of the safety net and use the proceeds to help the rich stay rich.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/24/opinion/desantis-florida-culture-w.html?unlocked_article_code=LzmDmN2DqF3m8-OGf0mke6ITS32F-VjDNfwIgmZ4ljm6VRlOfutPrEoWb72DdTuHfT34mmRhiPGsZzcha-HUy-4zLVwwVJdG5cG7C09j7CLrCLxAJB7L8KmPR3uyfPAScJbiG0sVD7QttK9MM_Iv9vQgml81THpZGMIcW3AfrW3MhSYklYIp7vxdNKHpStrNdzfJs5KQo9y9971w8mExT9s5B3gThQTAuCHvyDOIGuBGKMs6URBUEgcOX4PHUIjwUm6BA7b-c5Mt4WJzfRWspT3M_iCoCuU4U4VUQC4euR0q3vQfHCVwU9fnAkFrhCSaq4Psmj0WvsLrhj3UC9B7lJDQaRA&smid=share-url
From E&E News Greenwire
Another noteworthy donation to the pro-DeSantis group came from Koch Industries, an industrial behemoth led by billionaire Charles Koch. Koch Industries donated $25,000 to the Friends of Ron DeSantis PAC on Oct. 30, 2022.
https://www.eenews.net/articles/meet-ron-desantis-energy-donors/
Assorted donors From Open Secrets
https://www.opensecrets.org/officeholders/ron-desantis/contributors?cycle=2022&id=17657831
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