The Folk Tale of Ron DeSantis being a racist-nut case grows by the day.
Tale one: Teaching his toddler daughter how to help Trump build a wall in a campaign ad.
Tale two: Ron went on Trump Television (Fox News) to discuss his opponent Andrew Gillum, a progressive mayor for Tallahassee.
Asked how he’d beat Gillum, DeSantis said:
This is a guy who—although he’s much too liberal for Florida, I think he’s got huge problems with how he’s governed Tallahassee—he is an articulate spokesman for those far left views. He’s a charismatic candidate. I watched those Democrat (sic) debates and none of that was my cup of tea, but he performed better than the other people there.
Continuing on in his response:
We’ve gotta work hard to make sure that we continue Florida going in a good direction—let’s build off the success we’ve had on Governor Scott. The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up. by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state.
The problem with calling his political opponent “articulate,” and that there is no reason “to monkey this up.” Is that Andrew Gillum is African American.
Tale three: The revelation that he moderated a Facebook group named “Tea Party,” where a bunch of racists were members of the group. One such member is Corey Stewart, a “neo-Confederate” running for the Virginia Senate.
In this group, people would call Black Lives Matter “ghetto scum,” and that the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally was “orchestrated by the left” to “destroy America.” And much more clear minded shit like that.
Tale Four: Has attended and spoken at conferences that were sponsored by David Horowitz, a man who said Huma Abedin, a top Hillary Clinton aide, had ties with the Muslim Brotherhood, but married a Jewish person “to infiltrate our government.”
Tale Five: Embracing the rightwing plan to rewrite the Constitution, lead by the project called The Convention of States. Tea Party activists, Koch Brother networks, and Religious Right leaders are the one’s pursing this effort.
The Convention of States, according to RightWingWatch:
The goal of Convention of States leaders is to get 34 state legislatures to formally petition Congress to call an Article V convention for the purpose of considering constitutional amendments that would dramatically limit the scope and authority of the federal government.
Their ambition is to strip constitutional authority from Great Society and New Deal programs like Social Security and Medicare, and that’s not all. They envision reversing Progressive-era reforms that date to the turn of the 20th Century, including the 16th Amendment, which allowed the federal government to collect income taxes, and the 17th Amendment, which made U.S. senators elected by popular vote rather than selected by state legislatures.
As RightWingWatch points out, they are serious to do all these things. The Convention of States co-founder Mark Meckler, told right-wing pundit Mark Levine that the goal of his movement is “to reverse 115 years of progressivism."
DeSantis was back on Fox News, with host Steve Hilton. Here’s a quick exchange:
Hilton:
Go back to Constitution. Everything that can be done by the states and local government should be taken away from the federal government–education, health care, social services, transportation, welfare, and more–all of it should be decentralized. We’ve had enough of the incompetence and corruption
in Washington. Time after time, politicians come in and say they’re going to change it, and they never ever do. So we the people have to take our power back through efforts like the Convention of States project.That is the next revolution we need.
DeSantis:
Steve, I want to take that speech and bottle it up and take it around Florida and the country. I agreed with every word you said; I thought it was very on point. And you’re right. The short-term stuff here, it’ll work out, there’s a lot of posturing, but the reason why we end up in these positions all the time is because the system has broken down, the budget system has broken down. I agree with you by using Article V of the Constitution we can pursue reforms such as a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution so that they’re not just playing with house money and they actually have to make tough decisions and balance the books every year.
…
The thing though that I’m encouraged about, though, Steve, is that if you go in the country, if you go in the individual states, I actually think there is a widespread belief in the reforms you discuss, and I discuss, and one way to do it would be doing it through those state legislatures, because the disfunction in Washington is not good for our individual state governments, either.
I hope Florida doesn't pull a Florida, and picks DeSantis for governor...
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