Florida now has America's lowest COVID rate. Does Ron DeSantis deserve credit?

Either way, the DeSantis argument acknowledges all this. Waves of infection are inevitable — and Florida tends to suffer in the summer, when the heat and humidity force people indoors, his proponents say. Insisting on precautions like vaccines and masks won’t stop these waves. So what’s the point of continuing to infringe on people’s freedom?

There’s a certain logic at work here. One day, experts predict, SARS-CoV-2 will become endemic, spreading seasonally around the globe in ever-evolving variations that might make a lot of people feel ill for a few days but are ultimately much less damaging and deadly because everybody has some degree of immunity through vaccination or prior infection.

At that point, mask mandates and vaccine passports will be more trouble than they’re worth.

The problem, though, is that the U.S. had not achieved endemicity this summer — and probably hasn’t achieved it even now. Forty-three percent of Americans still haven’t been fully vaccinated, including a third of the eligible population. Boosters have yet to restore full protection against serious illness to older and medically vulnerable Americans who’ve seen their immunity wane over time and in the face of Delta’s evasive properties. And kids, the vast majority of whom aren’t vaccinated, are back in classrooms nationwide for the first time since the start of the pandemic.

As a result, letting the virus rip without encouraging precautionary measures such as indoor masking and universal vaccination remains a very risky proposition. In DeSantis’s case, he has effectively discouraged such measures, going so far as to tweet about monoclonal antibodies — an expensive treatment that helps only after you’ve gotten infected and potentially transmitted the virus to others — 30 times more often than vaccines. And in addition to banning mask requirements, he’s seeking to reward those who resist vaccine mandates at work with unemployment benefits and, in an effort to get anti-vax police officers to move to Florida, $5,000 bonuses.

So while it’s true that COVID waves may come — and go — regardless of what leaders like DeSantis do, the more important question is how their constituents do when those waves inevitably arrive.

And the bottom line is that this summer in Florida, people did not do as well as they should have. Why? Because far too many of them died. The raw numbers alone are staggering. In all of 2020 — before vaccines essentially eliminated the risk of death for most recipients — 23,384 Floridians died of COVID-19. Now nearly as many — 21,000 and counting — have died in the past four months alone. And another 135 Floridians are still dying, on average, every single day.

The relative numbers are even more damning. Before Delta hit, Florida ranked 26th in the nation for cumulative COVID deaths per capita; now it ranks ninth. What’s more, three of the states above Florida on that list — New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts — suffered the bulk of their deaths right in the beginning of the pandemic, long before vaccinations and other interventions drastically reduced the virus’s deadliness.

In contrast, Florida is one of the only states where more people have been dying each day during the Delta wave — long after free, safe and effective vaccines became widely available to all Americans age 12 or older — than during any previous wave of the virus. Most of the other states in that category — Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Alaska — are places where conservative leaders have prioritized freedom from COVID restrictions over freedom from COVID itself.

The tragedy is that, unlike before, the vast majority of these deaths were preventable. DeSantis and his defenders might argue that it’s only a matter of time before the worst of Delta hits places like California too, further proving that a more cautious approach to the virus “provide[s] no benefits.” But that doesn’t explain why Florida’s peak daily COVID death rate was 2.5 times higher than California’s last summer — and nearly six times higher this summer. It doesn’t explain why California fell about 10 places on the state-by-state list of cumulative death rates at the same time Florida climbed nearly 20.

And it doesn’t explain why whatever price Californians paid this summer — no lockdowns, no business closures, no shuttered classrooms, no official curbs on indoor drinking or dining; just masks and tests in school and masks and vaccinations at some indoor businesses — was less acceptable than the price tens of thousands of Floridians paid when they lost their lives.

In the end, policy can do only so much during a pandemic. But leaders like DeSantis do have some power to encourage or discourage safety measures, and some responsibility for the behaviors they help to normalize (or not). Their supporters can give them credit for declining case numbers if they choose. But they’re also accountable for how much damage each wave of infection leaves in its wake.

Miscounting. Period. Had lung cancer but died of Covid? Not in Florida. Now you died of lung cancer. A daily chart of deaths and cases by state will show when Florida miraculously started halving their case and death rates.

DeathSantis is making sure that cases are wildly under-reported.

He certainly deserves credit for that.

It's because those who recovered have active immunity and are less likely to be reinfected or transmit the virus. As far as "costly treatments" is concerned, we could have easily saved more lives if we had spent some of that trillions in Covid relief in protecting the most vulnerable.

And how many people in FL have died from Covid?

Lol R6.

That's what I was going to say.

Florida now has a low COVID rate, because it killed so many people in that state.

Thanks to DeSatanist.

