How DeSantis can de-program the blue states
Four years ago this week, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis presciently warned in his first inaugural address that big-spending, high-taxing states were inspiring “productive citizens to flee.” DeSantis came into office with a flimsy mandate of just four tenths of one percent at a time when Florida had 257,175 more registered Democrats than Republicans. Republicans now outnumber Democrats in the state by more than 356,000 and, in the wake of his resounding twenty-point win in November, DeSantis’s inaugural address last Tuesday felt like a warm-up for the 2024 presidential campaign.
In his 2019 speech, DeSantis spoke to Floridians, but he seemed to be addressing all Americans, urging us to reconsider Florida as a model rather than as the butt of Florida Man jokes. Republican hopes in 2024 may hinge on this effort to recast the Sunshine State. It won’t be easy, but Florida can be re-branded, though DeSantis will likely need a secret weapon he may not have considered.
Though the media likes to diminish DeSantis as a Trump knockoff, his concise, sixteen-minute address was as focused and substantive as Trump’s speeches are a gallimaufry of complaints and rants. Trump is the businessman, but DeSantis is the one who is all business. Trump uttered nearly 9,000 words in his campaign launch, while DeSantis’s speech weighed in at 1,649. Though it obviously wasn’t a campaign launch, it still sounded like one at times.
“When the world lost its mind — when common sense suddenly became an uncommon virtue — Florida was a refuge of sanity, a citadel of freedom for our fellow Americans and even for people around the world,” he said.
DeSantis spoke of the “historic number of families” who have moved to what he called a “promised land of sanity,” one of law and order, fiscal restraint, and no Covid mandates. Freedom, a word he didn’t use once in his 2019 address, was the key theme of the speech. He also never mentioned the word “woke” four years ago, but his pledge to keep Florida as the place where “woke goes to die” was his biggest applause line of the day.
DeSantis is likely to find a receptive audience if he takes his anti-woke message nationally. An October Harvard-Harris poll found that 64 percent of Americans and 52 percent of Democrats blamed “woke politicians” for the recent increase in violent crime, while 77 percent of Americans said it was very or somewhat important to “stop the teaching of woke ideologies in schools.”
In his speech, DeSantis spoke of our federalist constitutional system as a “laboratory of democracy” where states can test governing philosophies, arguing that his have worked. The proof, he said, was in what he called the “mass exodus of productive Americans” from blue states, just as he warned four years ago. The demographic trend is undeniable and, as a resident of Florida, I would love to see our state be a model for governance. But selling Florida as a model of freedom or anything else will require a serious de-programming effort akin to the sort of re-education program South Koreans will have to do in the North when the Kim dynasty falls.
Media figures, celebrities, and other woke types view Florida as a dystopian nightmare. A growing number of Americans distrust the media, but influencers are sadly still, well, influential. The only way to break through to independents and wavering Democrats is to have them visit our state and see things for themselves.
DeSantis often speaks of the importance of the travel industry to Florida’s economy. As James Meigs put it recently in City Journal, DeSantis is no “progressive climate warrior,” but he is a Teddy Roosevelt conservationist who has “devoted considerable resources — and spent political capital — pursuing innovative environmental stewardship.” Many who have moved to Florida in recent years did so after visiting on a trip and liking what they saw. I’ve long been a believer in education through travel. A place you’ve never been to before is one you’re certain not to understand.
In DeSantis’s first term, he shipped migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. In his second term — assuming he runs for president — his campaign should spend part of their budget on free or subsidized trips to Florida to help de-program brainwashed Americans. Some of the blue-state visitors we entertained at my home in St. Pete during the early phases of the pandemic expected to find dead bodies piling up in the streets and were delighted to discover that this wasn’t the case.
Americans who believe the media narrative that Florida is a place of book banning will be delighted to find whatever books they desire in our bookshops. Those who think our GOP-led state is one of environmental degradation will be surprised how pristine our beaches and state parks are. Hapless media consumers from other states should also visit cities like mine — where buses are rainbow-covered and the Pride parade is by far the biggest party of the year — so they can see that the media narrative about Florida being hostile to gays is ludicrous.
