XPost: alt.politics.usa, stl.general, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: alt.politics.nationalism.black   
   From: billsteele@hotmail.com   
      
   In article    
   David Hartung  wrote:   
   >   
   > The FBI is a corrupt organization of political sycophants.   
   >   
      
   Democrats grow increasingly desperate as they continue to fail,   
   so they’re hysterically attempting to brand Republican leaders   
   as “authoritarian.”   
      
   People on the right are calling Joe Biden’s vicious “MAGA   
   Republicans” speech “unpresidential” and “divisive” when in   
   reality, it was simply desperate. That’s a new theme on the left   
   that has become obvious on a comical level.   
      
   The national media have spent the last several weeks insisting   
   that after enduring months of record inflation, unaffordable gas   
   and electric bills, plus a completely avoidable war costing   
   taxpayers billions (and counting), the country is now feeling a   
   new sense of affection for Biden. I’m sure. Now they’re hyping   
   up the Democrat line about some “extreme MAGA ideology” (what?)   
   and “authoritarian leaders” who “represent an extremism that   
   threatens the very foundations of our republic.”   
      
   Those are all quotes that Biden slurred his way through last   
   week in Philadelphia, but the sentiment was just as sweetly   
   captured the previous day in a New York Times column by Thomas   
   Edsall. But instead of targeting the unnamed yet ever-so-   
   fearsome “MAGA Republicans,” Edsall and a round of scholars went   
   after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, aka God’s Chosen One.   
      
   “The fact that Ron DeSantis … is favored to win re-election is a   
   clear warning to those worried about declining support for   
   democratic institutions and values in the United States,” wrote   
   Edsall.   
      
   A popular governor might be chosen by voters in his state for a   
   second term. That certainly doesn’t sound like cause for worry.   
   But maybe Edsall has a bigger point.   
      
   Should DeSantis win reelection, he wrote, it would indicate that   
   voters in a major swing state “will tolerate, if not actively   
   embrace, the abuse of traditional political norms by domineering   
   leaders.” It’s unclear what Edsall meant by “abuse of   
   traditional political norms,” but he noted that the governor   
   “has made no secret of his intent to use executive authority to   
   the fullest extent.”   
      
   If an elected official’s use of authority “to the fullest   
   extent” is “the abuse of traditional political norms,” it would   
   be interesting to know what Edsall makes of Biden unilaterally   
   spreading hundreds of billions of dollars of student loan debt   
   among taxpayers, including many who never went to college and   
   many who had already paid off their own. It would be interesting   
   to know what he makes of Biden’s failed attempt at coercing   
   millions of workers to inject themselves with an experimental   
   drug.   
      
   Those weren’t an abuse of traditional political norms. Those   
   were bold progressive actions!   
      
   Edsall went on to cite some of DeSantis’s more widely known   
   achievements in office, including his crackdown on public   
   schools that were teaching children that to be white is a   
   problem; punitive measures he took against corporations that get   
   tax breaks and then get mouthy about politics; and his removal   
   of a state attorney general who openly said he would not adhere   
   to a Supreme Court ruling.   
      
   It was “surprising” to Edsall that the productive governor   
   hadn’t been the subject of a more focused political pushback   
   from Florida Democrats. But he also admitted he knew why that   
   was: “One answer is that his policies have substantial support.”   
      
   Ah, so it’s difficult to successfully take down an elected   
   official who is actually supported by the people he represents,   
   even if some of that support is begrudging. Who knew?!   
      
   This is where Edsall introduced his trusty gang of “experts” to   
   make the case that despite DeSantis having broad appeal among   
   the people who would have to hand him any higher office he has   
   designs for — we call this an “election” — such a victory would   
   mean certain doom for democracy.   
      
   Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli   
   Institute for International Studies, told Edsall that what would   
   worry him about a “Trump Republican” like DeSantis in office is   
   “the extreme politicization and abuse of federal government   
   power, the targeting of political enemies and the mobilization   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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