NY Times: FLA Under DeSantis: ‘Rightward Lurch…More Rigid Conservative Orthodoxy’

One more day. New York Times story about the star Republican governor of Florida (and potential 2024 presidential candidate) Ron DeSantis: “Rapidly Flexing Power, DeSantis Turns Florida Into a Lab for the Right,” Miami bureau chief Patricia Mazzei portrayed Florida as a hot-headed state throwing a conservative temper tantrum led by a attention-seeking, Trump-adjacent governor.

Florida is like Florida running feverIts very identity is changing rapidly.

It was once the most important traditional presidential battlefield, but it is now a center of potential for the political left.

Mazzei’s description of conservative policies was clearly unsympathetic.

Discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity prohibited in early elementary school. Math textbooks rejected en masse for what the state called “indoctrination.” Schools and employers limited in what they can teach about racism and other aspects of history. Public universities’ tenured professors are subject to new review. Abortions banned after 15 weeks. The creation of a law enforcement office to investigate election crimes. A congressional map redrawn to give Republicans an even bigger advantage.

And, perhaps most stunning of all, Disney, long an untouchable corporate giant, stripped of the ability to govern itself for the first time in more than half a century, in retaliation for the company’s opposition to the crackdown on L.G.B.T.Q. conversation with children in school.

Interesting word choice here: “blamed.”

Bob Buckhorn, the former Democratic mayor of Tampa, blamed a combination of factors for Florida’s sudden turn: Mr. DeSantis’s ambition, national culture wars and Mr. Trump, for having “given voice to all of the ugliness and the demons that inhabit Americans.”

….

….beginning 2020. A politically savvy Mr. DeSantis took advantage of discontent over coronavirus panademic policy, betting that individual liberty and economic prosperity would be more important to voters long-term Protecting public health is more important than maintaining it. More than 73,000 Floridians have died of Covid-19, yet public opinion polls have shown that Mr. DeSantis and many of his policies remain quite popular.

More than 90,000. Californians died from COVID-19, despite the restrictions and lockdowns, as well as Democratic Governor. Gavin Newsom was forced to stand for recall. So where’s Newsom’s hit piece?

At least Mazzei didn’t try to link the pro-vaccine DeSantis to the anti-vaccine fringe again

Now, Mr. DeSantis, and almost everyone in Florida, is wondering if the rightward drift will end, whether by corporate backlash, court intervention or electoral rebuke. But given Florida’s trends in recent years, the more likely outcome could be a sustained campaign toward a new, more rigid conservative orthodoxy, one that voters could very well ratify this fall.

Mazzei may have unwittingly revealed media bias against “conservative hellhole” Florida.

Despite the heated rhetoric and headlines in the national press, Ms. Arnett said that her day was the same as before.

“If you put on the TV or you look at the news at what’s going on, it seems like Florida is a conservative hellhole,” she said. “When you’re living in Florida and interacting with people and moving through your day-to-day life, it doesn’t feel that way at all.”