Is DeSantis Just Not Dumb Enough for Republican voters?
The perils of a true-believing conservative intellectual in a Trumpy party.
A little over four years ago, Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign appeared to be, if not inevitable, then at least like the most strongly positioned candidacy to win her party’s nomination. The former Harvard professor had won over a large segment of the progressive intelligentsia with her impressive array of domestic-policy proposals. But the enthusiasm of activists and intellectuals seemed to augur a groundswell of support from the base that never arrived.
The Warren precedent sprung to mind when Florida governor Ron DeSantis yesterday ventured to South Carolina, where he railed against the “woke mind-virus,” which he defined, perhaps unhelpfully, as “a form of cultural Marxism.” These are terms and concepts that have ricocheted across the conservative elite, especially Republicans trapped in New York, Washington, Silicon Valley, and other citadels of liberal elitism, where teachers and human-resource staffers have grown enamored of Robin DiAngelo–speak. But is this worldview, and the jargon DeSantis uses to express it, actually familiar to the voters? Are Republicans in South Carolina truly in a state of despair over “cultural Marxism”?
DeSantis’s struggles have consumed the national media and inspired sundry explanations. Perhaps his misanthropy is the problem. (“He doesn’t like talking to people, and it’s showing,” one supporter complained to the Washington Post.) Maybe the issue is that Donald Trump was indicted. Maybe it’s his refusal to engage the mainstream media. Or maybe his struggles are a passing phase, willed into existence by a campaign press corps that quadrennially seizes on any wisp of momentum, positive or negative, and blows it up into a self-perpetuating narrative, before getting bored and overcorrecting the other way. (DeSantis’s new image as an inept loser is difficult to square with his 19-point victory in Florida last year.) But the deepest problem may be that he has simply brain-poisoned himself into an abstract worldview that his constituents don’t recognize.Unlike Trump, who oozed his way into Republican politics through a combination of instinct and absorbing hours of Fox News, DeSantis came to the conservative movement from the brainy end. His first book articulates a theory that has circulated among elite right-wing economic elites for decades: that redistribution through taxes and spending via the ballot box poses an existential threat to liberty. His devotion to that theory helped drive him to take positions (in favor of cutting and privatizing Social Security and Medicare) that now constitute perhaps his biggest political liabilities.
More recently, DeSantis seems to have grown fascinated with a different theory that has spread rapidly on the right. It posits that the far left has gained control of the media, schools, entertainment, and even many corporations, from which position it will extend its control over the rest of society. (They often refer to this process by using a line allegedly from the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, “the long march through the institutions.”) Conservatives believe they must gain control of government and use the power of the state to halt the spread of these radical theories, or else face ideological extinction.
DeSantis has referred repeatedly to this theory in public. His book explains this is the basis for his governing agenda. (Given left-wing control of institutions, he writes, “elected officials who do nothing more than get out of the way are essentially greenlighting these institutions to continue their unimpeded march through society.”)
Indeed, this theory seems to have ordered much of his activity over the last year. DeSantis’s measures to clamp down on instruction about sexism and gender in schools, to intimidate companies that criticized his proposals, to clamp down on ESG investing, and to make it easier to sue the media all follow from this analysis of American society. This agenda has helped build for DeSantis a loyal following in the conservative-movement apparatus. Traditional organs like the National Review and The Wall Street Journal editorial page, and new Trump-era ones like the National Conservatives, have all enthusiastically rallied behind him.
But do these maneuvers actually resonate with the party’s rank and file?
Many of his moves seem consumed with grievances that are only intelligible to those steeped in state-of-the-art right-wing analysis. Does the average Republican care about DeSantis’s plans to wrest control of a liberal-arts college’s curriculum?
Do the toothless trailer park hillbillies living in the boonies really care about 'cultural Marxism" in their daily lives?
