Timing, as always, is everything. Just as we have a deadly COVID surge and GOPsters equating vaccine passports and mandatory mask-wearing (especially among vulnerable students) with diminished freedoms, we have a governor whose top priority is fundraising and political ambition. “Flori-duh” under the fine-threatening Ron DeSantis is in a doubling-down spiral. To misparaphrase Patrick Henry, Give me disingenuously-defined “liberty” and give me self-inflicted “death.”
Most recent Exhibit A: Gov. DeSantis speaking to a Pasco-red, Saddlebrook Resort crowd at the annual Reagan Day fundraiser in Wesley Chapel. “Vaccine,” the life-saver that isn’t saving as many Florida lives as it should and could, never came up. But crowd-pleasing, red-meat cheap shots about “woke” universities, “regime-controlled media” and President Joe Biden sure as hell did. “If Joe Biden is trying to destroy the livelihoods of our people, I will fight back,” exhorted DeSantis. “We’ve got a lot going wrong in our country … but we’ve got a lot going right in the state of Florida.” Actually, we’ve got a lot going wrong and right wing in the state of Florida.