Sarasota, where DeSantis candidates won the school board, is a very conservative district.
Polk County went for Trump in the past; 52% of its voters are Republicans. But Ron DeSantis’ conservative slate lost.
Billy Townsend explains the surprising outcome.
And he concludes that if DeSantis can’t win Polk County, he’s in trouble.
To recap: Chief crank Ron DeSantis and his Polk GOP hench-cranks succeeded completely in making the Polk School Board elections partisan. In doing so, they lost basically every geographical engine of growth, commerce, creativity, and civic life in Polk County. And they added some functional chunk of Republican primary voters to the generic Polk County Democratic political coalition, at least for a night. Well played, GOP.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The danger to our democracy is that we have assumed that everyone will play by the rules. The ascendence of Ron Desantis illustrates that we need to reassess that supposition. Desantis is using his position as Governor to execute Steve Bannon’s playbook of filling the room with sh@$ to see what sticks. I am not optimistic about the outlook for his Democratic opponent Charlie Crist. I can only hope that firing school board members and local DAs will be a bridge too far for Floridians when they begin to realize that the “woke” Desantis wants to gag is them.
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yes, and who knows the rules in these days of an unpredictable “Q” ascendance
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We are not far away from an America in which anyone who expresses any opposition to the opinions of Glorious Leader will have Gestapo breaking down their doors, on some pretext, and pointing guns at their children and other family members.
And the Glorious Leader who orders this stuff will talk incessantly of the importance of “freedom.”
Freedom to think as I do, do as I say.
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or else
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As I’m sure you are aware (and were probably alluding to), you are already there in Florida.
That’s precisely what DeSantis did in the case of the Florida COVID data scientist (Rebekah Jones) who crossed DeSantis.
Jones is now running against the Congressman (and sometime underaged-girl-boinker) Matt Gaetz,, although powerful folks in Florida are doing their damnedest to disqualify her from the race — unsuccessfully, so far, but that might change at any time because it is currently under legal review (by Ronny boy?)
Assuming Jones doesn’t get “disqualified” (which is certainly no sure thing at this point), wouldn’t it be fitting if Gaetz lost to a woman who gets t
Governor’s knickers into a twist every time she speaks?
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Jones is obviously such a threat to studly He-man DeSantis that he felt the need to go after her and her family with a heavily armed SWAT team who pointed their guns at her and her kids.
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And he signed into law a bill that allows local authorities to declare any group of three or more protestors a “riot,” makes it a felony to block a street, and prevents a protestor or his or her family from suing anyone who drives into someone who is protesting in a street. All this in response to BLM.
And, of course, he resurrected a state alternative to the National Guard, accountable only to him.
Want to see such policies taken national?
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DeSantis is not someone who is all bluster; he’s far, far smarter than Trump is, and he will not hesitate to use state violence. And, of course, the current-day GOP will see him as a “strong leader.”
You know, like Mussolini or Pinochet.
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Our president come 2025
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Maybe that approach was appropriate against terrorists in Fallujah, Iraq, where DeSantis honed his Harvard acquired legal skills as a Navy JAG, but Rebekah Jones is a scientist, not a terrorist, and this is America, not war torn Iraq and I somehow doubt it was really “necessary” in the latter case (to put it mildly)
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DeSantis had just better hope Jones does not win because if she does, she is going to be his worst nightmare.
Smart as he may be as a lawyer, he is no match for her.
And he knows it, so I am pretty sure he is now doing whatever he can behind the scenes to get her disqualified from the ballot, which means Gaetz would be re-elected.
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Whom DeSantis has chosen to target is
actually very telling.
He chooses people whom he believes he
can steamroll: Women (Jones and teachers), BLM protestors, etc. As I indicated above, I think he is very wrong in figuring as much, but he nonetheless chosecthem because he believed it.
Lots of people are under the misapprehension that he was a Navy Seal (a myth which he makes no effort to dispell )but what he really was was a legal ( JAG )adviser to a Navy Seal commander. Needless to say, the two are not the same.
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And I don’t believe ANY actual Navy Seal
would ever have sicced a heavily armed
SWAT team on data scientist Rebekah Jones.
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“You know, like Mussolini or Pinochet.”
And. . . Francisco Franco is still dead!
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The voting shift in Polk County confirms that people of both parties are tired of DeSantis’ constant lying and bashing of public education in Florida. The fact is, despite DeSantis’ campaign to destroy public education in the state, the majority of people are not buying his lies and misinformation. People are growing tired of his meddlesome culture war that simply reveals what a small minded bigot he is. They are tired of his micro-managing interference in local issues. They are starting to understand that DeSantis’ version of “freedom” is really about control and domination.
