Tag Archives: Ron DeSantis

As I mentioned last week, J.D. Vance’s standard response to being quoted accurately is to whine about how unfair the media are. Did he complain too many Democratic leaders are childless women with no stake in the future? Well obviously what he was really saying is that the Democrats have anti-family, anti-child policies (in contrast to Republicans?), how could anyone misconstrue that?

Now Usha Vance is insisting we completely misunderstood J.D.: what he’s really saying is that “it can be really hard to be a parent in this country, and sometimes our policies are designed in a way that make it even harder.”

Um, no. He didn’t talk policy, he said childless women should not be leaders. And he’s said the same thing on other occasions, or said Kamala Harris should “get her own kids to brainwash” rather than come for his and Usha’s. I look forward to how the Vances will explain J.D.’s comment that outside of Harvard Law professor Amy Chua he doesn’t know any Chinese-Americans.

I think Vance is an opportunist whose views shift with the wind but I’m sure his misogyny (excepting his own wife and daughter) is deep-rooted and sincere. And this is the man Trump and many Republicans want one step away from the Oval Office — given Trump’s age, not a very big step. And I despise journalist who try to be coy about it, like the NYT saying Vance wants to “break norms and test constitutional limits.” No, he wants a Republican dictatorship. See also this one. Or this one. (More on press bias here).

Of course, a lot of Republicans are fine with misogyny. Vance’s mentor Peter Thiel doesn’t think women should vote because they don’t vote libertarian enough for him — which is to say, I assume, that they don’t believe in a totally unregulated capitalism, which could mean the billionaire might make slightly less money. He also believes the modern US has reached the same point as Germany in the 1920s, when Hitler had to intervene to fix it. He’s also horrified Christianity cares about the downtrodden and oppressed. On the plus side, Vance’s fellow Thiel lackey, Blake Masters is too weird even for Republicans.

Thiel’s not unique. The idea of ending women’s suffrage is one of those quiet parts more of them are saying out loud. After all, having the vote makes women equal citizens in America and misogynists hate that. Hell, Jesse Watters, Tucker Carlson’s even more buffoonish replacement, “thinks” voting for women makes you a woman (I use quotes because I doubt 99 percent of what comes out of Watters’ mouth represents his sincere thoughts).

Equally buffoonish, novelist turned right-wing pundit Andrew Klavan claims women cannot care for themselves so they need to belong to a man. And Harris is a “cackling, venomous serpent.”

Tim Walz being a football coach and former Marine turned non-toxic masculine type is freaking them the hell out. Particularly since he provides students in Minnesota schools with free menstrual products (in contrast to Ron DeSantis who veoted a bill for doing the same). I don’t think the new label “Tampon Tim” is going to hurt him (though slacktivist discusses the way the news media now feel obligated to treat fighting period poverty as a controversial issue, simply because Republicans claim it is)

For more on misogyny and its countless stupidities check out my Undead Sexist Cliches, available in ebook and in paperback.

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new educational guidelines for Florida schools include mandating classes in the evils of communism. I find this silly — the Cold War’s over and our conflicts with China have nothing to do with it being communist — but lord knows, there’s certainly plenty to criticize (of course our own foreign policy has plenty of atrocities but I doubt that’ll come up). However it’s an outright lie to equate Stalin’s murderous purges with cancel culture, which DeSantis’ Education Department with suffering criticism for right-wing statements.

Oh, DeSantis has also decided sociology is a bad discipline. Unlike, say, his state’s distorted version of teaching history (More here. The one good thing is teaching about the US internment of Japanese-Americans, though I’m wondering how that will turn out in practice). Not that he’s unique: Oklahoma State School Superintendent Ryan Walters claims the Tulsa race massacre had nothing to do with race. That tells us a lot about his belief students shouldn’t be upset about race.

How about contraception? The Heritage Foundation is dedicated to stamping out women’s right to be sexually active without risking pregnancy. And things that come with it, like the high risk of maternal death or injury. However the Foundation’s Emma Waters pretends their proposed rules aren’t bans, they’re medical safeguards — they know what’s best for women! And if women think they know better what they need in their lives, well, Waters doesn’t care.