Kill tens of thousands of your most vulnerable residents and your death rate will eventually start to go down. If you think De Santis deserves "credit" for that, you might be a sociopath.

A similar thing happened in California despite its high vaccination rate. We saw a huge surge followed by a sharp decline.

r5 missed the study that says with natural immunity you are 16 times more likely to catch covid again.

R10 Which study is this? Smells like BS to me.

As I understand it, they are strongly considering not vaccinating kids under 12 who have tested positive for covid this year.

All it means is that the virus has temporarily run out of maskless, irresponsible idiots to infect in Florida.

He has been fucking with the numbers since the pandemic started. False information.

But it doesn't. In state rankings it's currently #2 in active cases and #3 in both in total Covid cases and deaths.

Didn't Florida change the way they were reporting COVID cases months ago to make themselves look better? I'm too lazy to look it up.

I don’t believe this for one second. They are most likely under reporting.

r11 is a perfect, shining example of how conservative bias influences the brain.

As a liberal, I see two pieces of information and say "these facts conflict, I think i know which is correct but I need to look deeper". In the same situation The conservative brain defaults to their side and often digs in, even when presented with new data. Cheers to r11 for asking for more info though!

R18 I called BS because I never became aware of such a study and wanted to analyze it. But I see most people rather default to the "numbers are fake" which is actually intellectually lazy.

To be fair to R11, the study cited at R10 did not say "with natural immunity you are 16 times more likely to catch covid again." It said unvaccinated people can be expected to be reinfected with the coronavirus roughly every 16 months.

Unless there's another study I don't know about.

R20 Yes, that study I am aware of. That makes sense given that active immunity offers longer protection than passive immunity. Someone who is fully vaccinated is likely to be reinfected 6 to 12 months later if not taking precautions.

What is "active immunity"? Is it immunity?

Stop that lying! Why, if Ron DeSantis were Pinocchio, his nose would be a mile long!

And it was a peaceful day in Gettysburg the day after the battle ended.

New day, same shit from Florida. I hope he and Trump both have massive heart attacks and die on the same day. Biden can declare it a new federal holiday.

R11, here is the study.

Florida has been playing with their numbers for over a year.

R6 r7 amen to that, I was just coming here to post it. For the state with the largest population, what’s CA’s death rate?

From the celebrated 70s novel “House of God” a Catch-22 sendup of Boston’s celebrated Beth Israel (get it?):

“You can’t find a fever if you don’t take a temperature.”

Fake numbers from Florida.

Totally normal. Totally sane

Someone should remind DeSantis that Covid comes in waves and that he's been here at least once before.

Don't worry. I'll be back.

COVID will be back as soon as the holiday travel and festivities get underway.

This thread seems like extra-strength catnip for people who already buy into stereotypes about Florida, as well as harboring a visceral hatred of its governor.

R25 That's not a national study. It's from Kentucky, where there are no mask mandates. Moreover, it doesn't give any indication of when those individuals were first infected. The vaccine has been widely available for less than a year, unlike Covid which has been around for quite some time. During the summer, the CDC also recommended lifting mask mandates. They are hardly trustworthy at this point.

Our strong, broad shouldered, muscular governor deserves some of the credit

[QUOTE] They are hardly trustworthy at this point.

Amen! The messaging on this has been awful. Plays right into anti-vax hands!

Did y'all see the video on twitter comparing his gestures with Orange Julius? Creepy.

Florida has 60,000 deaths. So, mazeltov, I guess?

I don't trust Florida COVID numbers released by DeSantis.

Nor do I believe Florida has the lowest COVID rate in the USA.

DeSantis is a big fat liar and follows the ways of his boss, tRump.

Thank you R30 for posting that link. This is the point that R3, R4, R14, R16, R17, R26, and R29 were making. You can't trust the numbers Florida is reporting because DeSantis removed anyone capable and ethical from the official counting process so that he could manipulate the reporting.

If it is true that Florida has the lowest COVID rate, let DeathSentence prove it. Bring in the investigators and analysts, give them the raw data and access to all of the records and personnel, and we'll see. Until then, take this with the same level of assurance that one of the nation's worst governors can provide, which is little to none.

Lefty Yanks are mad Desantis wasn't a tyrant and didn't try to control people's lives. Their brains truly can't comprehend not having their rights violated.

tRump lost. He's a loser. Get over it already.

they fake the numbers. they were never honest with the numbers from day 1.

It's obvious that a LOT of people who are commenting in this thread didn't bother to read the article posted by the OP in full, or if they did, their reading comprehension skills are shockingly poor.

[quote]Lefty Yanks are mad Desantis wasn't a tyrant and didn't try to control people's lives.

You mean like when he decreed that no schools could institute mask mandates and no municipality or organization could mandate vaccines?

