Winners And Losers

It’s early, but in purely political terms it appears that Ron DeSantis emerges as a clear winner in GOP politics and Trump is looking like damaged goods. Life isn’t fair. In many ways, DeSantis built on Trump’s appeal to conservative voters. That’s how politics works. Trump tried a bit too hard to get along. DeSantis followed advice, and got in the Woke Crowd’s face. If the GOP does retake the House, it looks like it will be largely, if not totally, because of DeSantis’ redistricting.

Don Surber, an astute observer of the political scene, writes this morning about DeSantis’ victory and what it means. His title derives from DeSantis’ victory speech:

Daily Wire @realDailyWire

DeSantis: "We have embraced freedom. We have maintained law and order. We have protected the rights of parents. We have respected our taxpayers, and we reject woke ideology...We will never ever surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die!"

'Never surrender to the woke mob'

After last night's shocking loss in the counting of votes, conservatives need a little hope. We got a ton of it from Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

He took on LGBT, transgender-mania and Disney. And that was just in March. He opened his state for business during the pandemic panic and triggered an economic boon. He is a fighter for the people.

Floridians rewarded him on Tuesday with a landslide victory.

To cheers of Two More Years instead of the four more years he won, DeSantis delivered a rock 'em, sock 'em victory speech.

He said, "The people have delivered their verdict: Freedom is here to stay. Now, thanks to the overwhelming support of the people of Florida we not only won this election; we have rewritten the political map."

Indeed he has. His redistricting plan flipped four Democrat House seats read. He was not afraid to break up a racist and gerrymandered black majority district.

He said, "We saw freedom and our very way of life in so many other jurisdictions in this country wither on the vine. Florida held the line. We chose facts over fear. We chose education over indoctrination."

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DeSantis said, "Florida was a refuge of sanity when the world locked down. We stood as a citadel of freedom for people across this country and indeed across the world. We faced attacks, we took the hits, we weathered the storms, but we stood our ground. We did not back down. We had the conviction to guide us, and we had the courage to lead. We made promises to the people of Florida, and we have delivered on those promises. And so today, after four years, the people have delivered their verdict. Freedom is here to stay."

Fact-check: True.

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In the rest of the post Don quotes extensively from DeSantis’ victory speech.

As in all of life, DeSantis can’t rest on his laurels. He must continue what got him to this point and, above all, show that he’s not captive to special interests. But the reality for now is that DeSantis remains one of the only major GOP politician—that excludes Putin, of course, just to be clear, but also Trump—who took on Wokism in all its manifestations. We can’t be sure how sincere he is in all that, but the same is/was true of Trump. I voted for Trump twice with that understanding, but believing he would follow through for whatever reasons. Maybe DeSantis has adopted these positions simply because he correctly understood the political dynamics of America, on advice given, possibly as also in the case of Glenn Youngkin. For now, that’s good enough to make him the winner—he was at least smart enough to seize that opportunity. There are still two years to go before 2024, and DeSantis may yet face difficult decisions, but for now he comes out a winner.

Steve Sailer has a smart article at Taki’s Magazine today. The article, as he states, was written yesterday. In light of today, however, it may offer some hope going forward. Not that the hope he offers promises any easy or non-messy outcome—the probability is most likely to the contrary. Here’s a lengthy excerpt, but it’s well worth your time to read it all. The title is from Sailer’s blog, but the link is the article at Taki’s:

My Models of the Two Parties

To my mind, the Republican Party suffers from the contradictions of being traditionally the party of the executive class but also increasingly lately the party of the working class. I’m not sure if the inevitable economic conflicts between management and labor within the modern GOP can ever really be squared in the long term.

One fundamental problem is that most of the expertise at complex tasks like changing the tax code is of course found at the higher economic level. Moreover, working-class Republicans lack large institutions thinking hard about how to make subtle tweaks to benefit them, the way that, say, sixty years ago the AFL-CIO employed numerous smart lawyers, economists, and lobbyists to dream up reforms to benefit working-class Democrats at the expense of executive-class Republicans.

Perhaps that helps explain the Trump cult of personality: the hope that at least one guy will fight for you because all the enemies he’s made means he doesn’t have any other friends.

In general, Republicans lack institutional support. …

The GOP has engaged in effective institution-building to keep conservatism intellectually viable among judges via the Federalist Society, but that’s a rare exception. In general, big institutions such as academia, media, and tech have been increasingly closely aligned with Democrats, with a massive chilling effect on freedom of expression.

Hence, Republicans tend to be dependent upon individual ideological entrepreneurs. Sometimes that works. For instance, a couple of years ago Christopher Rufo finally solved the problem of how to talk about growing antiwhite defamation without mentioning antiwhite defamation, which the media won’t allow and with which most moderate and conservative whites are uncomfortable anyway: use the academic label “critical race theory.”

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On the other hand, the Democrats have been trying hard during the Great Awokening to give the two economic classes within the GOP at least a common cultural ground in defense of reality and sanity.

By the way, today is the feast of the Dedication of the Basilica of St. John Lateran. The “epistle” is actually from the Revelation to John, 21:2-5:

And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride is adorned for her husband. 3 Then I heard a loud voice from the throne say, "Behold, God's dwelling is now with men. He shall dwell with them and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be with them.1 4 He'll wipe every tear from their eyes 2 and death shall be no more--no more grief or crying or pain, for what was before has passed away."

5 Then the One seated on the throne said, "Behold, I'm making all things new!"

1 Ez 37:27; Lv 26:11-12

2 Is 25:8

This is our true hope—not in men. To be on the winning side.