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At a family wedding, my wife had a total stranger volunteer, “Isn’t that Governor of Florida wonderful!” We are far from out of the woods in regard to the impact of misinformation. I do hope that Desantis has overstepped, but since his approval ratings hover above 50%, I’m not sure he is losing.
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Lots of right wing extremists will stick with the diabolical DeSantis, but some less extreme types that support quality public schools may be swayed. I think that may be what happened to Polk Country where the registered Dems were 37% of the total. They likely picked up some independents and a few disguntled Republicans in the school board election.
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In Florida, you are free to do what DeSantis says you should do.
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From outside the left-wing bubble, here is an informative history of that most chameleon of politicians – Charle Crist.
https://spectatorworld.com/topic/charlie-crist-florida-flimflam-man/
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If I lived in FL, I would vote for a chameleon over an amalgamated dung beetle/cockroach/stinkbug, thank you very much.
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Thank you for your response. It’s a perfect example of the intellectual level of almosty all of the regular commenters here.
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Agreed. Crist is not ideal, but I will vote for him because he is sane and not a budding fascist. He may have flip flopped on some issues, but maybe that’s because he is evolving. Republicans abandoned him because he shook Obama’s hand for sending help after a hurricane. What does that say about the GOP?
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Call him what he is: fascist
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I prefer Crist to the fascist.
I prefer a donut to the fascist.
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OK, I must admit that I prefer doughnuts to a lot of things. I like doughnuts, a lot.
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I would prefer Christ to pretty much every politician who has ever lived.
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Christ or Satan?
Crist with “h” is Christ
And latter’s very nice
DeSantis is too near
To Satanist, I fear
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And Mary loved her Joe
And Jesus loved him so
But Ron was nowhere round
When baby came to town
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In case anyone didn’t get that last one Crist’s full name is Charles Joseph Crist
And lest anyone believe I think Crist is Christ, let me just say it’s a joke, my don
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My son
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SomDAM always so clever, especially Christ or Satan.
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The extremists are extremists. Nothing will change them.
Then there are those who actually think.
And, if it affects them directly (actual, not ideological) – they’ll show up and vote.
The cranks are not only using the exPresident’s playbook of howling at the sky and big government, they are dictating what people can and cannot do.
To borrow Townsend’s point – the exPresident spews (sick) values, beliefs, and generalizations. His folks soak that up.
However, those same people do not want to be told what they can and cannot do with their bodies, can read and not read, that people can and should bring weapons in their schools and to church, etc. And, some realize their kids are going to grow up in a diverse society and will need to navigate it without hate.
Many of those people – (speculating those under 40) don’t vote unless something affects them directly. “Vote blue” doesn’t affect them. “They want to tell you what you can do with your body” and “they don’t want your kid to learn history or science” – – that affects them.
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If the young people don’t come out in November and again in 2024, we are doomed. That’s it for democracy in America. It’s over.
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Republican strategy has obviously made school board races the focus of political activity. This is in response to the Virginia Governor’s contest that turned out their way. But what if they are wrong? What if the national holy grail is something else? In that case, they will just change.
Remember the days of drug testing teachers? You forgot didn’t you. Before 9/11 happened, GOP pols were screaming about the need to drug test teachers. I worried for my life, for a law requiring my good friend and fellow teacher, Kay, to get a blood test would have been so funny I might have expired laughing. But the towers came down, and with them vanished the call for drug testing teachers as a major issue.
The GOP has been conjuring up fear appeals ever since Gingrich ande his revolution. They will not stop until these appeals fail. If they do not fail, the result will be Hitlerian, and we will have to dig ourselves out from under the yoke of continual fear appeals.
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In other news, a sitting U.S. Senator, Lindsay Graham, is trying to prevent legal authorities from doing their jobs by threatening more lawlessness (“rioting in the streets”) if Trump is indicted. I really wish I knew what Trump’s Russian handlers have on Lindsay to make the former never Trumper such a brazen supporter of any extreme from the criminal, traitorous, orange idiot.
And, of course, because he is powerful and relatively wealthy, Graham has managed to put off and put of, perhaps will be able to do so forever, appearing before the grand jury in Georgia. How is this possible? Well, because there is the “justice system,” which applies to people like you and me, and there is the “Just Us System,” which applies to the likes of Gaetz and Trump and Graham (and, for the longest time, to Trump’s buddy (buddy of a lot of powerful politicians, academics, and business people), Epstein.
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cx: put off and put off
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Polk County is one of the scarier places I’ve been through. I’m guessing they will revert to [r]epublican fold in next election.
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Alligators everywhere???
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