Ron DeSantis: a strong leader of the extreme right to succeed Trump

In the only face to face they had during the campaign for the elections on Tuesday, the former governor of Florida and candidate for the same position, Charlie Crist, asked the current occupant of the position and candidate for re-election, Ron DeSantis, if in case of leaving elected would undertake to serve a four-year term; In other words, if he would not leave the game in the middle of the game to, in 2024, run for the presidential elections.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
11 November 2022 Friday 22:30
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Ron DeSantis: a strong leader of the extreme right to succeed Trump

In the only face to face they had during the campaign for the elections on Tuesday, the former governor of Florida and candidate for the same position, Charlie Crist, asked the current occupant of the position and candidate for re-election, Ron DeSantis, if in case of leaving elected would undertake to serve a four-year term; In other words, if he would not leave the game in the middle of the game to, in 2024, run for the presidential elections. The Republican did not seem to know what to answer, and the other took advantage of that silence to highlight his lack of response. But DeSantis was quick to reply. And in what way. Without actually answering the question, he said: “I already know that Charlie is interested in talking about 2024, just like Joe Biden. But I just want to make one thing clear: the only old donkey I want to put out to pasture is Charlie Crist."

This is how the 44-year-old ultraconservative, married and with three children, spends it, who two weeks after that debate was re-elected governor of the Sunshine State with a difference of almost twenty points over his contender (59.4% to 40%). At the victory celebration party, his fans did not sing “Two more years! Two more years!” So that Crist would not be misguided about the secret intentions of his rude and lazy adversary. He, however, would continue that night and in the following days without confirming or denying his presidential ambitions, which Donald Trump, one day his mentor, already takes for granted and considers disloyalty to his person.

When he first ran for governor, after resigning his seat in the House of Representatives in 2018, the Tampa Bay Times interviewed one of his teachers at his elementary school in the city of Dunedin, Dee Centinaro: “It was brilliant. He always did his job. And today he has a promising future, including more important things than being governor.”

The young Ronald Dion DeSantis, descendant of Italians, son of a nurse and an installer of television audience meters, served as a diligent student and great baseball player. His power as a pitcher and hitter actually helped him get into Yale University, where he studied History and Political Science while serving as team captain for that sport. He then went to Harvard, where he earned his JD degree and then went on to major in military law at the US Naval Justice School.

DeSantis practiced law at Guantánamo Bay (2006) and Fallujah, Iraq (2007), advising soldiers in both hot spots on the treatment of prisoners. Upon his return home in 2008, he acted as an adviser to active-duty military lawyers in the southeast, especially on how to proceed with "sensitive" cases, such as soldiers accused of rape. Then, after finishing the book Dreams of Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Obama Era, in 2012 he jumped into politics, running for a seat in Congress, which he won.

As a parliamentarian, he cultivated an image of military austerity. In his surroundings, they say that he used to sleep in the office and refused medical care and pension privileges. Even today, his declared net worth amounts to just over $300,000. However, his ability to raise campaign funds is limitless. In the last one, he collected 200 million dollars.

The man who today enrages Trump, who has just baptized him as “Ron DeSanctimonious”, that is, Ron the Piss, always maintains a distant attitude even with his collaborators. It is not uncommon to see him answering his cell phone while others talk to him or walking through the corridors with his headphones, looking straight ahead, without looking at anyone who crosses his path. That utter lack of warmth is often made up for on the campaign trail by his wife, Casey DeSantis, an affable and talkative former TV host who regularly accompanies him at key events.

Ron DeSantis follows the agenda of the American extreme right to the millimeter: zero concessions to immigrants, whom, in alliance with other governors of his party, he has sent by the hundreds to Democratic states; it was the right to abortion; no sex education in school, much less recognition of gender identities other than sex at birth, and not a minute of teaching on the history of racism in the United States, topics those last two that he has legislated to avoid "inconvenience" to Florida parents. To parents who think like him.

DeSantis is, in short, just like Trump ideologically and like an iron sergeant in everything else. Only with more and more power.