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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   37968 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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You've misjudged the politics. Trump was already the leftward turn on policy for the Republican party. He's against cutting Medicare/Medicaid, wanted to tax the rich heavily to pay for infrastructure projects, was by far the most pro-gay GOP candidate ever, and made a big deal of signing major reductions in criminal justice efforts. He also was exceptionally dovish by GOP standards.

There is no outflanking that on the left, and Trump wasn't getting criticism because he was too far right on policy - he got attacked as the boorish tribune of declasse plebs; all those rural white men ... YUCK! Can't be any less cool than that. Didn't anyone tell them the Future is Female? And takes a train in a big city to an email job? Deviating significantly from a Trump-ish attitude signifies that the candidate isn't with the base, and that's no way to win a primary.

No, the way DeSantis attacks Trump is on details. DeSantis can sell himself as the type of executive who actually can do things. This means culture war stuff about defunding woke educational bureaucracies, sure. But it also means basic good-governance stuff like public order, disaster recovery, COVID management, firing rogue prosecutors, etc. (Whether or not DeSantis can make good on this is another question - he's benefitted mightily from having good connections with the friendly legislature in FL while governor; he's significantly less well-connected or -liked in Congress, and there's no guarantee that a Pres. DeSantis would have majorities in both houses).

The RCID thing is not as big as you make it out to be. I'm not even sure people remember why they were mad at Disney in the first place over this.

Desantis seems like he has the ability to pull friendly appointees from high profile state positions(both Florida and elsewhere) a lot more easily than trump, helped along by just being a better boss/personnel manager.

Being a disastrous people manager and completely unable to assemble a working team is the source of the most Trump's failures. In fact, he was the one who hired the lawyer on whose words the current accusations against him are based, didn't he? DeSantis would do well to be much better at this - and there's not much space to be worse.

Yep, MAGA has it's visionary, it needs someone who knows how to govern and implement it. I'm not sure DeSantis is that guy but there's room for someone to be.

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