Because many people directly or indirectly died from it and, so, are no longer around to be counted in the totals, p'raps?

The Orlando Sentinel takes exception to the idea that DeSantis deserves any credit.

"With numbers finally falling, DeSantis now has the gall, the nerve, to take a victory lap.

What a fraud. What a phony.

The do-nothing governor is trying to claim credit for this surge coming to an end. It is DeSantis’ final and most essential command — to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. How Orwellian."

I posted some time ago that medical colleagues in Florida were under extreme pressure to report Covid experiences in a very complicated and constrictive manner: such that the details regarding infections and causes of death could be misconstrued.

Received plenty of blowback for this; but stand by the fact that what comes out of Florida regarding Covid is NOT transparent and likely misinformation to fit a certain agenda.

[quote]It's because those who recovered have active immunity and are less likely to be reinfected or transmit the virus.

Yeah, not so much.

The whole US should do what Desantis is doing and just move on and live their lives instead of being terrified of a cold.

Apparently R51 has just awoken from an enchanted sleep after playing nine-pins with a group of gnomes in February 2020. You've got some catching up to do, R51!

[quote] The whole US should do what Desantis is doing and just move on and live their lives instead of being terrified of a cold.

Hahahahahahahahahahahaha.

A cold, you say, R51?

Would love for you to join our rounds where a healthy 23 year-old is on the vent with Covid and full organ failure. And we just admitted a 42 year-old marathon runner who looks increasingly like he is headed to the vent also.

All from a “cold”.

PS: Their terrified families have many regrets: and one voiced that they would have gone all “prison colony” if they’d known something like this could happen to someone in THEIR FAMILY.

For some people (like you, R51), what happens to others is not significant.

Ron ‘24 is the only number Florida is showing

R50 Lots of problems with that study that's mentioned in the replies but I actually clicked on the abstract and read the whole thing. The discussion appears to invalidate the study findings.

I had read about this in two prior articles. Florida is intentionally misrepresenting the numbers, Those who died of COVID but have a preexisting condition such as heart disease or cancer are being categorized as dying from that disease rather than COVID. This is what happens who you have a corrupt governor and secretary of state.

Natural immunity ! Look at the facts people, quit believing BS that is fed to you. Number one rule , look at all sides and decide for yourselves. Dont be sheep.

[quote]Natural immunity ! Look at the facts people

The facts, per the CDC:

In this U.S.-based epidemiologic analysis of patients hospitalized with COVID-19–like illness whose previous infection or vaccination occurred 90–179 days earlier, vaccine-induced immunity was more protective than infection-induced immunity against laboratory-confirmed COVID-19, including during a period of Delta variant predominance.

Google Israel, Phillipines, and Waterford County in Ireland.

Or just Google "studies that tell me what I want to hear."

It will be a Dark Winter.

You can't fight the pandemic with vaccination alone, just like you can't fight a once-in-a-century flood with dams and levees. You can stall and delay it to buy yourself time to get healthier, thus to be able to fight the virus. But the pandemic has to happen. The flood/pandemic needs to spread and flow and be gone. Yes, millions of people will have died before the pandemic subsides and become a seasonal endemic.

R58 As I mentioned earlier, the CDC has been wrong over and over again. I suppose they could be right this time, that is if the virus was specially engineered to cause the most damage possible, which would go against everything we know regarding passive versus natural immunity. Again, there are complications which the study quoted at R50 acknowledges as well as additional international studies that conclude the opposite. This doesn't mean that people should be trying to catch Covid on purpose, but if 1/3rd of the country already has some form of active immunity, then perhaps sweeping mandates targeting children as young as 5 is not the ideal solution.

60,000 dead in Florida alone. Not a success story.

President DeSantis? 🤯

Is DeSantis (how should we say?), morbidly obese?

Are people forgetting that DeSantis fired data scientist Rebekah Jones last year for refusing to cook the state's Covid numbers, and then had state police raid her house (with children present), seizing her devices because she tried to get the accurate numbers out there to the public?

Why the hell would you believe ANY numbers coming from this corrupt fuckwad?

Is there anything the federal government can do to remove rogue state governors? Both DeSantis and Abbott are responsible for thousands of unnecessary deaths and you know they have to have lots of other shady shit going on.

Same thing with Kristi Noem, she has turrned South Dakota into the Cayman Islands as far as tax avoidance.

Oh and let's not forget the freeze that was responsible for the deaths of like 200+ people in Texas last winter. But instead of winterizing the state's electricity grid, he's spending funds building a useless border wall and showboating at the border.

[quote]You can't fight the pandemic with vaccination alone...

The last worldwide pandemic was in 1918. They didn't know what caused it, let alone have a vaccine. So, how did you come to your genius conclusion?

