Gov. Ron DeSantis earns heaps of liberal gratitude

Think of Ron DeSantis as Toto, the yappy little dog who pulled back the curtain on the “great and powerful Oz.”

DeSantis yanked away Donald Trump’s aura of invincibility and exposed a bombastic humbug.

Who could have imagined it? Ron DeSantis, snarling rightwing enemy of liberal ideals, has stymied the snarling rightwing enemy of American democracy.

For the last six years, Republican politicians groveled at the wizard’s feet, worried that even a suspicion of disloyalty would ignite a firestorm of retribution.

Even after Trump instigated the Jan. 6 insurrection, Republican members of Congress, whose very lives were threatened by his MAGA mob, feigned fealty, lest their dear leader assail them with threats, insults, disparaging nicknames and a primary opponent from far off in the lunatic fringe.

But DeSantis has shown cowering Republicans that behind the fearsome façade lurks an impotent has-been.

DeSantis dared to campaign for reelection without larding his campaign speeches with the requisite Trump adulation. And without disputing the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Worse, DeSantis failed to promise to abandon his own presidential ambitions if Trump decided to run in 2024.

For such disloyalty, Trump hung a middle-school sobriquet on his upstart rival: “Ron DeSanctimonious.” At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, four days before the Nov. 8 election, Trump veered into 2024, bragging about a poll gauging a hypothetical primary match-up two years in the future. “There it is, Trump at 71%, Ron DeSanctimonious at 10%.”

But on Election Day 2022, Gov. DeSanctimonious scuttled the notion of the Republican Party as a fully owned subsidiary of The Trump Organization.

Without Trump’s support, DeSantis won reelection over Democrat Charlie Crist by 19.4%. Meanwhile, in startling contrast to Florida’s Republican stampede, voters elsewhere rejected a slew of MAGA candidates endorsed by the former prez.

The failed kingmaker’s chosen candidates for U.S. Senate seats in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Arizona lost, along with his gubernatorial picks in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona.

Trump’s failed endorsements, in combination with DeSantis’ big win in Florida, seem to have had a liberating effect on the Republican hierarchy. As if they had been waiting all along for someone like DeSantis to upstage the old tyrant. The metaphorical streets were filled with Republican Munchkins, singing, “Ding, dong, the witch is dead.”

Suddenly, Republican governors and senators, political operatives, former Trump White House staffers and GOP mega-donors were dissing Trump. Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News and the Wall Street Journal likewise turned sour on the old reprobate. The tabloid cover on Murdoch’s New York Post featured “Trumpty Dumpty” in large type under an unflattering caricature of the former president.

The election returns made it apparent that American voters wanted no more of the lies, chaos, petty feuds, election denial and alt-right craziness fomented by Trump. Fox News’ Laura Ingraham warned Trump, “If the voters conclude that you’re putting your own ego or your own grudges ahead of what’s good for the country, they’re going to look elsewhere.” (But take away Trump’s ego and his grudges, there’d be nothing left but a jutting chin and a shock of yellow hair.)

But the Republican establishment needed DeSantis to convince them that Trump was an empty suit, albeit a very large empty suit. (I was going to employ an “emperor has no clothes” reference, but the mental image was too disgusting for a family newspaper.)

Suddenly, other possible contenders for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination seemed emboldened. They were hardly deterred by Trump’s lackluster I’m-running-again speech Tuesday evening at Mar-a-Lago, his beach-side repository for pilfered classified material.

The once pro-Trump conservative Club for Growth countered Trump’s announcement by touting polls showing Republican voters preferred DeSantis over the former president.

Of course, Trump could still win. He’s the master of pluralities, which accounted for his key wins in the 2016 primary against 16 opponents. He’ll go into the 2024 primaries with the unwavering support of hardcore forever Trumpers, perhaps 30% of the Republican electorate. For him, the more opponents splitting the balance, the better.

But DeSantis, at least, quashed the aura of inevitability around Trump’s candidacy.

In another context, Florida’s governor would seem an appalling possibility for president. He has undermined medical science for political advantage. Time and again, he has preempted home rule when cities and counties rejected his rightwing agenda. He spent millions of taxpayer dollars setting up hapless immigrants or confused black voters as political props. He ginned up fake culture war controversies over school curriculum and transgender kids.

No matter. He may have saved America from a wanna-be autocrat with no respect for democratic norms.

Better Ron than Don.