Ron DeSantis is right to fight back against woke capitalism

Spiked ^ | 4/27/2023 | Brendan O'Neill

[Joe Brower]

Ron DeSantis is right to fight back against woke capitalism
Corporate meddling in politics is out of control. Pushback is needed.
Spiked
Brendan O'Neill
4/27/2023

Some top Republicans are getting cold feet over Ron DeSantis’s fight with Disney. The Florida governor has been locking horns with the Walt Disney Company for more than a year. His beef is with Disney’s arrogant decree that it would use its economic clout to wound and ideally kill off his House Bill 1557, branded the ‘Don’t Say Gay Bill’ by some commentators. Now passed into law, as the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, HB1557 limits what schoolteachers can say about ‘sexual orientation [and] gender identity’ to kids under the age of 10. ‘Unacceptable’, said the bosses of Disney as they peered with aristocratic scorn at the democratic process from their ivory-tower-cum-Cinderella-Castle.

DeSantis might have votes, but we have money, Disney essentially said. He might have the backing of 4.6million Floridians, but we’ve got millions of bucks, and we’ll use all that sweet capital to try to thwart his wicked law. Disney promised to cut off donations to any politician who backed HB1557. Shorter version: bow down to our woke worldview or the cashflow ends. Not surprisingly, given he, not Disney CEO Bob Iger, is the democratically elected governor of Florida, DeSantis wasn’t best pleased with these threats of corporate meddling in law-making. So he revoked the special tax status the Disney district of Florida had enjoyed since 1967. He also hand-picked members of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District Board of Supervisors to exert more influence over Disney’s affairs. This week, Disney has initiated legal proceedings against DeSantis, accusing him of pursuing a ‘relentless campaign to weaponise government power against Disney’.

It is a fascinating stand-off. It represents one of the first serious efforts by a politician in the modern West to hold at bay the burgeoning power of woke capital; to tame the burning corporate urge to intrude on the realm of democracy. And yet some in the GOP are starting to bristle at DeSantis v Disney, wishing it would just go away. We’re supposed to be a pro-business party, they cry, and yet there’s Ron getting into a scrap with a business. ‘I don’t think Ron DeSantis is a conservative based on his actions toward Disney’, said the Republican governor of New Jersey Chris Christie last week. We shouldn’t be telling business ‘what to say, how to think’, he said.

The Hill reports that ‘deep divides’ are emerging in the GOP, with some ‘worried the party is straying from its roots by going after the internal politics of big business’. Some Republicans’ boycotting of Bud Light over its promo campaign with TikTok fake-girl Dylan Mulvaney has also got the GOP worried. Indeed, the National Republican Congressional Committee swiftly deleted a tweet slagging off Bud Light – ‘we can all finally admit that Bud Light tastes like water’, it said – presumably after someone reminded it that Bud Light’s parent company, Anheuser-Busch, is one of the Republican party’s biggest donors. GOP insiders are fretting that business-bashing by anti-woke Republicans has reached such a level that we’re now ‘biting the hand that feeds [us]’.

We definitely live in strange times when it comes to democracy and capitalism. Everything has been turned on its head. Democrats and even self-styled radicals cosy up to big business, imploring it to put its money where its mouth is and Do Something about social injustice. Meanwhile, ostensibly pro-market right-wingers behave like student agitators of yesteryear, condemning the capitalist elite for its political overreach and threatening to boycott its wares. This 21st-century weirdness is beautifully captured in Disney v DeSantis. On one side we have woke liberals, the kind of people who say they want to tear down the heteronormative patriarchal capitalist superstructure, begging Disney’s boss class to ‘actively oppose’ HB1557. And on the other we have a right-leaning possible future president of the United States effectively saying: ‘Back off, corporation.’

And yet the GOP bigwigs taking swipes at DeSantis are wrong. They clearly don’t understand what is at stake not only in DeSantis v Disney, but also in the broader irritation many people feel with woke capitalism and its insatiable appetite for re-engineering public life to make it accord with its own eccentric creeds. Corporate activism represents a grave threat to democratic life. When powerful actors in the business world play an outsized role in politics – whether they’re clubbing together to discuss how to tear down ‘restrictive voting laws’ in states like Georgia or banning elected politicians like Donald Trump from social media – equality itself is undermined. The view of the capitalist oligarch comes to carry more weight than the views of the citizenry, and that should be intolerable to everyone who believes in democracy – left or right.

