Ron DeSantis is continuing to respond to Gavin Newsom’s farcical criticisms of the Florida governor, laying waste to the arguments that have been made.
As RedState reported previously, Newsom has been in a mostly one-sided feud with DeSantis, lashing out with an ad campaign targeting the Sunshine State and its governor, touting California as the true bastion of “freedom.” Further, while visiting the White House (while Joe Biden was out of town) for reasons completely unknown, Newsom again slammed DeSantis, calling him a bully and shouting for him to “stop.”
Most recently, the California governor made the laughable admission that he’s targeting DeSantis because the latter threatened to fine the organization that runs the Special Olympics because of its COVID-19 vaccine mandate. That was done to ensure all athletes, even those without the ability to get the vaccine due to preexisting conditions, could compete, and in the end, they did. Apparently, Newsom values the irrational, pointless virtue signaling of partisan adults over the needs of children, hardly surprising given his subservience to the teachers’ unions during the pandemic.
The entire spectacle has been nonsensical and funny to witness. Newsom is desperately flailing about, hoping to gain national attention in hopes of taking Kamala Harris’ ordained spot at the top of the 2024 presidential ticket. DeSantis is here to rain on his parade, with the Florida Man doing so again on Tuesday in a skilled takedown of Newsom.
“This is a guy that locked people down, that kept kids out of school, denied people the right to earn a living, wanted to force COVID vaxes on people – what did I do? I stood in the way of all that,” he said. “We made sure that people had the choice about whether they wanted to take this vax or not.
DeSantis responded to Newsom’s criticism on pressuring the Special Olympics to drop the vaccine mandate, which would have violated state law.
“These athletes – they have down syndrome, disabilities, and they wanted to compete in the Special Olympics in Orlando. Well, there’s an international bureaucracy affiliated with the group that imposed vax discrimination on these athletes,” he said. “The athletes I met, their doctors told them not to do it based on their condition.”
While Newsom speaks in false generalities about Florida (no, the state has not banned saying the word gay or banned books), DeSantis has real-world examples on his side. California has been a case study in how to not run a state for nearly two decades. Homelessness is out of control, taxes are sky-high, the population is decreasing, and the public infrastructure, from energy to water, has been woefully mismanaged, causing constant shortages.
Then there’s COVID-19 where Newsom still refuses to relinquish his emergency powers that helped usher in years of widespread lockdowns and ineffective mandates. There is no real freedom in California because everything is controlled by the dictates of the state government. Florida stands in stark contrast, consistently prioritizing the individual rights of its residents, not bending the knee to politicized corporations or partisan officials.
DeSantis’ fight with the bureaucracy that controls the Special Olympics was simply an extension of that commitment. Children wanted to compete who otherwise wouldn’t have been allowed to. DeSantis made sure they were allowed to. That Newsom chose that as an attack line is quite the strategic blunder.
To end, I do think it’s noteworthy that DeSantis has chosen to engage Newsom. He could have sat by and let the California governor flop around on the floor, but the decision to go right at him shows the Florida governor’s confidence in his own record of governance as well as his ability to rhetorically win these battles. That’s a good sign. Republicans love a fighter, and DeSantis has not been one to back down.