So, now that Donald Trump seems to be looking for ways to drop out of the 2024 Presidential race that he dropped into a month ago, the Fake News can really start pumping up Ron DeSantis as the next embodiment of MAGA for the GOP. Apparently, in the last days before the mid-terms, when DeSantis won an easy re-election against Charlie Crist, his campaign sent out a mailer which had a blatant attack on gays.
Florida has a long and distinguished history of public figures trying to rile up the old people against a life-style that’s only become accepted just about everywhere since Anita Bryant started ranting about a pro-gay ordnance in Dade County nearly fifty years ago. The picture above was taken at a press conference in June 1977 when Bryant announced her campaign to ‘save the children’ from the threat posed by a gay life.
Anita actually got the ordnance repealed so she won that battle, except she also lost the war. Because her campaign created the first, organized pro-gay political movement in America, which no doubt played an important role in the momentous Obergefell v. Hodges decision back in 2015.
She recently lost another little skirmish when her granddaughter Sarah didn’t invite Grandma to her wedding last year. Why did grammaw sit home on this wonderful day? Because her granddaughter happens to be a lesbian and married another girl. Oops! – I mean she married another human being.
So, the question is this: why does Ron DeSantis and for that matter the rest of the GOP actually believe they can use an electoral strategy which is being called a ‘cultural war’ and actually win the next national election in 2024?
They’ll maybe win some old or new Confederate states (Mississippi being ‘old,’ Ohio being ‘new’) but they won’t come close to winning the states they need to carry the whole shebang. If the GOP hasn’t yet figured out how and why the Supreme Court’s abolition of Roe v. Wade was one of the reasons the ‘red wave’ turned into a mere trickle at best, this bunch isn’t just as dumb as Republicans tend to be, they’re also stupid, deaf and blind.
I happen to believe, incidentally, that the best thing which could happen to the blue team going forward would be for the red team not only to continue fighting the cultural war, but to ramp the war up to as high a level as they can make it work.
The reason I say that is actually two reasons: Reason #1 is that you can’t unwind history. Reason #2 is that you can’t use history or things which happened in the past to either explain the present or somehow get past events to happen again.
Take, for example, a past event as recent as Donald Trump saying that the 2020 election was ‘fixed.’ Even if it were true, it wouldn’t explain the 2022 results and it certainly wouldn’t make a bit of difference in terms of what will happen in 2024.
There were actually some liberal-minded folks who took Trump’s threats seriously about closing down various polling places where votes would be stolen again. In fact, last month’s election took place in a remarkably peaceful and non-violent way.
One asshole walked into a polling station in the little town of West Bend, WI wielding a knife. He was immediately arrested and told the officers that he needed psychiatric help. And that was the extent of polling violence last month.
Tomorrow is the 81st anniversary of the war we got into because of the Pearl Harbor attack. Why can’t the GOP use January 6th to mark the beginning of the ‘cultural war?’
Where were the Proud Boys? Where were the Three Percenters? I guess they were all at home figuring out how to respond to Kanye West’s demand that Hitler be forgiven for burning six million Jews (plus lots of other people too).
You see, the real problem with leading a ‘cultural war’ as that, by definition, you’ attract morons and crazies like Kanye West and Marjorie Taylor Greene to join up on your side. And if this is what the GOP thinks will help them win an election, to quote Grandpa, ‘a be gezunt’ (read: a jerk will always be a jerk.)
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