By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling
with Jenny Herk in Florida
Are you old enough to remember when Assistant Urinalysis Officer and pudding lover Ron DeSantis was regarded by political savants as the odds-on favorite to win the Republican Presidential nomination?
What happened?
I was an early adopter of the idea that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) could beat Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination; I even put him ahead of Trump in my rankings as the most likely GOP nominee as far back as August 2022.
Virtually everything in the six months that followed seemed to bolster that view. [To whom? – Ed.] DeSantis was never regarded as a heavy favorite, but he rose steadily; he sometimes led Trump in head-to-head matchups in the polls, and his 19-point reelection victory in November — coupled with Trump’s very bad midterm Election Day — felt like it could be a turning point.
I’m less convinced now.
...the Trump-usurper armor has shown some early cracks.
DeSantis once could do no wrong, it seemed, and that threatened Trump. But the last two weeks delivered something of a reality check.
Did reporters take a hard look at his anti-democratic assault on the right to vote, the right to speak, the right to read, and the right to be treated with simple human dignity? Of course not. What happened was DeSantis fell off his elevator shoes when asked the most basic questions relating to U.S. national security:
DeSantis last week drew attention — and some pretty harsh rebukes from his party — by seemingly telling Fox News’s Tucker Carlson what Carlson wanted to hear about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
While DeSantis had been hawkish enough on the Russia-Ukraine issue when he was in Congress, he suddenly labeled it a “territorial dispute” and emphasized the lack of a “vital U.S. interest” in further American involvement.
Of course, parroting the Putin/Trump party line on the criminal invasion of Ukraine should be a disqualifier, although it doesn't seem to be a problem for the Tiny Toadstool himself. But any failure to support military force regardless of the merits or lack thereof (like Iraq) is grounds for disqualification by the pundits of the Hot Air Force, always ready to direct the battle from their command post at the Metropolitan Club in Washington.
Unleashing a reign of terror against gay and trans kids, punishing a corporation for daring to disagree, and empowering crazed vigilantes to censor books in school libraries – no problemo for this crowd.
 |
| DeSantis: “I love it!”" |
Even more embarrassing was the sizzling platter of Hot Takes served up by The New York Times, desperately trying to get ol' Pudding Fingers to talk to them by attempting to mold the steaming pile of DeSantis foreign policy statements into a coherent and less-stinky mass:
A close reading of more than 200 of his speeches, votes, writings and television commentaries over the past decade, as well as interviews with his peers, reveal the makings of a DeSantis Doctrine.
The DeSantis Doctrine? Ayfkm?
Yeah, because there's no better way to understand what Lt. (j. pee) Ron DeSantis is up to than by reading the self-serving crap he and his flacks put out and trying to bend it like a pretzel into a supposed Doctrine, all in the most fawning, least critical way possible.
What's really going on is that the Times, by putting out reams of hot takes purporting to take seriously the crap spewed out this subversive unpatriotic clown (while ignoring possibly relevant matters, like his involvement in torture and war crimes at Guantanamo Bay or his overarching contempt for democracy and the rule of law), is schnorring for an interview with this guy, which will generate thousands of words of uncritical stenography beginning above the fold on A1.
When will they give up? DeSantis won't sit down with the Times for at least two reasons. First, his brand is built largely on unjustified white grievance and hatred for a free press that might give a voice to non-bigots, non-Christians, and non-white people is a key part of that grievance.
Second, equally important, DeSantis fears that no matter how deferential the Times reporters are, he will s*** all over his nice white go-go boots, as he did when served up Ukraine softballs by reliable right-wing hack Piers Moron (apologies to Private Eye).
But we digress. The torrents of conventional wisdom generated by Aaron Blake cannot be held just to DeSantis. They flood every Republican who can fog a mirror. Blake's hot takes cover what he sees as the top 10 candidates for the Republican nomination. Since it's going to be Trump, the whole piece seems like an exercise in filling space.
 |
| Who can appeal to these very fine Republicans? |
We can't cover every single one of his top 10 hot takes. We'll limit ourselves to his choice for the number 3 slot.
Wait for it.
It's not Threeway Greene. It's not Gym Jordan. It's not Jeannie Pirro. It's someone who is even less likely to win the Republican nomination:
3. Tim Scott: The senator from South Carolina is not polling like the top alternative to Trump and DeSantis; he’s usually stuck with all the others around 1 percent. But he’s doing just about everything you’d expect a would-be candidate to do, and he’s someone you can see emerging as a credible alternative to Trump — especially if DeSantis does flame out or just fades. Perhaps nobody in the field could drive the kind of happy-warrior message Scott appears likely to go with. His presence in the 2024 race could also be unusual in another way: He well might be the only senator. (Previous ranking: 3)
“I'm a Senator.” Now there's a crowd pleaser, especially to a Republican base that contemns competence and experience.
There's one other possibly interesting thing about Sen. Scott that might be worthy of note: he's a Black man. This actually may work in his favor, as white supremacist Republicans get a cheap thrill out of voting for people of color, as long as they promise, like Scott, to preserve, protect, and defend white racism.
We don't really have the stomach to go through Blake's other Republican rodents. We'll only note that in his breathless top-10 horserace ranking there's no room for discussing unimportant trivia, like what these Republican worthies advocate and stand for.
That's probably because there are in fact no differences of substance between ex-Pres. Tiny Toadstool and the other nine, except for sending weapons to Ukraine. They all want to replace our pluralist secular social-democratic institutions with white supremacy, intolerance, Christian nationalism, and subversion of democracy.
They all want to accomplish this by any means necessary. If they can't win elections on the square, they'll rig the districts, disenfranchise opposing voters, lard the courts with extremist activists, and, as a last resort (as shown on January 6) launch violent insurrections to maintain their undeserved positions of privilege and power.
But DC gasbags like Blake are too busy serving up steaming hot takes to step back and smell the gunpowder. We're on our own.
UPDATE: After we went to press, NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen helpfully weighed in on the difference between covering the odds and the stakes of a campaign:
Not the odds, but the stakes.
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) March 25, 2023
That's my shorthand for the 2024 coverage we most need. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences if they do.
Here, the odds are centered: "Our rankings of the 10 people from among whom the 2024 GOP nominee is likely to emerge." pic.twitter.com/WYxNQMHbFw
No comments:
Post a Comment