As is the case with yours truly, those of you who have an affection for old-time radio shows are familiar with “The Shadow.” It was a crime drama that ran in its best-known form from 1937 to 1954, featuring wealthy young man about town Lamont Cranston who, through hypnotic and telepathic abilities learned in the mysterious East, was able to cloud men’s minds, using this scientific ability to fight crime. The show started thusly.
Whether Ron DeSantis has ever listened to “The Shadow” remains unknown, but one thing is clear. Like Lamont Cranston, DeSantis is a man of mystery who strikes terror in the very souls of sharpsters, lawbreakers, and criminals. Or, as referred to today, progressives, although they are seldom sharp.
This has seldom been made more evident than in the terrified writing of one Joshua Green at Bloomberg, whose January 5th article “The Secret to Ron DeSantis’s Success? Ignore Donald Trump–and Attack Business Instead” is permeated with the gnawing fear of every big business that has grown drunk on woke’s wicked whiskey. Namely, DeSantis will run for President in 2024, win, and then do on a national scale what he has already started in Florida.
While the article briefly delves into DeSantis’ present method of taking on Donald Trump by not taking him on, its primary focus is how DeSantis has grown devastatingly effective by challenging a group most commonly associated with Republicans, namely big business. Of course, names are named *coughDisneycough*, but another sector not often noted also received attention, that being Florida’s massive sugar industry.
In 2018, DeSantis entered Florida’s Republican gubernatorial primary, and his charmed career smacked into a big obstacle: sugar. “The sugar industry was probably more in for Adam Putnam than they’d ever been for any politician,” says Peter Schorsch, publisher of the newsletter Florida Politics. “He was their golden child.” DeSantis, on the other hand, had voted against sugar subsidies as a congressman. As one of the state’s most powerful industries pounded him with millions of dollars in negative ads, many funded by dark-money groups, DeSantis struck back, branding Big Sugar as a major polluter and aligning himself with the Everglades Foundation, a conservation group co-founded by the billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, who became a major campaign donor. DeSantis won plaudits for standing up to sugar–the Tampa Bay Times dubbed him “the green governor,” despite his 2% rating from the League of Conservation Voters–and after dispatching Putnam, he narrowly won the governor’s race. Then he exacted revenge by forcing everyone on the South Florida water board, which was known for doing the industry’s bidding, to resign.
The article neglects to mention how DeSantis’ approach sweeps the legs out from under a standard Democrat talking point, namely that Republicans are in bed with big business and could care less about the working person. The opposite is true; it is the Democrats who are most cozy with big business, especially those who have embraced the satanic gospel of woke as they seek to crush the middle class underneath a suffocating burden of taxes and inflation while importing as much illegal, cheap, exploitable labor as possible. Woe be unto the media lackey who tries in a press conference with DeSantis to parrot the Democrat party line in this area.
DeSantis has made it clear in word and action that when it comes to currying big business’ favor, he points to the field where he grows his so that all might see it is barren. Whether he would be a more formidable opponent than Trump to whoever is the Democratic nominee in 2024 and how he would do in the primaries against Trump are questions that warrant raising only if he chooses to run. Where there is no question is that people on the other side of the aisle are scared to death of Ron DeSantis. And it’s quite enjoyable to behold.
