DeSantis Vs. Hated GOP EstablishmentBy Rod Dreher
June 21, 2022
This part of the New Yorker‘s profile of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is saying the quiet part out loud:
For decades, the Democratic Party had commanded a majority of Florida’s registered voters. But the state was changing, as Trump’s election helped energize a shift in political affinities. The Republican Party’s rank and file became increasingly radical, and G.O.P. leaders appeared only too happy to follow them. “There was always an element of the Republican Party that was batshit crazy,” Mac Stipanovich, the chief of staff to Governor Bob Martinez, a moderate Republican, told me. “They had lots of different names—they were John Birchers, they were ‘movement conservatives,’ they were the religious right. And we did what every other Republican candidate did: we exploited them. We got them to the polls. We talked about abortion. We promised—and we did nothing. They could grumble, but their choices were limited.
“So what happened?” Stipanovich continued. “Trump opened Pandora’s box and let them out. And all the nasty stuff that was in the underbelly of American politics got a voice. What was thirty-five per cent of the Republican Party is now eighty-five per cent. And it’s too late to turn back.”
Read it all.
Jeremy Carl is right about the GOP establishment, though I think the NYer piece, though clearly hostile to DeSantis, is worth reading:
https://twitter.com/jeremycarl4/status/1538978121537376256Last night I got this text stream from a sophisticated conservative friend back in the US (I changed it slightly to hide his identifying details]:
Having spent a week hiking and rafting in the highways, byways, and towns along or near the Appalachian Trails and river ways, I have a greater appreciation for the Great Disintegration underway in these (Dis)United States:
1. The Blue Collar tradesmen who once formed the backbone of the Democratic Party distrust and HATE the “symbol manipulators” in the coastal Commanding Heights of NYC, Boston, LA, and Palo Alto.
And it is more cultural than political: Republican Romney is despised as much as Democrat Hillary.
The Deplorables are in the verge of revolt — and many are Hispanic business owners who hold to the Old Ways, which explains the Red Wave in South Texas.
2. JD Vance accurately described the disintegration of Hillbilly families wrought by globalization, cohabitation, pornography, and drugs.
I mentally assented to the concept, but was largely insulated from the physical consequences while living in [a major metropolitan area].
Our elites have callously destroyed Middle America and most of these unmarried men will never become computer coders.
Andrew Yang is correct: we better have a game plan for working class Middle Americans who once worked in factories, drove trucks, or served in the military / law enforcement.
No unequal civilization can survive this many “lost boys” addicted to booze, meth, and porn.
3. Racism explains much of the Past, but not much of the Present and probably nothing of the Future.
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Interesting, the comment about Trump and the GOP donor establishment, linking them both as drags on the Right. I get the point: that the situation is becoming desperate for the kind of people Trump claimed to speak for, and they can’t tolerate another leader who says what they want to hear, but who does not, or who cannot (because of his own personal limitations), do anything substantive to help them. This is why I keep saying we don’t need the Return of Trump; we need an American Viktor Orban: a cunning politician who understands the nature of the fight in front of us, and who knows how to use power to advance the interests of his voters, against institutions captured by the Left.
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Source:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/ron-desantis-hated-gop-establishment-republicans/