In fact, if everyone was vaccinated in the US when they were eligible last Spring, this would have been over by the summer, even with Delta. We could then, also, have moved on to helping vaccinate the rest of the world. But, no, the dipshit fucking morons that fill half this country couldn't wear a simple mask and can't figure out how to spell vaccine, let alone get one, so here we are. I wish they'd all shot themselves to prove how free they were to die instead of inflicting their fucking stupidity on the rest of us.

He fired her because she wanted to count anyone who died with covid as dying from covid, which is how this entire fraud of a pandemic has been perpetuated. His new Surgeon General is applying early mitigation treatments and, believe it or not, treating a virus with antivirals, before it turns into pneumonia, turns out to be the most effective way to both stop viral replication, reduce transmission and save lives. But, please, keep destroying your natural immune system with experimental gene therapy injections that killed all the animals in the trials.

[quote] His new Surgeon General is applying early mitigation treatments and, believe it or not, treating a virus with antivirals, before it turns into pneumonia, turns out to be the [bold] most effective way to both stop viral replication, reduce transmission and save lives.[/bold]

Source/receipts for this statement, R71?

[quote] But, please, keep destroying your natural immune system with experimental gene therapy injections that killed all the animals in the trials.

Again, where is the legit proof for this?

Don’t you have to prove that someone who died having Covid died as a result of Covid or that it played a significant role in the person’s death? I mean, I guess a person could go into a hospital having a heart attack or cancer and catch Covid in the hospital but it was the cancer or heart attack that actually killed them. Maybe this is just too hard to prove. Americans are so unhealthy with such a horrible healthcare system that I guess everyone has to be treated as having a preexisting condition. I mean, isn’t over half the population obese? Too bad we can t just say that those who have a preexisting condition need to be the ones who need to be accommodated and kept at bay. If we did that it would be 99% of the population. Oh well.

r70 the awake "half" knows this is a cull. If you want to continually inject these experimental substances for the remaining months/years of your life, go for it. Wishing you the best! Oh, and please stay the fuck out of Florida ;-)

r74, it's just so sad and also amazing how easily brainwashed people can be.

R71/R74 is an ignorant lunatic who has zero idea what he is talking about. A simple look at excess deaths proves everything he states about the counting of deaths completely wrong. All other knowledge proves everything else he's said wrong.

R75, yes, it is sad how brainwashed the Trumpian masses are by a literal orange turd and his shit drips that follow him around, isn't it?

r75 I could not agree with you more!

You guys act like genocide is some conspiracy theory... Trust The History.

[quote]But, please, keep destroying your natural immune system with experimental gene therapy injections that killed all the animals in the trials.

[quote]Again, where is the legit proof for this?

It's all over Fox News, BitChute and YouTube videos by Eastern European chiropractors! Do some research!

As people in the north move inside during the fall, number go up there. Conversely, after the brutal summer is over, Florida people are going outside again, making the numbers go down.

And DeSantis is screwing with the reporting

[bold] The article itself notes that Covid numbers rise and fall in very standardized waves and that Florida is just at the lowest point in its wave

[quote] Does Ron DeSantis deserve credit?

OP if I killed a hundred people and then stopped killing people would I deserve credit?

[quote] But, please, keep destroying your natural immune system with experimental gene therapy injections that killed all the animals in the trials.

Notice R72 cannot come up with the requested RECEIPTS and instead spouts wishful thinking misinformation.

It’s fascinating that bloviators on FOX tout anti-vax lines, but ever so quietly their head (Murdoch) is vaxxed and FOX requires their employees to be vaccinated as well.

So what they say and what they DO are two completely different things.

They are disingenuous and full of it, but anyone in the USA with a functioning, literate brain knows this by now.

Sadly, it is the ignorant fools that buy into all the propaganda and spout ridiculous information....,to their extreme detriment resulting in death. We’ve seen it again and again here in the USA.

[quote] I would think Americans would be about the last people to COVID-shame another country seeing that you fucktards absolutely, by any standard, unequivocally, have shat the bed on this pandemic. I mean, holy fuck, you fat fucks were dying by the thousands in hospital parking lots as the rest of the world passed the popcorn. Read the room, clowns.

For you, R72, and all your misinformation.....

(As posted by someone in the Russia Covid thread.)

[quote] Florida now has America's lowest COVID rate

When a DeStupid can fool most resident Floridians, it’s not a surprise. Rich Jewish vacationers still have to vote in New Yawk.

Shocked that Bill Maher last night stated the obvious. "The rest of the world recognizes natural immunity. We don't. That's because everything has to go through the pharmaceutical companies." Even Senator Coons agreed. Looks like everyone who is willing to think critically and think for themselves will be vindicated.

tRump has a tiny mushroom shaped penis. He spray tans. He has herpes. He lost the election.