At the same link, right-winger Roger Severino lies that “the notion that there’s a formal organized movement to ban contraception across America is downright silly. I don’t know how that idea came about. But it strikes me as political posturing in the wake of the Dobbs decision to try to mislead people into thinking everything is up for grabs having to do with sex .. It’s fearmongering.”

Liar, liar pants on fire. The idea came about because that’s exactly what conservatives intend (here’s some of the plans). They’re pissed off about the idea of women having sex without consequences. And liberals and abortion activists are not “fearmongering” — they’re expressing a real fear of something Severino and others really intend to happen. Claiming it won’t happen is as much a lie as the talk of how once abortion is banned, they’ll start being nice to mommies. Or the pretense their issue with the morning-after pill is environmentalism (Jessica Valenti has more on that).

Oh, and Severino’s wife Carrie Severino lied some years back that Christine Blasey Ford’s rape accusations against Bret Kavanaugh could easily be describing boorishness. Yes, pinning someone down on a bed, covering their mouth, that’s boorish, sure. It’s also attempted rape. Lots of Republicans lied like she did.

Bullshit historian David Barton has a simple approach to lies: no matter how many times people prove he’s wrong, repeat the same lies. Never giving an inch is, I guess, one of the ways to shift Overton’s window. And he’s not unique.

Vivek Ramaswamy has had enough of the media pointing out Republican lies. He’s bought a large stake in Buzzfeed (parent of Huffington Post) and he’s demanding they hire Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens or similar right-wing propagandists to spread the gospel of bullshit. Why compete in the marketplace of ideas when you can simply buy it?

Much of what we’re seeing in the Republican Party these days would be there even without Trump. But much of it wouldn’t

It has, since the civil-rights movement and the women’s rights movement, been moving increasingly rightward in a desperate attempt to reassert white male patriarchy. As Fred Clark says, that explains a lot of religious conservative support for Trump — the white evangelical stance is to deny the full humanity of non-white people. I’d add that they’re also big on denying the full humanity of women (see this post).

But as several political bloggers have pointed out, Trump has also turned it into a cult that worships him. That’s one reason nobody stands a chance of beating him in the primaries — Ron DeSantis can imitate Trump’s polices and promote himself as a more effective hatemonger but you can’t replace a cult leader just by claiming you’re a better leader.

Thus we have Arizona Republicans pushing a resolution that would declare Trump the automatic winner in November.Back in 2020, a lot of Republicans really were ready to overthrow the government and as Trump is still lying about fraud, so are they. Or Stephen Miller declaring that if Trump doesn’t have immunity, he’ll have Joe Biden prosecuted and tried for something. Laura Ingraham demands candidates celebrate Trump. The Republican National Committee seriously considered making Trump the nominee without further contest. Matt Gaetz insists Trump did not commit insurrection in 2021. Trump himself says Nancy Pelosi caused it.

And no matter how stupid his babble gets, they’ll defend him. Trump declared he’d encourage Putin to invade NATO members who don’t pay us protection money, they’re going to defend him on that too. That includes defending Putin’s right to the Ukraine as Trump’s against us supporting them: Tommy Tuberville, for example, claiming NATO provoked him even though Putin’s made it very clear he wants an empire.

And while Republicans clearly prefer a border crisis to stabilizing things, Trump opposing a bill seems to have killed it. Not even on immigration, an issue their voters care a lot about, are they willing to defy the cult leader.

And now Trump wants his daughter-in-law, Lara, as RNC chair and she’s already declared she’ll spend every penny of RNC cash on his re-election bid. Which would work out great if it starves the RNC of funds for down-ballot races — I mean that would doom Democrats, please, please don’t do that!

But not everything is Trump’s fault. I could easily see Republicans 20 years back declaring that Palestinian babies are not innocent in war. Or libeling a scientist to the point he collected bigly because science is against their belief. Or an elected Republican identifying Texas as one of the original U.S. states. And the latest in the long history of politically paranoid theories, that the Deep State will replace Joe Biden with Michelle Obama (also here). Orson Scott Card was working an early version of that bull more than a decade ago.

There’s also the overlap effect: as Trump spouts racist bullshit and proves he can get away with it, more Republicans say it openly. Like discussing how the government is Jewish-controlled, or pushing other anti-semitic bullshit.

This tells us something about the party’s future … but I’m not sure what. Other than that Republicans will be a scourge for a long time to come.