The city of Tampa recently gave free trips to around 100 residents of Tampa, Kansas, in order to promote tourism, and a nonprofit called Birthright Israel offers young people of Jewish heritage free trips to Israel to help them connect to their Jewish identity. Perhaps Governor DeSantis ought to bring impressionable young people from around the country here to let them see how the place where woke goes to die is indeed a haven of sanity in a world gone mad.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/01/how-desantis-can-de-program-the-blue-states/
******************************************************Idaho Supreme Court Refuses to ‘Read Fundamental Right to Abortion’ Into State Constitution
In Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court held in June that the U.S. Constitution “does not confer a right to abortion” and, therefore, abortion advocates will be challenging pro-life laws in state courts under state constitutions.
On Thursday, the Idaho Supreme Court upheld that state’s ban on abortion, holding that “we cannot read a fundamental right to abortion into the text of the Idaho Constitution.” (On the same day, the South Carolina Supreme Court came to the opposite conclusion about that state’s constitution.)
Idaho first made abortion a crime in 1864, when it was still a territory, and enacted many laws protecting the unborn since then, including new abortions bans in 2020 and 2021.
They would become effective, the laws stated, when the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade, its 1973 decision inventing a right to abortion. By doing so in Dobbs, the court returned “the authority to regulate abortion … to the people and their elected representatives.”
Planned Parenthood sued, claiming that those laws violated the Idaho Constitution.
Idaho is one of 47 states with a constitution that does not explicitly protect a right to abortion. Nor is it one of the 12 states in which the state supreme courts had already interpreted other constitutional provisions to do so.
Planned Parenthood wanted Idaho to join that list by finding an implicit right to abortion in Article I, Section 1 of the Idaho Constitution, which recognizes “inalienable rights,” including “enjoying and defending life and liberty.”
In Planned Parenthood v. State of Idaho, by a 3-2 vote, the state Supreme Court declined to do so.
In her majority opinion, Justice Robyn Brody first explained that the Idaho Constitution must be interpreted “based on the plain and ordinary meaning of its text, as intended by those who framed and adopted the provision at issue.”
As a result, Brody wrote, “for us to read a fundamental right into the Idaho Constitution, we must examine whether the alleged right is so ‘deeply rooted’ in the traditions and history of Idaho at the time of statehood that we can fairly conclude that the framers and adopters of the Inalienable Rights Clause intended to implicitly protect that right.”
Brody’s opinion is especially instructive because she thoroughly presented why this is the proper approach to determining whether a written constitution protects unwritten rights. “[O]ur duty as the judicial branch [is] to sustain the law—not to promote our personal policy preferences. If we were to jettison that disciplined approach … the Idaho Constitution would no longer be the voice of the people of Idaho—it would be effectively replaced by the voice of a select few sitting on this Court.”
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Top Dem Bows Out of Party After Getting Rude Awakening About How Party Treats Black Voters
South Carolina state Sen. Mia McLeod, who ran unsuccessfully for governor last year, said that she was leaving the party “because it no longer espouses the values my constituents and I hold dear.”
In an email to supporters Tuesday morning, McLeod said she made the decision after “seven months of prayer and reflection,” presumably since coming in second in the gubernatorial primary on June 14. She had been the first black woman to run for governor of the state, according to The Columbia State.
McLeod said she had been taught by her parents to support those whose “visions and values” most closely matched her own, and that that mindset had often forced her to work against the Democratic Party.
“[I]t hurts to admit how often I’ve had to fight my own party, just to help my own people,” she wrote.
“By not engaging, enlightening or expanding the electorate … refusing to publicize the June Primary and getting a historical top of the ticket ‘shellacking’ on November 8, the party ensured a republican super-majority and the losses of eight black legislators in the SC House, five of whom were black women,” she explained. “Yet, a recent SCDP fundraising email acknowledges, ‘Black voters are the backbone of our party …’ which makes me cringe because I’ve experienced first-hand how the party treats black voters and black women who run statewide.”
McLeod’s announcement did not say whether she would seek to join the Republicans or affiliate herself with a third party, but the final paragraph of her email may provide a hint regarding her intention.
“This is a new year,” she wrote. “It’s time for a new direction. So, with unprecedented clarity and perspective, I’ll continue to move forward in faith … boldly, fearlessly and yes … independently — always eager to work with any person or party that prioritizes our people … ever mindful of who and whose I am and why God has placed me in this space, ‘for such a time as this …'” (emphasis original).
The bold type McLeod used to emphasize “independently” may suggest that she plans to remain politically unaffiliated — at least for now.
Former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard similarly announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party in October. Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema followed suit two months later. Neither woman is currently affiliated with a political party, though Sinema continues to caucus with the Democrats.