[quote] tRump has a tiny mushroom shaped penis.

And Yeti pubes R88!

R87, "natural immunity" involves a LOT of deaths and serious illness that could be prevented through vaccination. Or don't you believe that vaccination helps prevent death and serious illness? Because if you don't believe that, based on the statistics, you are an idiot.

It's funny because everyone in the funeral business has tons of stories of families who early on the the pandemic didn't want their savior Dictator Baby Hands to look bad so they begged them not to put covid as the cause of death on the certificates. Anything but covid. Then, when Biden announced that families of covid victims would get a bunch of money for funeral expenses, they're all calling and screaming at them to CHANGE THE CERTIFICATE TO COVID!!! and then telling them the horror stories of their prolonged death from the chinavirus, so they can get that sweet, sweet money from Uncle Joe

"Earlier studies have contributed to busting the myth that natural immunity acquired through infection conveys the same or better protection than vaccines. One CDC study found that less than two-thirds of people who had Covid in the past developed any antibodies against the virus (compared to 100 percent of individuals who developed antibodies after vaccination). Another study found that natural immunity can wane, especially among people who mounted a lower initial immune response to the virus."

R92, if that's true, it's incredibly disgusting, and I hope those people get $0.

r90, have you looked at the UK data? The Israeli data? Iceland? India? Every single place where GT pushes have happened have seen almost immediate subsequent surges of CV19 deaths.

R95, cite your sources or STOP the idiocy. You are literally so dangerously stupid that you don't deserve to live.

r96, wow. You want me to bump all the threads you didn't bother to read? Am I your mother? You want me to wipe your ass and brush your teeth for you, too?

Die right now, R95/97. It's a total lie that more vaccinations have resulted in surges in COVID deaths. Quite the opposite, you despicable turd.

First - it does not have the lowest COVID rates. Where did they get that from? Look at the graphs. It has gone down, but they still have 2-3,000 per day.

Second, as everyone has mentioned, why would ANYONE believe any of their data?

Lastly - just wait until the holidays. These stupid unvaxxed fuckers are going to make another spike happen.

OP is either pathetically gullible or a troll. After De Santis fired public health officer Rebekah Jones for disclosing that the state was falsifying covid numbers and sent troopers to search her house and seize her computer, it became clear that these "statistics" are not credible.

See how people like r98, who consider themselves "the good guys" "the enlightened ones", jump immediately to wishing Death upon people they disagree with? Great look for Democrats.

[quote] "natural immunity" involves a LOT of deaths and serious illness that could be prevented through vaccination. Or don't you believe that vaccination helps prevent death and serious illness? Because if you don't believe that, based on the statistics, you are an idiot.

Never said that vaccines don't protect from death or serious illness, just that they wane over time. People thinking that the vaccine offers much better protection than natural immunity, which goes against everyone we know about how immunity works, is why we are being fed lies about how only mass vaccination will lead to herd immunity.

[quote] Another study found that natural immunity can wane, especially among people who mounted a lower initial immune response to the virus."

As we saw recently with the death of Colin Powell, even being fully vaccinated won't protect you if you're severely immunocompromised or have other preexisting conditions.

If you don't take responsibility when things are going bad, you don't get to take credit when things are going good.

[quote]Never said that vaccines don't protect from death or serious illness, just that they wane over time.

So does natural immunity.

"Among 156 frontline health care personnel who had positive SARS-CoV-2 antibody test results in spring 2020, 94% experienced a decline at repeat testing approximately 60 days later, and 28% seroreverted to below the threshold of positivity."

[quote] the CDC has been wrong over and over again. I suppose they could be right this time

That simply means that the CDC was doing their job(s). Stupid people fail to understand science, specifically that failure is part of how we learn. It's that simple... but not for the mentally challenged.

R105 It also means recognizing the limitations of one's own studies and not making recommendations based on inconclusive evidence.

[quote]wishing I could live in florida instead of a prison colony

Why don't you pull yourself up by your bootstraps and move there?

Vaccinated individuals are less likely to get tested because the ones who experience breakthrough infections are usually asymptomatic.

^If we made testing required, we'd have much better data on infection rates.

They ran out of inbred meth-addicted fuckwits to infect. No news there.

In related news DeSantis is hip-deep in the Matt Gaetz sex trafficking case. Greenberg was pimping underage girls to several bigwigs to curry favor in Florida.

Scientists know that natural coronavirus immunity doesn’t last very long (6 months), unlike other viruses where immunity can last a lifetime.

[Quote] the CDC has been wrong over and over again.

Can you give an example where CDC was wrong in the moment?

