Sound, fury signifying nothing but status in MAGA world

Without the bombast, none of us would have heard of Anthony Sabatini. He would have made no more impression on the Florida electorate than a shimmer of gossamer on a moonlit night.

Yet in our not-so-brave new world, a man utterly without substance worms his way into our collective consciousness. A twice-elected state representative without a single notable legislative accomplishment concocts a persona that generates 2.6 million hits on Google, nearly all linking to rhetorical excess or outrageous lies or gunslinger bravado.

Sabatini is more poseur than policymaker, but that’s enough to lend him celebrity status in MAGA-world. Who cares if his controversial bills wither and die? A social media buzz is what matters.

Internet chatter has created more name recognition for this 33-year-old state rep from Howey-in-the-Hills than most, maybe all, his fellow legislators. Twitter and Facebook clamor explains why Sabatini — not the House speaker or Senate president — will be a headliner next month at American Priority’s “Take Back America” gathering at the Trump golf resort in Doral. He’ll share the podium with the likes of provocateurs Roger Stone, Mike Flynn and Matt Gaetz, the congressman who made himself famous by being infamous.

Gaetz’s allure is apparently unaffected by the scandal around his party-boy buddy Joel Greenberg, the former Seminole County tax collector convicted of cavorting with an underage girl. Lately, Gaetz has been on a national speaking tour with the ultimate example of nothingness-cum-luminaire, Georgia U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose ghastly behavior has hardly dimmed her celebrity status.

Greene caught Broward’s attention with her harassment of a Parkland massacre survivor, chasing him along a Washington sidewalk and yelling lunatic accusations that the most appalling crime in South Florida’s history was faked. Once, that antic alone would have gotten her drummed out of the Republican Party. She has since compounded her awfulness by blaming California wildfires on “Jewish space lasers” and repeating other lunatic conspiracy theories. Then she compared mask mandates to the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear by World War II Nazis.

Yet, the likes of Greene and Gaetz still shine in the modern GOP, where status is measured by groveling devotion to Donald Trump and his stolen election myth. (Greene got a celebrity invitation to last week to the Hillsborough County GOP’s annual fundraiser in Tampa).

Rhetorical excess similarly explains Sabatini’s ascent in Florida politics. Before his election to the House, he served a single term on the Eustis City Commission, where in

2017 he created national attention by inviting southern cities and counties that were removing Confederate monuments to ship them to Eustis, saying: “We will gladly accept and proudly display our nation’s history.”

The rebel symbols were never coming to Eustis, but that wasn’t the point. Sabatini understood that his constituency responds to sound and fury. Even if it signifies (sorry, Shakespeare) not much.

After a 17-year-old gunned down two Black Lives Matter protesters in Wisconsin last year, Sabatini tweeted, “KYLE RITTENHOUSE FOR CONGRESS.” Sabatini boasted that if BLM protesters marched on his town, he’d welcome them with an AR-15, as if BLM leaders had ever heard of Howey-in-the

Hills. That probably wasn’t the same assault weapon he intended to raffle off as a campaign fund raiser, until the Orlando Sentinel noticed that would be illegal.

Two months before Joe Biden assumed the presidency, Sabatini made news with a nonsensical tweet demanding that the president-elect “be impeached and then sent to federal prison.”

Though Trump carried Florida, Sabatini demanded an extralegal “full forensic audit” of five counties where Biden won. He regularly files bills meant to titillate the Trump base, not survive the legislative process, like measures to allow concealed weapons on campuses, or mean-spirited legislation that would outlaw transitional therapies for transgender teens.

Sabatini filed a bill last week that would outlaw vaccine mandates by local governments and private businesses — not likely to please Republican corporate allies such as Disney. But Sabatini is all about generating jolts of publicity, not actually changing anything.

Also last week, the sixth loser lawsuit Sabatini filed against local mask mandates was tossed. One presiding judge accused Sabatini, a member of the Florida Bar, of “frivolous” litigation worthy of sanctions.

Sabatini’s frivolous pursuits may not impress judges, but they’ll create enough clamor to win him the Republican nomination in Central Florida’s 7th congressional district.

And I wouldn’t bet against him in the general election. If you can whip up enough sound and fury, who needs substance?

Fred Grimm, a longtime resident of Fort Lauderdale, has worked as a journalist in South Florida since 1976. Reach him by email at leogrimm@gmail.com or on Twitter: @ grimm_fred.