Are they interested, or even supportive, of his crusade to stop Disney from grooming children with left-wing propaganda?In an interview, DeSantis lashed out at Bud Light for featuring Dylan Mulvaney, a trans influencer. He explained to Benny Johnson that he was boycotting the beer, although it wasn’t clear he ever drank it to begin with:
“Some of these controversies that come up, and people can kind of just say, ‘Oh, well it’s kind of a one-off, yeah, it was stupid to do,’ but it’s part of a larger thing where corporate America is trying to change our country. Trying to change policy, trying to change culture, and you know, I’d rather be governed by we the people than woke companies, and so I think [the] pushback is in order across the board including with Bud Light.”
“What would I do? My wife and I, whenever we just go out for a beer, we actually like the stout, Guinness.”
DeSantis seems unable to understand what makes the Republican party tick. His methods are the opposite of the Trump method.
Ron DeSantis seems to be appealing to a more educated version of the Republican party that simply does not exist.. He speaks in large words in an educated manner which doesn't appeal to the toothless cousin fucking rednecks of the Republican party. Donald Trump on the other hand speaks at a third grade level that they can understand..
Does the average hillbilly Republicans order really care about transgenderism in their daily lives? Transgender people and liberal arts curriculums are not a factor in the daily lives of a trailer park hillbilly living in the middle of nowhere Kentucky or Mississippi. They don't care about these things. Even if they hate them all the same
They care about black people (in the sense that they hate black people) And they care about hating Mexicans. Donald Trump appeals to the things they care about. Donald Trump does not talk about transgenderism or liberal arts colleges or cultural Marxism.. Donald Trump grants and raves against minorities knowing that a redneck from Kentucky cares more about his hatred for black people then he does about trans people he's never met and probably never will meet in his part of the country.. Donald Trump does not rant and rave about encroaching communism but about the "deep state" That has replaced "the guvment" in his supporters vocabulary for the big bad Boogeyman they blame for all their problems.
And it's understandable. For a lot of people in the boonies in the middle of nowhere they're only interactions with the government are dead. The only interactions they have with the government are when the taxman comes to their door. Or when the state regulator comes to their farm or property and tells them that their structure isn't up to code or that they can't dump pesticides into the runoff that leads to the drinking water.. In their parts of the country they don't see all the good things the government does. They don't see the police force or the roads or the hospitals or the snow plows or any of the other things that the government would provide them. And Trump knows that. So he appeals to their hatred of the government. Their hatred of black people and of Mexican immigrants. Their sexism against women and other things that they do in their daily lives.
It is only the conservative elite who talk about what to them are more pressing and important issues such as what the universities are teaching the next generation of leaders both incorporate world and government. But rednecks don't go to college.. So they don't care
And this is the divide which separates good politicians from their voters. This is the divide that prevents conservative superstars like DeSantis from appealing to the voters in the ways that a low IQ failed con man like Donald Trump could
Donald Trump understands what makes his voters tip. Most of the GOP do not. Donald Trump understands that his voters are not worthy of respect. That they are incredibly stupid and easily manipulated and he panders to them based on that.
He doesn't read history books and studies and research and then talk about that on Twitter. He understands that the majority of the Republican voter base gets all of their information from Fox News so he religiously consumes Fox News repeats whatever they said.
Of course, a politician can appeal to Joe Sixpack without being a rambling idiot. (Trump abstains from alcohol.) But it seems revealing to watch DeSantis mustering passion on the subject of Bud Light entirely through the lens of his conviction that its advertising methods are part of a nefarious ideological propaganda campaign.
DeSantis’s first term as governor achieved political success in part because the pandemic allowed him to craft a populist identity based on the intuitive principle of letting people do what they want. And by religiously pandering to Donald Trump.
Now he has ventured on his own and begun attempting to take on the liberal establishment . In the minds of DeSantis and his most ardent followers, he is pursuing a historically necessary struggle. I wonder, however, if Republican voters are even able to follow the plot.