The pandemic is constantly changing so a directive given in June about something isn’t wrong for what’s happening now—it’s just inapplicable

R101 probably bought Don Jr's Alec Baldwin shirt. Not a great look for Republicans. He probably doesn't care about the 700,000 people who died from the coronavirus, either, and encourages people not to get vaccinated

Republicans underreacted to Covid and Democrats overreacted to Covid. Republicans never followed the science and democrats only followed the science when it was convenient. The last two years will go down as one of the saddest chapters in American history. I hope you all are proud of yourselves.

Take a look at the other fecal matter r101 posts, r113. Such a second-tier troll.

Both sides! Both Sides! Look at ME, I'm real smart!

R101, yes, I honestly think anyone who suggests that more vaccinations have led to a "surge" in COVID deaths, rather than the opposite, deserves to die, because that idiotic idea is so potentially dangerous that the death of of the person spreading it would be a benefit to the public good. And besides, the death of anyone who's that incredibly stupid is really no loss to the world.

"break through cases" = adverse jab reactions

they're not dying from covid after being fully vaccinated they're dying from the vaccine and they're saying it's from covid

These people are lost to logic. And I'm talking about you pro-vax lunatics.

You wouldn't know logic if it bit you on your rotundabuns, r119.

I'm not clicking fucking bitchute. The fuck is wrong with you?

Because YouTube is incredibly censored, R121. Wrongthink can't hurt you, trust me, even your brain can handle it unscathed.

R71 um, the Regeneron treatment that DeSantis is touting is _also_ an experimental treatment.

And it's also much easier to AVOID GETTING THE VIRUS IN THE FIRST PLACE which is the point of the vaccine and masking.

Let me know where you acquired your PhD in Broscience, I'm sure it's from a very reputable establishment.

You can say that after what it did to *your* brain, r122?

Ah, yes, BitChute. Where JFK Jr. is still alive, the Holocaust is a lie and demonic possession is real. It's the web equivalent of the Weekly World News, and has even less credibility.

Oh wait, is Ron D. a great big fat person?

I know, bitchute would be hilarious if it wasn't actually murdering people.

r125, r30: Breaking News...bitchute is a free speech PLATFORM (unlike heavily censored YouTube) and not a content producer nor content police. I'm kinda surprised you didn't realize this 🤔? Attacking the bitchute PLATFORM instead of attacking/addressing the specific issues of my post in a concise and targeted fashion. is completely counterproductive. The bitchute PLATFORM hosts content ranging from loony flat-earthers and trans-Olympians to YouTube-banned Nobel Prize winning epidemiologists speaking out about the "vaccine" and "pandemic". .. and everything in between. Not sure if you're a DL newbie or a pharma troll, but please stay on point and cease the smokescreen dis-info tactics. besos

Breaking News: BitChute is a PLATFORM for loons, whether they’re claiming alien abduction or Covid insights. All of it is intended to grift rubes.

r129 Not Breaking News: You're a disinfo troll... and not a very talented one. LOL. besos

Omfg. Please don't get vaccinated. And stay the fuck out of hospitals. Take your vitamins and horsepaste at home. Thanks!

Donald Trump is trying to hang on as the doddering boss of the Republican Party. Earlier this month, he threatened that his supporters may stay home in 2022 and 2024 unless others in the GOP validate his delusion that he beat Joe Biden.

Were the GOP base less easily duped, it would move on, as when George H. W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney lost White House bids. As president, Trump failed to build his border wall or bring home the troops. No 75-year-old candidate who lost the popular vote to general-election opponents as weak as Hillary Clinton and Biden portends future glory for his party. And Trump energizes intense opposition like no one else, uniting otherwise divided Democrats while alienating a faction of conservatives and independents who normally vote Republican. As if that weren’t enough, America would be weaker with him as president because he tears us apart.

Nevertheless, Trump remains more popular among the shrinking Republican base than anyone else. So in publications including National Review, The Dispatch, and The Bulwark, anti-Trump conservatives are now debating what to do. They all view the 45th president as an unacceptable leader, deplore the Trumpist turn in the GOP, and lament the dearth of promising strategies for reversing it. Alongside the options they’re considering, I’d add one more: uniting behind Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the GOP rising star who can boast both conventional political achievements and credibility on the Trumpist right. By failing to unite around any candidate in 2016, Trump’s opponents all but guaranteed that the celebrity businessman would coast to the nomination. In 2024, DeSantis may not be the president that Never Trumpers would choose. He’s too Trumpy for their taste. But their options are limited, and if beating Trump is their highest priority, as I think it should be, DeSantis may be their best bet.