The first reason DeSantis was right to stand up to Disney is because HB1557 was not a horrible, homophobic law, as some claimed. No, it’s a popular piece of legislation designed to deal with something many parents are concerned about: the transformation of the classroom into a site of social re-engineering, in which teacher-cum-activists have become obsessed with inculcating kids with correct-think on everything from gender to race. Many parents agree that under-10s should not be told there are 72 genders. DeSantis won a landslide victory in the midterms in November, securing the votes of many Latinos and working-class whites: the kind of people who are deeply opposed to the ideological capture of education by the purple-haired ideologues of the new elite. Call me old-fashioned, but I believe the views of these voters should hold more weight than the views of Disney’s clique of aloof bosses.

The second reason we should support DeSantis against Disney is because this clash might just be the start of a much-needed fightback against the woke corporate assault on democracy. We live in a world in which companies brazenly refuse to pass donations to ‘controversial’ activists like the Canadian truckers. Where corporations like PayPal openly dream of fining users thousands of pounds if they spread ‘misinformation’. Where American Express, Mastercard, Amazon and others block donations to members of the US Congress who say things they disapprove of. Where hip billionaires in Silicon Valley will expel you from the modern public square if you say men are not women. Where Ben & Jerry’s thinks nothing of dictating to elected governments what policies they should adopt. And where the likes of Disney, Coca-Cola, Starbucks and others look to punish states that pass laws they don’t like. ‘Corporate America is, once again, weighing in on politics, and Republicans aren’t happy’, crows the left, with spectacular foolishness.

This is an oligarchical onslaught against the workings of democracy. It is an attack on citizens’ fundamental rights to raise money for political campaigns, to freely associate with one another, to express their political views, and to expect that their voice will count for as much as the voice of richer people who run big businesses like Disney. GOP members who cry ‘But what about the rights of private companies?’ have failed to clock the existential nature of the battle at hand, which is between an unaccountable elite on one side and reason, democracy and the common sense of the electorate on the other. I know which side I’m on. Cry more, Disney.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

“There is no good reason for kindergarten teachers to be discussing their sex lives with their charges.

Disney enjoyed privileges tantamount to self-government that were granted under Florida law when Walt was scouting real-estate for Disneyland East. Now Disney World is just another business like Universal Studios or Sea World.”
***
Exactly, there was no logical reason for Disney to want Sex Ed for kindergarten kids.

[TexasGator]

“People are manufacturing a persona for a guy who is about as bland as you can get.”

results are more important than showbiz persona.

[Jim Noble]

Our rulers care not at all about the “woke” nonsense. They are fine with giving it to DeSantis as a chew toy because it gives him some conservative credibility while posing no threat to their core interests.

[TexasGator]

“He’s fighter? He caved immediately on his position the Ukraine war as soon as the Republican establishment demanded it.”

He beat the teacher’s union.

He beat the Democrat machine in Florida.

He beat wokism in Florida.

A fighter and a winner.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Exactly, there was no logical reason for Disney to want Sex Ed for kindergarten kids.

It was not even that well thought out. It involved internal Disney emails to employees offering them support in the face of perceived adversity. Disney is stuck with Florida, but they were trying to mollify their workforce with ham-fisted emails. When the emails inevitably were leaked to the press it lead to a pissing contest with DeSantis. Since the Disney executives were stuck with the original mischaracterization of the law, and unable to back down without enraging their spoiled workforce, things deteriorated quickly. Probably not a battle DeSantis sought, but once in it, he fought to win.

[Dr. Scarpetta]

“People are manufacturing a persona for a guy who is about as bland as you can get.”
***

Elite Democrats and Snobs can’t relate to the fact that DeSantis came from a very humble background, was in the Little League World Series, earned scholarships to college, was captain of the Yale baseball team while he worked, became a lawyer, a veteran, and earned a Bronze Star for meritorious service.

His father was an installer of Nielsen TV-ratings boxes. No parent bought his way into an Ivy League college.

