Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appears to have three things going for him.
First off, he’s not Donald Trump.
Second, he’s sort of clever.
Third, he’s comparatively young, a year younger than Donald Trump … Junior.
Of the three, the one that may come back to haunt him is the second one. As with many conservatives, cleverness or humor often winds up playing a snide or mean.
At least for now, DeSantis seems to be the future to Republicans while Trump is the past. At an event in Las Vegas showcasing possible 2024 candidates, DeSantis used one of his favorite lines that play well to the goobers.
“Florida is where ‘woke’ goes to die.”
Uh, Ron? That line only works until people realize Florida is where everything goes to die. It’s God’s Waiting Room.
DeSantis may have other problems. Like a bachelor’s degree from Yale and a law degree from Satan’s own law school, Harvard. What’s the matter Ron, couldn’t get in to Florida State?
His Ivy League education could definitely end up haunting him with the goobers. When he spoke about standing up to the federal government during the pandemic, he said he “refused to let the state of Florida descend into some type of Fauci-ian dystopia.”
Uh, Ron? Pretty sure your average Florida goober has never even heard of Faust and has no idea what a dystopia is. If you’re serious about running for president in the party of Klan Mom and Matt Gaetz, you’re going to have to dumb it down a little.
Or maybe not.
When Trump ran for president in 2016, he did nothing to make people really believe he loved the goobers. In fact, his entire campaign with them could be summed up in one short sentence.
I hate the people you hate.
And with the decline of the overall intelligence in the electorate, that was pretty much all it took for Trump to win them over.
Four years later, when COVID-19 came along, all it took for DeSantis to win over Florida’s goobers was to promise them he wasn’t going to let the federal government tell them what to do.
If you look at the numbers (as of today), you can see how well that has worked out. California has nearly twice the population of Florida, but not even 20 percent more deaths. There are states with more deaths per one million population than Florida, but not many.
Florida’s numbers might be skewered a little by the much higher percentage of elderly goobers, but essentially, DeSantis is telling his people that if they want to die, he’s not going to stop them.
I’m probably overstating it by essentially using the terms “goobers” as a synonym for Floridians. I know at least four people in the state who don’t qualify as morons. My son-in-laws parents are intelligent people, as is a long-term friend of mine who lives in Sarasota. I even have a friend and former colleague who was just elected mayor of a good-sized city in the Miami metropolitan area.
I respect the intelligence of all four, even though I’m pretty sure two of them voted for DeSantis.
Of course, three of them are past 70 and the fourth is past 60.
Or as some people might call them, typical Floridians.
At 44, DeSantis has a huge advantage over Trump in the long run.
Because while America seems to have fewer and fewer old people looking down the road, there seem to be more and more goobers all the time.