Republicans Are Getting It Wrong About DeSantis and Florida

NYT OPINION: Republicans Are Getting It Wrong About DeSantis and Florida
By Lulu Garcia-Navarro
Section: Opinion
Source: New York Times
Published Date: January 12, 2023 at 02:00AM

Why the governor may not be the savior the GOP is hoping for.

Engulfed in turmoil in Washington, D.C., and the humiliation and setbacks of their party leaders, Republicans can be forgiven for looking elsewhere for a savior. Former President Donald Trump was, until those final minutes, largely ineffective in getting his ideological offspring to make Kevin McCarthy speaker, and so hopeful eyes have turned yet again to that other Floridian.
“Wanna know who looks good right now and focusing on his state, constituents and staying out of the chaos and mayhem?” Meghan McCain tweeted. “DeSantis. DeSantis looks good right now.”
“Ron DeSantis looks like a grown-up here, and an adult,” a former Trump adviser, David Urban, said on CNN the night Mr. McCarthy finally got the votes, “where the Washington Republicans are kind of in a quagmire.”
Being smart enough to stay out of the hot mess in the House is hardly the sign of political genius, but there is no doubt the newly re-elected governor of Florida has the wind at his back. After his commanding performance in the midterm elections, I informally polled my conservative family members in Miami, who all said they had dumped Mr. Trump and were on team DeSantis for ’24. One colorfully called the former president she had voted for twice a “whiny crybaby” who could only talk about losing the last election. Ouch.
The case for Mr. DeSantis, according to them, isn’t just that he looks comparatively sage next to Mr. Trump. It’s also that he spoke out early against lockdowns and has overseen a growing economy. Florida now has the fastest-growing population in the country, a factoid that Mr. DeSantis’s spokesman, Jeremy Redfern, immediately touted after it was announced. “People vote with their feet,” he said. “We are proud to be a model for the nation, and an island of sanity in a sea of madness.”
Most criticism of Mr. DeSantis’s national electability has been centered around his lack of charisma, which Mr. Trump crystallized by giving him the cumbersome nickname Ron DeSanctimonious. But focusing on personality and style obscures the governor’s real failings: Florida is not a model for the nation, unless the nation wants to become unaffordable for everyone except rich snowbirds.
While my home state’s popularity might indeed seem like good news for a governor with presidential ambitions, a closer look shows that Florida is underwater demographically. Most of those flocking there are aging boomers with deep pockets, adding to the demographic imbalance for what is already one of the grayest populations in the nation. This means that Florida won’t have the younger workers needed to care for all those seniors. And while other places understand that immigrants, who often work in the service sector and agriculture, two of Florida’s main industries, are vital to replenishing aging populations, Mr. DeSantis and the state G.O.P. are not exactly immigrant-friendly, enacting legislation to limit the ability of people with uncertain legal status to work in the state.

Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/12/opinion/desantis-florida-income-inequality.html

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