People who have not had these achievements are jealous of the work ethic of Ron DeSantis.

[Bratch]

Florida House Passes Bill Allowing DeSantis to Run in 2024 Without Resigning – Heads to Governor Desk for Signature, After He Returns from Overseas Tour

April 28, 2023 | Sundance | 339 Comments

The Senate bill that permits Governor Ron DeSantis to run for the GOP nomination in 2024 has now passed the Florida House and awaits the governor signature after return from his overseas ‘book tour.’  The bill passed the House by a vote of 76-34.   DeSantis is expected to announce his official campaign mid-May.

Meanwhile, the details of DeSantis campaign team are starting to emerge along with details of how the Florida Republican Party has been paying for the team to assemble quietly without attention.

“The leadership roster remains subject to change since the campaign – which could launch as soon as the start of next month – does not yet technically exist and most salaries are being paid, for the moment, through the state Republican party.” 

This construct once again, proves my 9-month-long point about the deception operation behind DeSantis.

I have long ago accepted this DeSantis construct has been several years in the making, and it is a demonstrable certainty that all of the action since late 2021 was done to lay the stage for a massive deception upon the voters of Florida.  This campaign operation, and the astroturf assembled to assist it, has been a GOPe operation for a long time.  The assembled team is a who’s-who of GOPe operatives and DC professional republicans.  There’s not a single outsider among them.

[FLORIDA] –  Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, is quietly assembling a senior staff for an expected 2024 presidential campaign that will be headed by his top political adviser, Generra Peck, and around seven other Republican operatives serving as top advisers, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The leadership roster remains subject to change since the campaign – which could launch as soon as the start of next month – does not yet technically exist and most salaries are being paid, for the moment, through the state Republican party.

But some of the senior staff have started to move in recent weeks to the campaign’s base in Tallahassee, the people said, as DeSantis prepares to announce his presidential ambitions as perhaps the closest challenger to Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican nomination.

 

[…] The campaign manager is expected to be Peck, one of DeSantis’s most trusted advisers, who most recently shepherded his 2022 re-election effort for Florida governor, which saw him defeat the Democratic challenger and former governor Charlie Crist by almost 20 percentage points.

Peck is considered a highly adept political operator – notably including by Trump’s own team – who associates say earned the trust of DeSantis and his wife, Casey. At the governor’s inauguration, Peck was one of the people he thanked for his success.

The political director is expected to be Ryan Tyson, another top DeSantis adviser and one of the best-known Republican pollsters, who has been tasked with turning DeSantis’s legislative record in Florida into campaign policy that could work for a national audience.

[…] The policy team is expected to be headed by Dustin Carmack, DeSantis’s chief of staff when he was a member of Congress, from 2013 until 2018, before he ran for Florida governor. Carmack was also the chief of staff for the director of national intelligence during the Trump administration.

The communications team is expected to be headed by David Abrams, who came over from the Republican State Leadership Committee. Abrams previously worked for the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and the New Hampshire governor, Chris Sununu – both potential 2024 candidates.

Also a senior adviser for press is Christina Pushaw, responsible for rapid response. Pushaw came under scrutiny last year when the justice department directed her to retroactively register as a foreign agent for her work on behalf of the former president of Georgia Mikheil Saakashvili from 2018 until 2020.

In a reflection of Casey DeSantis’s influence on her husband’s political career, her top aide, Melissa Peters, is also expected to serve as a senior adviser, with the title of chief financial officer overseeing operations, acting effectively as “the voice” of the would-be first lady on the campaign.

The chief technology officer is expected to be Carl Sceusa, who helped set up the WinRed platform, which generated more than $1bn in digital fundraising for Republican candidates in the 2020 election in only 15 months. He is expected to work with Ethan Eilon, who is heading the digital team.

DeSantis had discussed having Heather Barker run the finance operation, but last month, she joined Never Back Down Pac – the main fundraising vehicle for the DeSantis campaign. Barker’s deputy, Tucker Obenshain, is now expected to lead the advance team.

