Jon Chait correctly names Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis as an autocrat, pointing to his retaliation against Disney as the blueprint for his inevitable presidential run in 2024.
Here is how the New York Times reported DeSantis’s latest maneuver: “In a move widely seen as retaliation, Gov. Ron DeSantis asked Florida lawmakers on Tuesday to consider the ‘termination’ of self-governing privileges that Disney World has held in the Orlando area for 55 years.”
A move widely seen as retaliation is quite a way to put it, given that DeSantis himself has advertised the measure as retaliation. DeSantis said he was “fighting back” against Disney. (“Fighting back” is a synonym for retaliation.) First he floated a completely different provision targeting Disney (a social-media carve-out he had designed himself) before turning to the current version.
To make his intentions even more obvious, he appeared on Fox News to confess. Brian Kilmeade presented his intentions plainly: “You basically said, ‘Hey Disney, I don’t like your stance against this bill, this parents rights bill, so maybe we’ll go into revisit your special status in Florida.’ Do you want to expand on that?”
DeSantis did not deny this. Instead he made a case on the merits for the retaliation, before saying, “Six months ago, it would have been unthinkable” that Republicans would have taken this step.
The response from the conservative media has been more instructive. One foundation of DeSantis’s governing style is that he has calculated he does not need mainstream media at all. He can rely on support from party-controlled media to obtain sufficient public approval to meet his goals, and his non-party-controlled media as a punching bag.
The conservative media has raised almost no objection to DeSantis’s thuggery. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, Washington Examiner, and Washington Times — all of which would be publishing front-page editorials calling protesters into the streets if a Democrat had tried something like this — have no commentary on it. Republican legal mind Hugh Hewitt approves.
National Review has two stories, one approving, one disapproving. The latter is the only dissent I have seen in the conservative media. It is exceedingly mild. Its author, Charles C.W. Cooke, notes his overall support for DeSantis and the anti-gay measure, but chides him for “an ugly and ill-conceived mistake” they are undertaking “inexplicably,” given that the anti-gay law already passed.
Cooke calls the move a “tantrum,” one serving no purpose at all. But of course there is a point to it. The point is to send a message to any other corporation that they will be punished by the state if they oppose DeSantis on anything.
National Review’s opposing column supporting DeSantis’s retaliation makes that explicit: “These corporations assume that it’s still 2010, and that our genteel Marquess of Queensberry norms will prevent conservatives from retaliating against their many political campaigns and rhetorical posturing against us.” It seems the principle that the government should not coerce private firms into supporting the regime was devised by Marquess of Queensberry, who was probably a communist. In any case, it doesn’t seem to be a coincidence that the only conservative who publicly opposes DeSantis’s move is also the only one who doesn’t seem to be (or wish to be) aware of why he is doing it.
The impetus for DeSantis’s presidential candidacy is the belief that Trump is a liability, and a desire for a replacement who can marshal the same coalition more effectively. What DeSantis is building in Florida is his blueprint for the country.
"Trump, but without the baggage" was always the goal, and DeSantis is well on his way. Should he become president in 2024 along with a GOP-controlled Congress, the entire American experiment will be scheduled for demolition. Greg Sargent:
So let’s run a thought experiment. What might it look like if a President DeSantis took this view of the administrative state and decided to wield his power this way?
Donald Moynihan, an expert on the administrative state at Georgetown, says you can envision various scenarios. Such a president, he said, might use regulatory agencies staffed with right-thinking political employees (which Vance explicitly wants) to harass or investigate companies perceived as “culturally disloyal.”
Another possibility, Moynihan said, might be to change the tax status of liberal-leaning foundations. Those are already another favorite target of right-wing populists.
Faced with a president “who’s fully willing to use the powers of the administrative state,” Moynihan told me, such foundations might refrain from advocating for various causes or fund certain types of research, “because it’s not worth the potential risks.”
What if such a president were backed in this project by congressional leadership? Josh Chafetz, a Georgetown law professor who studies Congress, says you could see legislation targeted at offending companies, and even if it didn’t survive the courts, it could still function in a punitive way.
Those companies would sink large sums of money into litigating against such measures, even as Congress relied on taxpayer-funded lawyers on their side, Chafetz told me, meaning “the onus of the expense would fall on the companies, which would have a chilling effect.”
So a lot is at stake in how DeSantis’s war with Disney turns out. To glimpse the future, just look at what DeSantis is saying and doing right now. And given all the accolades he’s getting from the right, does anyone doubt that this could get a whole lot worse?
American government would become nothing more than a tool to punish grievances, real or imagined. Pick a group of those people and take everything from them, while making it clear that refusal to join in the pogrom means you are next. Pretty soon everyone wants to be on the winning side, because it's the only game in town.
Autocracy 101.
We're well on our way.
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