It was one year ago today that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled former Florida Congressman and current Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who was narrowly elected in 2018. Back in 2012, in his first Congressional run, DeSantis ran as a Tea Party candidate trying to get whatever momentum was left out of that toxic movement, and earned a second term by raving about Benghazi as much as possible in 2014. By 2016, DeSantis was feeling cocky enough that he thought he would be able to fill the void left by Marco Rubio who was leaving his U.S. Senate seat open, and promised he wouldn’t run, so DeSantis made a run for U.S. Senate. It wasn’t going so well, with polls showing not just that DeSantis would be crushed in the general election by any Democratic candidate, but that he would finish not just behind David Jolly, but even behind Carlos Beruff, a complete lunatic and political outsider. When Rubio reneged on his promise to run for a second term for office, it really made DeSantis’ decision to instead run for re-election for his House seat look far less craven.
In 2018, DeSantis sought the office being vacated by Voldemort-cosplayer Rick Scott due to term limits. This is troubling to us here at CSGOPOTD because of various alliances that DeSantis has with… well, hatemongers. The Southern Poverty Law Center noted in April of 2017 that Ron DeSantis was teaming up with fellow Congressman Bill Johnson to form the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus, and in that endeavor, acting as its chairman, enlisted the help of Daniel Pipes, an anti-Islamic “activist” who has spent three decades demonizing Muslims in the political sphere, including proposing Muslim detention camps in the United States, and claiming that Muslims orchestrated the Oklahoma City bombing and not the anti-government militia lunatics who actually did it.
That relationship with a xenophobic bigot is not an outlier, by any stretch. Only a few weeks after the 2017 election, Ron DeSantis appeared at David Horowitz’s “Restoration Weekend”, a rather polite name for an event that is perhaps better classified as an Islamophobic hate rally, which that particular weekend, featured White Nationalist speakers like Steve Bannon, actual Neo-Nazi Sebastian Gorka, and Milo Yiannopoulos, who had already been revealed to have spoken several times in favor of pedophilia, as if his racist agenda wasn’t enough of a reason to be disgusted by him. And yet, there was DeSantis on stage, speaking alongside both Milo and Bannon, without any shame whatsoever. (We haven’t forgotten, Ron.)
So, we’ve established already that Ron DeSantis is allying himself with the Alt-Right/Neo-Nazi/White Nationalist wing of the GOP, and perhaps no greater evidence of that is the pathetic way he’s been trying to defend Donald Trump from the Mueller investigation. In August of 2017, he was actually trying to campaign within Congress to place a six-month timetable on the probe into any collusion between Trump and Russia. That has continued until the present day, when he’s been a frequent guest pundit on Fox News to try and taint the findings of the investigators further, claiming that the investigation was “infected with bias” from the start. Now, why would anyone trying to win office in 2018, during a Blue Wave year, do something so stupid?
Maybe you’d get the idea that DeSantis being proud of being arm-to-arm with those intolerant jackasses means he has some courageous streak… HA! No. Because the day after yet another tragic mass shooting in Florida, this time in Parkland, Florida, a local television reporter that wasn’t satisfied with DeSantis posting “thoughts and prayers” on Twitter put a microphone in front of the Florida Congressman to ask him if there would be any gun control measures he might support to prevent such a tragedy from happening in the future… and he cravenly ran away claiming he “had to go down” as if there was a vote about to happen.
His voting record as a Congressman showed him vote for Disaster Relief Funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy (but you know he would want disaster relief if a hurricane hit Florida, and he voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown and then the time came to vote to re-open the federal government, DeSantis voted to keep it closed. as well as a variety of anti-choice, pro-gun legislation through the years. DeSantis also voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act scores of times, and even voted to strip the protections granted by the Americans with Disabilities Act prior to leaving office in 2018.
Since becoming Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis has still been awful, releasing a statement to honor the victims of the Pulse shooting but neglecting to make any mention of it being a hate crime against the LGBTQ community, and then, blaming that omission on his own staff (you still signed it, Ron), Around the same time, DeSantis had a major purge where seven members of his staff quit on the same day (and no one is still sure if there’s a connection). Still, DeSantis is doing what he can to take credit for disaster relief funding coming to his state for Hurricane Irma, when as a Congressman, he voted against doing so for other states. The initial approval ratings after his election have mostly held steady, but the honeymoon is about to end, and in a hurry. CS
One Year Ago, July 2nd, 2018: Ron DeSantis (FL)… Original Profile
Two Years Ago, July 2nd, 2017: Frank Artiles (FL)… 2017 Update
Three Year Ago, July 2nd, 2016: Frank Artiles (FL)… 2016 Update
Four Years Ago, July 2nd, 2015: Frank Artiles (FL)… Original Profile