DeSantis frustrates and disappoints me within normal parameters. He hasn’t yet frightened me, as Trump does, as being superlatively incompetent, divisive, morally degenerate, or authoritarian. As MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough put it last June, when COVID-19 numbers were failing and DeSantis was peaking in the polls, “We’re going from the political heroin to the political methadone.” However bleak the analogy, that’s a significant step toward recovery!

At just 43 years old, DeSantis offers a sharp contrast with both Trump and Biden, two of our oldest presidents. The Florida governor grew up middle class: His father installed Nielsen TV-ratings boxes, and his mother was a nurse. He graduated from Yale and Harvard Law, served in the Navy from 2004 to 2010 as a JAG officer, worked as a federal prosecutor in Florida, then ran for Congress in 2012, where he was a founding member of the Freedom Caucus and opposed funding the Robert Mueller investigation, arguing that the Department of Justice’s approach “didn’t identify a crime to be investigated and practically invites a fishing expedition.” In 2017, as DeSantis prepared to run for governor of Florida, Trump supported him in that state’s Republican primary. He remains a plausibly acceptable candidate for anti-Trump conservatives, in part because winning narrowly in a purple state has all but forced him to moderate his populism. He has pursued substantive initiatives––such as expanding access to monoclonal antibodies and attracting successful businesses with a friendly regulatory climate––that appeal to moderates and traditional conservatives.

Of course, anti-Trump Republicans have had other things to think about than the 2024 election. Even before the Capitol riot on January 6, lots of anti-Trump Republicans had already left the GOP. Afterward, tens of thousands more Republicans changed their voter registration to quit the party, Politico’s David Siders reported. That’s the context for the intra-right debate of the moment.

Surveying all the tumult, Bill Kristol, the longtime movement conservative and Never Trumper, published a February 22 column at The Bulwark setting forth a controversial proposal: “Why shouldn’t anti-Trump Republicans at least consider becoming a kind-of-Old-Republican wing of Joe Biden’s Democratic party?” he asked. ”Moderate Democrats, historically speaking, get no respect. Sure, they win elections. And they govern pretty successfully. But they get ignored by the media, by their side’s intellectuals, by donors, even by Democratic political pros. And now they’re getting ignored by Never Trumpers. Maybe it’s time they get attention and respect.”

Another faction believes it’s unrealistic to expect many conservatives to cast votes for a Democratic Party that takes positions opposite theirs on abortion, guns, foreign policy, and tax-and-spending issues. So is a third party a better alternative? In a recent Los Angeles Times column, the conservative author Jonah Goldberg suggested “a third party with a simple, Reaganite conservative platform combined with a serious plank to defend the soundness of elections.” If a Republican nominee met its requirements, “a new party of the right could endorse the Republican, the way New York’s Conservative Party does. If not, a non-Trumpy candidate could play the role of spoiler by garnering enough conservative votes in the general election to throw the election to the Democrat.”

But a third party struck National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke as highly likely to backfire. “The implication of Jonah’s piece is that if the GOP loses yet another election, it will learn precisely the lessons that he thinks it needs to learn,” Cooke wrote. “In the real world, though, this almost never happens … Games such as the one Jonah proposes to play aren’t how you get rid of a Donald Trump. They’re how you get the next one.” Dan McLaughlin, also of National Review, added, “​​The battles that Jonah wants to fight are very much worth fighting. But the place to fight them is in Republican primaries.”

The best way forward depends, in part, on how bad one believes Donald Trump himself to be for America. Is he no worse than any number of other populist demagogues who are capable of winning the White House, or is he sui generis, so that any likely alternative would damage America less?

Probably the latter.

For that reason, Trump’s opponents should pursue all potentially viable strategies for keeping him out of the White House. I agree with McLaughlin that a primary fight is worth having. Then, if Trump still wins the GOP nomination, Kristol should support the Democratic nominee and Goldberg and others should encourage a conservative third party, even if that risks inspiring “the next Trump,” because even another right-wing populist is likely to be less bad than Trump––less depraved, less shameless, less able to rely on fame and riches, less imbued with a bullying charisma that makes his sadistic cruelty seem more acceptable. Republicans need to know that, if they renominate Trump, the right will be bitterly divided, while the faction of the country that wants to elect a Democrat will grow bigger, more energized, and more united.

Of course, Trump’s divisiveness will seem like a compelling reason for the GOP to dump him only if an alternative nominee can better unite the right’s Trumpist and anti-Trumpist factions. Put another way, a viable Trump primary rival isn’t going to be the Republican that Kristol or Goldberg, let alone a longtime independent like me, would most like to elevate. A successful unity candidate can neither repudiate all of Trumpism’s excesses, as I would prefer, nor embrace Trump’s most authoritarian attacks on American democracy, as Trump himself would prefer.

