Ron DeSantis
46th Governor of Florida
Ronald Dion DeSantis (born September 14, 1978) is an American politician and attorney serving as the 46th governor of Florida since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, he represented Florida's 6th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives from 2013 to 2018.

QuotesEdit
2015Edit
- Too many in Washington display a ruling class mentality and congressional term limits would go a long way towards restoring the citizen-legislator ethos of the Founding Fathers, Americans of all political background overwhelmingly support term limits, yet term limits have floundered in Congress. An approach that phases in congressional term limits reconciles the self-interest of members of Congress with the public–s desire to see these changes enacted and gives us the best chance to make term limits a reality.
- DeSantis Takes New Approach to Term Limits Press release (May 4, 2015)
- I think all that has to be vetted in a way that errs on the side of protecting the American people. If there's a chance that someone may be inclined to be an enemy of the country, then I think you have to err on the side of caution.
- Rep. Ron DeSantis on refugee debate: 'Err on side of protecting the American people' Fox News (November 26, 2015)
2017Edit
- Look, Hollywood is a cesspool. The idea that Wienstein is alone, or even that conspicuous, I don’t think is true, I think this is pervasive behavior in Hollywood, and I think it does implicate the media. I think they’ve been complicit in it, I think businesses have been complicit in it.
- "Rep. Ron DeSantis: Hollywood Sexual Misconduct Must Be 'Thoroughly Investigated'" Breitbart (November 2, 2017)
2019Edit
- I promised to be the most pro-Israel Governor in America and our bold agenda for my upcoming Business Development Mission to Israel includes many historic firsts and strengthens Florida’s ties with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.
- tweet (May 24, 2019)
2021Edit
- We looked at the data that we had from other parts of the world as we were getting into March, and we saw that this was a virus that had a disproportionate impact on elderly people and we're the second-oldest state in the country, so that was something that was obviously very concerning to us
- "DeSantis: 'Flawed assumptions' led some states to send COVID-positive patients to nursing homes" Fox News (February 28, 2021)
- We are going to stand with our Jewish brothers and sisters and we are absolutely going to stand strong in support of the Florida-Israel relationship. The Legislature and I have worked really hard on a lot of great legislation over the past few years on issues including Holocaust education, anti-BDS legislation, security for synagogues and Jewish day schools, and so much more.
- speech (June 8, 2021)
- You have hundreds of thousands of people pouring across every month
Not only are they letting them through, they’re farming them out all across the country, putting them on planes, putting them on buses. Do you think they’re worrying about COVID for that? Of course not.
Whatever variants there are around the world, they’re coming across that southern border.
He’s not shutting down the virus. He’s helping facilitate it.
Why don’t you get this border secure?
Until you do that, I don’t want to hear a blip about COVID from you.- August 4, 2021 regarding Joe Biden
2022Edit
- It seems that some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism
- Regarding the Stop WOKE Act "Ron DeSantis takes his culture war to the next level" CNN (Mon April 18, 2022) text+video
About DeSantisEdit
- In alphabetical order by author or source.
- The central question about DeSantis is this: Is he a corporate tax-cutter or a conspiratorial frother? Is he closer to Mitch McConnell or Marjorie Taylor Greene? The great DeSantis innovation has been to realize how much cover calculated outrage provides for rewarding cronies—and that the more you preach "freedom," the more you can get away with authoritarianism.
- Helen Lewis "How Did America's Weirdest, Most Freedom-Obsessed State Fall for an Authoritarian Governor" The Atlantic (27 March 2023/May 2023 issue)
- As is increasingly apparent in many of his public appearances, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is rather like Donald Trump, only without the charm. And that charmless demeanor seeps through his latest book, The Courage to Be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for America’s Revival, a grievance-laden tome written in advance of a presumed bid for the Republican nomination in the 2024 presidential election. The question is, will it help his chances? That's unlikely. Only fans or parties actively looking for someone to back in 2024 will read the book, and within a few months unsold copies will lie on the remainder tables, rubbing shoulders with Mike Pompeo's new memoir, Never Give an Inch, or past examples of campaign self-advertisements such as A Call to Service by John Kerry, A Time for Truth by Ted Cruz or even Trump’s Crippled America. I've read a number of these books and they’re rarely good. Nevertheless, DeSantis takes the usual dullness to a fresh level, redefining what cliched writing can sound like. It's one thing to offer the public a bit of wooden prose, but DeSantis gives us an entire lumber yard. I don’t blame DeSantis entirely for that lousy prose. Like most politicians, he's a busy man who will have likely farmed out the writing of his book to nameless minions. The governor doubtless talked at length to the "hardworking team of literary professionals" mentioned in his acknowledgments; these ghostwriters will have also had his speeches, social media feeds, appearances and policy papers to draw on.
- The title of this book must surely be ironic: The Courage to Be Free. DeSantis is all about the restriction of freedoms wherever possible. He wants to cancel librarians who allow kids to read certain Black or LGBTQ writers and to fire tenured professors in the state university system who teach "woke" ideas. He wants to restrict the rights of women seeking abortions and those of LGBTQ people seeking to live their lives. He hopes to punish corporations, such as the Walt Disney Company, for criticizing his policies.
