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I suppose if you went back and read everything I’ve ever written, you could be forgiven for thinking I’m a big ol’ liberal lefty. Yes, it’s true: I believe in some super-controversial things, for instance, that people should have affordable healthcare, that higher education should not cause a lifetime of indebtedness, and that Rudy Giuliani really sucks.

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On the other hand, I also embrace some things that are, at least traditionally, within the wheelhouse of the Republican Party. I’m a big fan of capitalism, within reasonable boundaries, anyway. I’ve written several things in support of GOP-generated legislation, on the increasingly rare occasions these days when a GOP lawmaker proposes a sensical bill. In spite of everything, I still kind of like Elon Musk. Additionally, I own a shitload of guns.

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Which is all to say, while you won’t find me voting in a Republican primary anytime soon, I feel a certain kinship to the folks who will. Hopefully enough to comment somewhat competently on what attributes might be attractive to the right-leaning electorate.

When it comes to any sort of attractiveness, Ron DeSantis comes up glaringly short. I really don’t think Fox News is going to succeed in its obvious campaign to shove DeSantis down everyone’s throats.

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Have you heard the guy speak? Yeah, he manages to cram the trending right-wing catchphrases into every appearance, but he has all the natural charisma of a naked mole-rat.

It’s not endearing to interrupt and yell at people for no good reason just so you can selectively edit a video clip to try to make it look like you’re standing up to the liberal media or whatever. Interrupting and shouting nonsense is the most annoying and hackneyed lawyer trick out there, and I don’t imagine it served DeSantis any better in his legal career than it has in his media appearances. Plus, DeSantis apparently used to pronounce the phrase “Thai food” as “thigh food” and got mad when people corrected him. Weird.

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Look, I loathe Donald Trump. No one can deny that the guy was entertaining though.

DeSantis, not so much. His takeaway from Trump’s success seems to be that triggering liberals is what the Republican base wants. However, the calculated antics of DeSantis mostly result in confusion across the political spectrum.

I don’t know how many liberals out there are all that concerned about DeSantis making life a little harder for Disney. It’s a Fortune 500 company, and at the end of the day, it is pretty easy to just not go to Disney’s overpriced Orlando theme park if DeSantis succeeds in ruining it.

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Likewise, his vendetta against “wokeness” in Florida schools appears ill-targeted. Does anyone really think that a public school’s curriculum is where people learn things like that it is perfectly OK to be gay if you are, in fact, a gay person? I graduated from a public high school in 2004. I don’t remember the existence of gay people even being mentioned one single time throughout my formal K-12 education. Yet somehow, I and almost everyone else in my generation figured out all on our own that gay people should have the same rights as everyone else.

Of course, DeSantis also has a habit of spending his state’s tax dollars to fly some other state’s migrants to yet another state, where they are then treated well, making him look like a total asshole. Again, very odd behavior.

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Although Trump may be losing some of his steam as he ages, he used to be genuinely funny. DeSantis is only unintentionally funny. Trump is also actually spot on with his criticism of DeSantis as sanctimonious. I would think devoutly religious people would be as turned off as everyone else by the facially blasphemous claim that you were divinely crafted to lead. Wow, how lucky for us that a living angel has been sent to save us from trans kids and sex scenes in books and learning about slavery.

Say what you will about Trump, but he is not boring, and he is not a prude. Today’s GOP voters want to be entertained; they want to be engaged. Nobody is ever going to be enthusiastic enough about Ron DeSantis to storm the U.S. Capitol for him though.

Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].

Topics

Donald Trump, Election 2024, Government, Jonathan Wolf, Politics, Ron DeSantis, Wokeness