Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has a “Florida man” problem.
The man in question is former President Donald Trump – the monarch of Mar-a-Lago – who according to a new state poll is Florida-man-handling DeSantis in the GOP presidential primary, leading the governor by 20 points among registered Sunshine-State Republican voters.
How can Floridians do this to their beloved governor, the man they reelected by a nearly 20-point margin? The man who has so bravely battled the forces of “wokeness” without abiding by unreasonable leftist demands that he explain what wokeness means? The man who has made life measurably worse for people Republican voters want to pretend aren’t real?
Ron DeSantis is getting pummeled in his home state, polling 20 points behind Donald Trump
The new poll from Florida Atlantic University/Mainstreet Research/PolCom Lab showed 50% of registered Republican Florida voters would vote for Trump right now, while only 30% would vote for DeSantis. The next closest candidate is Vivek Ramaswamy with 4%.
If the choices are winnowed down to just Trump and DeSantis, 54% would vote for Trump and 37% would vote for the Florida governor.
Bottom line: DeSantis is getting trounced in his home state, the one place in the country where people really know who he is and what he’s capable of as a politician. If a presidential primary candidate can’t win his home state, what are his chances nationally?
DeSantis needs to take action against Trump
Clearly, the governor needs to do something. Inspired by his legislative achievements, I can think of several ways he might stop the insidious pro-Trump/anti-DeSantis rhetoric that’s turning Floridians young and old into Trump supporters.
Just a quick heads up:AI-powered robots will kill us. K, bye.
DeSantis is clearly the apex predator in the world of woke, given that every fifth word out of his mouth as he campaigns in the GOP primary is “woke.” Speaking late last month in Philadelphia, DeSantis used the word “woke” six times in a span of 19 seconds, saying: “In Florida, we fought the woke all across the board. And as president, I will fight the woke in the corporations. I will fight the woke in the schools. I will fight the woke in the halls of Congress. We will never ever surrender to the woke mob. We are going to leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history.”
So an obvious first step in DeSantis’ quest to pry Florida voters away from Trump is to declare the former president part of “the woke.” He already suggested as much in a recent campaign ad that effectively accused Trump of not being sufficiently cruel to LGBTQ+ people.
DeSantis needs to say Trump is part of the ‘woke mob’
The governor just needs to slip the following line into an upcoming campaign speech: “You know, in Florida we have battled the woke, and we will battle the woke everywhere we go where the woke happens to be, and my woke opponent Donald Trump is the woke, and you don’t want a president who is the woke, do you? Woke.”
Phase 1 complete.
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Next, convince conservative Florida voters their belief that it’s OK to vote for Trump in the GOP primary is the result of sneaky liberal indoctrination happening in schools and corporations. This can be accomplished via two pieces of legislation.
Don’t say Trump, don’t teach Trump, feel ashamed by Trump
The first is the Don’t Say Trump Bill, which will prevent teachers from using the word “Trump” or having any discussions about Trumpian ideology in the classroom. It should be up to parents, not teachers, to decide whether their kids get to learn about Donald Trump.
The second bill would be the Stop WOKE TRUMP Act, modeled after the Stop WOKE Act that DeSantis previously signed into law. The Stop WOKE Act prohibited workplaces from conducting diversity training that may cause (white) people to feel guilt or shame over (shameful) historic wrongs. The Stop WOKE TRUMP Act, on the other hand, will force companies to train their employees to feel shame over Donald Trump, who is also a historic wrong.
That wraps up Phase 2.
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Trump and his supporters can’t resist the lure of free hamburgers and hats
The final phase will utilize the infrastructure created by DeSantis’ migrant relocation program, the one that allowed the governor to protect Floridians by flying asylum-seeking migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, a taxpayer-funded plan that made little geographic sense but tied in nicely with whatever “woke” is supposed to mean.
DeSantis can simply unveil the “Trump/Trump Supporter Relocation Program.” It would first involve tricking the former president into boarding a chartered jet, most likely with the promise of free hamburgers or top-secret documents. Then the governor’s team could lure Trump supporters onto the jet or jets with the promise of free red hats (they love those things). They would then all be unceremoniously dropped in some liberal enclave like Martha’s Vineyard or New York City, purging Florida of its Trump voters and boosting DeSantis’ primary chances at home.
If DeSantis defeated ‘the woke,’ surely he can defeat ‘The Donald’
The governor has already tried acting like a different, colder and more calculating version of Trump. The polls show that hasn’t worked.
So now DeSantis needs to do what he does best: Find someone he can paint as the enemy and then create useless legislation to attack that enemy, all in the name of shameless political opportunism.
If he can stop saying “woke” for like 15 minutes, I’m sure he can find time to get it done.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Twitter @RexHuppke and Facebook facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