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Cardinal Pell has passed away
An intellectual and a most distinguished Austalian churchman. His passing is a real loss
After 11 years at the helm of the Aquinas college in Ballarat and five years editing Light, the Ballarat diocesan newspaper, Pell left his home city in 1984 to take up the post of rector of Corpus Christi seminary in Melbourne – the training ground for the future priests of not only Melbourne but of regional Victoria and Tasmania. It was there, for the first time, that he ran into ecclesial controversy. His efforts to instil greater discipline, including attendance at morning Mass and better study habits, drew hostility from students and staff who preferred a less structured, less formal regime. A couple of the senior students, however, later became some of his closest lifelong friends.
The ever-increasing chasm between the traditional and liberal factions in the Catholic Church was becoming evident. Pell had the toughness and determination to prevail in what he called “a few small changes’’. It was clear to him, however, that more extensive seminary reform could only come from the bishops who had ultimate responsibility for priests’ training. That opportunity was later to come his way.
After three years running the seminary, Pell was consecrated a bishop, at the young age of 45, in St Patrick’s Cathedral on May 21 1987, a promotion that took his career, literally, out into the world, in unforeseen directions. Shortly after his consecration, Pell was elected by his fellow bishops to chair Australian Catholic Relief – the church’s overseas aid agency. For nine years, that position took up at least a day a week. It also involved frequent trips to the world’s trouble spots and poorest areas. His diaries from those trips made compelling reading, covering three visits to India, including one after the 1993 earthquake 400km southeast of Mumbai in which as many as 60,000 people perished. He wrote in his diary: “Wondered how God allowed earthquakes (perhaps God not all powerful, even cosmologically) … May God help victims and my weak faith’’.
As archbishop, Pell emerged as an outspoken, controversial figure in the national conversation. A “political agnostic’’ – in his time he voted Liberal, National and Labor – he waded into debate on issues relevant to the church. He was an outspoken critic of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which he condemned in 1998 for “racist policies’’ that “are a recipe for strife and misery’’ and for setting “groups of Australians against one another’’. He was a forceful critic of the Kennett government’s encouragement of gambling in Victoria. Recognising the sharp delineation between church and state, however, he infuriated the Left in 1998 arguing that John Howard’s proposed Goods and Services Tax was not an issue on which the Church could or should present a single viewpoint. Pell’s support for an Australian republic was a personal rather than a Catholic view.
Pell was also the main target of the contentious “Rainbow Sash’’ protests, refusing to distribute holy communion in his Cathedral to homosexual activists and their families and supporters wearing rainbow sashes. The issue attracted widespread adverse publicity, and defined Pell, in many minds, as an ultraconservative. But the issue was less divisive in Catholic ranks. Other church leaders of the time attested they would and did take the same stand.
In October 2003, Pell was promoted to cardinal by John Paul II. He celebrated the honour with 50 friends and family who travelled to Rome from Australia, the US, Canada, England and Ireland. It was, he recalled afterwards in his weekly Sunday Telegraph column, an exceptionally happy week of partying, perhaps “a slight taste of Heaven’’. Pell was a prodigious writer, of journal articles, columns and sermons; his works were collated into several books including “Be Not Afraid”, “Test Everything” and “God and Caesar”.
Despite the cardinal’s long history of heart disease, for which he received a pacemaker in Rome more than a decade ago, his death, from a cardiac arrest after a hip replacement operation in the Salvator Mundi hospital, was a shock. He had recently been working in Rome, meeting groups of students from Australia and seminarians from the US, and only days before had attended the funeral of his treasured friend Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI. In the lead up to the late Pope’s funeral he was also in demand for interviews from US, British and Australian media and was busy networking with brother cardinals who travelled to Rome for Benedict’s funeral. He was the author of the obituary for Benedict published in this newspaper.
Close friends said he was in the best fom they had seen him for years, after he emerged from 13 months imprisonment, mainly in solitary confinement, in Victorian jails, on historic sex abuse charges dating back to his first few months as Archbishop of Melbourne, in 1996.
The Cardinal was released from jail in the lead-up to Easter in 2020 after the High Court, by a 7-nil margin, quashed the five convictions, which were made, originally, on the testimony of a single complainant. The full story of what was behind the charges, and others that were subsequently dropped by the Victorian legal system, is yet to emerge. His three, candid prison diaries, written during his ordeal, are a testament to his sense of justice, his strength and his faith. Throughout the ordeal, he never lost heart but worked with his legal teams to clear his name
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My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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