Also regarded as senior staff is Jason Johnson, the former chief strategist for Senator Ted Cruz, though it was unclear whether he will be leading a specific team or whether he will take on a broader top advisory role with the campaign. (read more)

*****

• Richard Baris: DeSantis shouldn’t run

• Baris: I don’t know what DeSantis is going to do

[Joe Brower]

Well, if you have some more dragons for DeSantis to slay, maybe you should write him a letter. As it is, he’s already taken on more left-wing enterprises than any other governor currently in office, by far. Don’t know what he can do about Google, but if you have ideas, by all means share them. As far as ‘government funded education’, if you mean public schools, Florida’s way ahead of the conservative curve on that.

[Joe Brower]

"Our rulers care not at all about the “woke” nonsense. They are fine with giving it to DeSantis as a chew toy because it gives him some conservative credibility while posing no threat to their core interests."

That's quite a stretch there, Jim, and I say you're wrong. You are simply belittling Florida's massive wins against the 'Woke' mind-virus because you don't want to give credit where it's due.

[TexasGator]

“You are not allowed to use Right and DeSantis in he same sentence on this site”

You just did!

[jeffersondem]

“You don't like them, don't support them.”

Is that all you know about the Disney situation?

The all-white Florida legislature in the 1960s did wrong when it created Reedy Creek District - at the time the secret word for Disney World - and gave it self-dealing powers.

This disadvantages Sea World, Monkey Jungle World, and Fighting Alligator World who also want to operate tourist traps.

It is time to level the playing field.

The Reedy Creek District was given the power to build a nuclear power plant without state oversight. The idea of a perverted private company having enough fissionable material to build several dirty bombs without any state oversight should scare every American.

Disney World can rightly claim the title “Most Perverted Huge Company” but that standing alone is not justification for authorizing them to build a nuclear power plant in their back yard without state oversight.

The legislature was right to act.

[caww]

[Joe Brower]

I don't know what the real story is on the whole Lee Zeldin thing, and neither do you. I have read columns on that which go both ways. I can assure you that whatever 'Sundance' has to say over at Conservative Treehouse isn't it.

Don't be looking for a perfect candidate. DeSantis sure isn't, and neither is Trump. Mistakes get made, questionable things happen (I'm not happy with Donald Trump taking the side of Disney, for example), and you have to rationally weigh the good against the bad.

You do exhibit a bias towards DeSantis. You need to stop it. You don't have to hate one to support the other, and you are wasting your time and energy attacking a good man while the real enemy is out there doing real harm .

[momincombatboots]

That’s not what MAGA Trump says.

[Joe Brower]

"I hope he decides not to run. He’s doing a great job in Florida and we’d like him to stay until 2028. "

I am still not sure what the best course of action for DeSantis is, and he's not asking me anyway < G!>. Worst case, yes, he doesn't run for 2024, and we get to keep the best gov in these here United States around continuing to kick asses and take names on behalf of the Sunshine State. I can certainly live with that.

And God willing Trump will get to be POTUS again in 2024. I've said this before, but Trump wants a fight -- great, let's have one. I want to see heads on pikes all the way down Pennsylvania Avenue on day One. Mr. Trump knows what he's up against this time around, so I expect few if any prisoners.

And by the time he's done reaping the Deep State like winter wheat, DeSantis gets in for 2028 and finishes the job in a less, shall we say, 'boisterous' style.

It will be historic. $;-)

[TexasGator]

“after he took a donation from a donor who favored hochul?”

You keep posting this made-up BS.

[TexasGator]

“I hope he decides not to run. He’s doing a great job in Florida and we’d like him to stay until 2028.”

MAKE AMERCA FLORIDA

“No point in getting down into the sewer with Donald Disney.”

He gave Disney an attitude adjustment!

[TexasGator]

“He rarely speaks.”

He speaks often.

[napscoordinator]

Just say you love the woke culture and be done with it. You are pissed off that DeSantis is going after woke. You hate him for it. It’s as clear as can be from your words on every DeSantis thread.

[GOPJ]

When churches get into politics, the IRS can yank their federal tax exemption.

When gays turn kink into a religion the IRS doesn't give a crap... time to define religion with an eye to liberal manipulations.

AND Catholic Charities? They get away with bringing in millions of illegals because the IRS gives commie groups a pass.