- So, if The Courage to Be Free is a sign of things to come, DeSantis will likely hang his presidential campaign on efforts to find what he calls the "pressure points" in the system, finding ways to "leverage" his authority to advance his agenda. He's a lawyer, as he reminds us, educated at the famous Harvard Law School. If the book is any guide, he's going to use his lawyerly skills to dismantle our heritage and, in his Orwellian manner, he's going to proclaim that he's freeing us by doing so. Overall, I found the hectoring quality of DeSantis oppressive. He's a chilly man, with a heart of ice and — like so many politicians on both the right and left these days — full of resentments, grudges and the urge to destroy anyone who doesn't agree with him. The courage he claims for himself he would deny to many others. I shudder to think what he might do if handed the presidential bully pulpit. The good news, I suppose, is that the lack of charm this book illustrates could well severely limit his chances of success on the national stage.
- Jay Parini in "Opinion: Ron DeSantis’ new book offers a powerful warning to the US electorate" CNN (March 1, 2023)
- Is there anything liberals can do about Ron DeSantis other than quietly seethe, loudly condemn him every time he makes headlines and hope that his political flaws — his distaste for glad-handing, his less-than-inspiring public speaking style, his conspicuous unlikability — will take him down before he gets anywhere close to the presidency? It would be tempting to write off DeSantis, the bombastic Republican governor of Florida, as another unelectable right-wing lunatic unfit for national office. We’ve made that mistake before. It’s reliably depressing to revisit 2016 and the misbegotten liberal conviction that America couldn't possibly elevate Donald Trump to the presidency. We’ve already cataloged the mistakes in media coverage and dissected what we missed that somehow made Trump a viable, let alone a desirable, candidate to occupy the Oval Office. But here we go again. As the Democratic political strategist Lis Smith has remarked, the left’s reaction to DeSantis looks just like its reaction to Trump: "He's picking these fights. He’s saying and doing abhorrent things. And all the same characters — whether in the media, Democratic politics, the punditry class, whatever it is — have the same freakout."
- Pamela Paul in "What Liberals Can Learn From Ron DeSantis" The New York Times (February 9, 2023)[paywalled source]
- In a country where government often looks sclerotic, DeSantis’s knack for action bears notice. We can decry his stunt in shipping migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, but we should also be attending to the real concerns of people living in areas of heavy immigration. Lest we forget, Hispanic voters in Florida preferred DeSantis to his Democratic opponent in last year’s election for governor; they also supported his Martha’s Vineyard escapade, according to a Telemundo/LX News poll. "There are lots of Hispanic voters in this state who really like the governor’s style, this strongman who won’t back down," one pollster explained at the time. Democrats need to grapple with this appeal. It would be easy to write off DeSantis as a cartoon culture warrior or as racist, homophobic, transphobic and xenophobic. He may well be all those things, and so may some of his constituents. But he may not be, and either way, it would be foolish to characterize all his followers as such. Assuming a stance of moral superiority will do us no good. (See: Hillary Clinton, "deplorables.")
- Pamela Paul in "What Liberals Can Learn From Ron DeSantis" The New York Times (February 9, 2023)
- Finally, we shouldn’t let DeSantis co-opt positions on which Democrats have historical strength and a natural advantage: education, health care, jobs. There are reasons so many Americans are relocating to the Sunshine State beyond the balmy weather. This month, DeSantis released a budget plan that featured targeted tax cuts aimed at parents, salary increases for state employees, including teachers, and significant investments in schools, including programs in civic education. DeSantis’s maverick approach to primary, secondary and higher education has brought widespread condemnation from Democrats, particularly from their more progressive wing. But we should pay attention to why his policies land better with voters than with progressive critics. A law like the Stop WOKE Act of 2021 (later partly blocked by a federal court), which limited the discussion of certain racial issues during diversity training sessions offered by private employers and in the classroom, may come with an incendiary name and some egregious efforts to curtail free speech. But it's important to recognize that aspects of it appeal to Floridians tired of racial and ethnic divisiveness and the overt politicization of what's taught in the classroom. As many liberals will quietly acknowledge, the Parental Rights in Education Act, which DeSantis signed last year and which opponents nicknamed the "Don’t Say Gay" law, has reasonable and legitimate attractions for a broad range of parents who worry about the focus, efficacy and age appropriateness of what their kids are learning in primary and secondary school. Democratic leadership should worry, too. Keeping quiet or pretending those concerns aren't real won't make them go away.
- Pamela Paul in "What Liberals Can Learn From Ron DeSantis" The New York Times (February 9, 2023)
- Which brings us back to Trump. We know that he takes DeSantis seriously because Trump has shown signs that he's scared of DeSantis as a competitor. If even Trump knows that much, Democrats are capable of knowing more. Trump may think the best way to defang DeSantis — whom he calls "DeSanctimonious" — is to mock and belittle him. Democrats should recognize it will take far more than that.
- Pamela Paul in "What Liberals Can Learn From Ron DeSantis" The New York Times (February 9, 2023)
- We're winning big, big, big in the Republican Party for the nomination like nobody's ever seen before
- There it is, Trump at 71 [percent]. Ron DeSanctimonious at 10 percent. Mike Pence at 7 — oh, Mike Pence doing better than I thought.
- Cited by Mark Moore "Pompeo jumps to defend DeSantis after Trump's 'Ron DeSanctimonious' comments" NY Post (November 6, 2022 1:41pm Updated)
- Ron DeSanctimonious is playing games! The Fake News asks him if he's going to run if President Trump runs, and he says, "I'm only focused on the Governor's race, I'm not looking into the future." Well, in terms of loyalty and class, that's really not the right answer.
- Donald Trump on Truth Social, reported in Adam Carlson, Jay O'Brien, and Katherine Faulders, "Trump takes aim at Ron DeSantis, suggesting he's a 2024 rival", ABC News (November 10, 2022).