Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was in Pittsburgh last week campaigning for Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for Pennsylvania governor. DeSantis is intelligent and articulate, but what makes him probably the most popular Republican governor in the country—and why he brought star appeal to the Keystone State—is that he fights, and wins, political battles for conservative principles.
Earlier this year, the Walt Disney Company—one of the largest employers in Florida, and one of the most influential corporations in the world—opposed legislation sponsored by DeSantis that prohibited public school teachers from discussing sexual topics in kindergarten through the third grade. It was a strange position to take for a business that caters to parents with young children, and an indication of how ideologically deranged corporate America has become.
Not long after, DeSantis demonstrated a rare willingness to inflict pain on his political opponents by signing a bill revoking Disney’s special regulatory and tax exemptions. It was a major showdown, and DeSantis is rightly proud of himself for not backing off. If only more Republicans in other states, and in Washington, D.C., followed his lead. DeSantis is proof that political power, like muscle power, grows when it is used.
But constitutional politics always includes persuasion as well as coercion. So what about DeSantis’ rhetorical gifts?
In his Pittsburgh speech, he highlighted several accomplishments of his gubernatorial tenure in Florida: opposing the federal government’s hysterical overreach in the COVID-19 pandemic, upholding law and order in the face of widespread Democratic weakness on crime, and opposing critical race theory in schools. DeSantis, who attended Yale as well as Harvard Law School, understands the value of education for democratic citizenship, as well as the dangers of leftist indoctrination. In his speech, he clearly and accurately explained how “our rights come from God not the government.” In fact, he even wrote a serious book in 2011 called Dreams from Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama.
As a political scientist, I’m impressed by DeSantis’ learning and intellect; and I certainly can’t imagine Trump writing a detailed analysis of how the United States has abandoned James Madison’s constitutional principles. Yet Trump grasps intuitively something essential about America that is more basic and even more important than any academic discussion of political theory. He knows that America is supposed to be “for the people,” and that the government once defended the rights, interests, and prosperity of ordinary, working citizens. He further knows that the great crisis of our time is that it no longer does so.
A recent poll indicated that large percentages of Republicans, and even a majority of Democratic voters, believe the FBI has become a Gestapo-like force in service of the Biden White House. This simply confirms what many MAGA supporters suspected in 2016: the system is rigged. Establishment politicians, Democrats or Republicans, won’t admit this, for the simple reason that it is rigged by and for them. And because Trump does say it, loudly and often obnoxiously, he is hated by elites of both parties and the many people who benefit directly or indirectly from this bona fide hijacking of American democracy.
That America really was a government of, by, and for the people seemed to the world and to Americans to be an actual miracle. From the time of the founding until quite recently, it was commonly believed, and often said out loud, that the American Revolution and the genius of our Constitution were evidence of God’s blessings. As George Washington put it in his First Inaugural Address, “Every step by which [we] have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”
Even today, at Trump rallies, it is common to see signs saying “God Loves America.” And in small towns and local community gatherings nothing is more normal than to hear people express their gratitude for God’s blessings on America. But as our current ruling oligarchs inexorably pervert the institutions of government to serve their woke tyranny, it becomes harder and harder for patriotic citizens to see the evidence of God’s blessings. From this crisis of political faith comes a deep and growing doubt about whether we still have self-government in America.