Ron DeSantis seems determined to fade into “Presidential also-ran” history by running on roughly the same stuff every far-right Republican for 20 years. Recently, he said he’d eliminate the exact same federal agencies Rick Perry said he would in 2012 (Education, Commerce, Energy, and IRS), apparently oblivious that Perry went on to lead the Energy Department, so even old Rick must not have thought they were too bad.
Yet seeing him reheat the same old tired conservative tripe, I thought “Man, Rick Perry’s looking rough” these days, before I realized that beady-eyed photo accompanying the same old headlines was actually of DeSantis rather than the more boy-ish Perry.
Ironically, DeSanti’s by-the-numbers rhetoric is accidental proof that one of the reasons Trump caught such fire with the conservative/Republican base is because so many of their “leaders” are placeholder stooges for ALEC and the Heritage Foundation.
Scott Walker…Scott Brownback…Rick Scott…Rick Santorum…Rick Perry…Paul Ryan…Rand Paul…Ron Paul…Ron Johnson…Ron DeSantis…George Santos…Josh Hawley…Neil Gorsuch…Chuck Grassley…Chris Sununu…Chris McDaniel…Chris Christie…Kris Kobach…Charles Koch…Brett Kavanaugh…Tom Cotton…Ted Cruz…Matt Gaetz…Mitch McConnell…Kevin McCarthy…
It’s like some “Fill in the blank” placeholder politician that says the same shit, and usually even sort-of looks the same. [Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis could be brothers.]
By contrast, Trump came in with his gale force hurricane of bullshit and gave the people something kind-of new to watch. When commentators kept calling him a “carnival barker” and “circus clown,” they were right, but also missing that that’s a huge part of his appeal in a party that had three flavors for its next generation: Federalist Society-puppet governors/senators with interchangeable names, token black guys 98% of black people don’t like (Tim Scott, Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain), and “do as I say, not as I do” ultra-rightwing women that claim to be uber-Christian but have no interest in staying married (Boebert, Marjorie, Palin, Jeanine Pirro, Megyn Kelly, Martha McSally, various Trump women) or not cheating on their husbands (Nikki Haley, Kristi Noem, Joni Ernst).