So far, DeSantis has threaded that dispiriting needle more deftly than most other Republican contenders. My colleague David Frum wrote in an April profile that the DeSantis approach is “a form of political judo that works by employing judicious but limited provocation, followed by a deft, just-in-time retreat to the center,” arguing that “the Florida governor has figured out that Republicans love a culture-war brawl, but that overdoing it can alienate a general-election electorate.” I strongly disagree with DeSantis on some issues—such as capital punishment and the drug war—and have all the policy objections you’d expect from a classical liberal. Yet I would be relieved to grant him four years in the White House if, in return, I could be assured that no Trump would ever again be president.

DeSantis himself has tried to tamp down speculation about a 2024 run. Perhaps he truly doesn’t plan to run, or maybe he wants to postpone the moment when Trump attacks him as a rival.

Trump said in early October that, if he faced DeSantis, he would beat him, but that he expects most people, including DeSantis, to drop out of the GOP primary if he runs. Trump may be right, because he leads all candidates in the polls. But Trump is not invincible. He lost the popular vote twice, lost the Electoral College to Biden, and helped the Democratic Party win majorities in the Senate and the House. He is guaranteed the GOP nomination only if his is the only GOP faction that congeals behind a single candidate. And for anti-Trump conservatives, anything that denies Trump that prize is the least bad option. So it isn’t too early to start the “if not DeSantis, then who?” conversations to avoid repeating their 2016 mistake of failing to unite around anyone. Unless anti-Trump conservatives can think of someone more likely to beat Trump, they should be working on how to beg, cajole, or entice the Florida governor to contest the 2024 nomination.

Either no one left to get it (cause they all have it), or he’s fudging the numbers again.

Holy shit. How did Desantis turn 43 last month, yet he looks to be in his mid to late 50s?

Ms Rebekah Jones isn’t the most reliable narrator

From The Politico, re: Ms Rebekah Jones

Are we sure Ron D's heart won't explode before 2024?

R133 Anti Trump Republicans have nowhere to go. All the high profile ones have become bitches of the far left. They should either form a new party or just leave politics altogether.

I don't know if it's wishful thinking or what, but Conorsdorf in that article serious understates DeSantis's own authoritarian tendencies. I guess he thinks it's "within normal parameters" for a governor to override local health requirements and forbid state university teachers from giving expert testimony in a lawsuit over voting rights. Etc.

Nice deflection.

[quote]have you looked at the UK data?

Yes, I have, thanks for asking:

Isn't this good news? Why is OP crossed out?

他很好。

The declining rate of COVID in the US has now plateaued as people are returning inside for the fall. I wonder if FL's low rate is just a function of people staying outdoors longer--and his fixing the data.

I dislike DeSantis, but why can't we just be happy about the low Covid rate? Isn't that what we're all trying to get to?

I'm happy with the low covid rate. I'm not happy that he's getting credit for it.

It's the natural ebb and flow of the virus with the seasons has nothing to do with DeSantis, mainly because he didn't do anything.

[quote] I dislike DeSantis, but why can't we just be happy about the low Covid rate?

I'm unhappy because we need more deplorables to die

[quote]I dislike DeSantis, but why can't we just be happy about the low Covid rate?

We can be happy about the declining rate while questioning the wisdom and morality of sacrificing tens of thousands of people to do it.

R137, there isn't any evidence her claims were false. If twitter suspending your account means you're a bad person.....then your idol Trump must be a bad person, then

We've been stuck at 2% positivity in Illinois for over a month.

[quote]We've been stuck at 2% positivity in Illinois for over a month.

While across the lake, Michigan has been over 11% for a month.

Yeah, R154, we're surrounded by fucking idiots. Even the ones with Democratic governors who tried doing the right thing are shitholes now due to the Repug legislatures and courts. If it weren't for Chicago, Illinois would be the same giant mess they all are. Too bad Detroit is too empty to make a difference.

[quote] Michigan has been over 11% for a month.

Holy shit!

Could be worse, R156 -- Idaho's was over 50% over the last seven days.

Great news!

[quote]The office of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) estimated the job growth at three times that of the nation.

I believe that figure about as much as I believe the covid #s that come out of the office of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Zerohedge is a far-right libertarian looney bin and generally unreliable. Like Ron DeSantis.

Just the name alone put me off

R152: see here

R152: and here

R152: also here

And, to use one of DL’s favorite terms of endearment, Girlfriend is quite the Grifter

[quote]The office of Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) estimated the job growth at three times that of the nation.

In other news, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) estimated his weight to be around 165 pounds. Also, his magic mirror said he's the most beautiful in all the land.

They're cooking the numbers. DeathSantis lies all the time, typical trumpanzee.