The numbers in Florida don’t lie. Will the Republican Party pay attention and take note? I doubt it.
Here in Georgia, even though the state is still controlled by Republicans, I can feel a shift in political sentiment here. Trump is an effective wedge used by the Democrats here and moderate Republican voters are getting turned off by the negativity. The failure of Herschel Walker should be a lesson to the Republican Party in Georgia. Don’t find a black candidate to run against a black candidate just because he’s black. Find good candidates instead. The closeness of the Walker/Warnock race proves to me any other good candidate would have handily beat Warnock.
The thing about DeSantis the Operator is his voters don’t feel judged. No one feels like he’s wagging his finger at them, telling them to mask up, or stay six feet away, or pray, or eat vegan, or be inclusive. (Even his much talked about scolding of the college kids wearing masks, in which he said it was time to dispense with the “Covid theater,” wasn’t exactly scolding as much as it was scolding the scolders and the people who took the scolders seriously.) He’s too busy pushing back against the school lockdowns or shipping illegal migrants to Martha’s Vineyard—a move that horrified liberal elites but that many of his Latino supporters supported because they’re tired of the preening, the signaling.
“I was a Democrat when I first came here,” Claudia Cruz tells me. It’s just after sunset on South Beach, and Cruz is smoking a cigarette—there’s a pink bow in her hair, and we’re surrounded by women scurrying in heels to get to their dinner reservations. “I’m an immigrant, and they’re the ones who want us here,” she adds, referring to her thinking back then. In November, she voted for DeSantis. She says the Democrats are right about the environment, and she’s not really a Republican. More libertarian; whichever party keeps the government small.
“You have to have a big tent that’s actually diverse, and you don’t do that by calling people with different viewpoints evil,” Daren Dillinger, 54, an IT specialist from Tampa, tells me.
The Rise of the DeSantis Democrats – The Free Press
Democrat voters chose DeSantis. Because he’s an effective governor and doesn’t talk down to people. It turns out most voters like being able to decide for themselves how to live and prefer a governor that protects the right to choose.