Douglas Murray has written a good column for the Telegraph today about the success of U.S. conservatives in routing the left. Chief among them is Ron DeSantis, the Governor of Florida. The lesson, says Douglas, is to robustly defend traditional values.
The Conservative Party has some big choices before it. But it isn’t just whether it wants to be led by Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak. The choice is whether it wants to stagger along as another centrist political party, or whether it wants to actually win some conservative victories. It could learn something about the latter by looking to the successes of the conservative movement in America.
American politics today is dominated by a generation of Left-wing politicians who are all in, or fast approaching, their 80s. They are out of ideas and out of successors. If you look at the bench of Democrat politicians likely to replace Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi it is very thin pickings indeed. Can anyone imagine a great wave of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris or Pete Buttigieg?
The Republicans, by contrast, are bursting with younger talent. Some of which may even be about to see off the monster of Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump, who has not yet announced his presidential bid.
But whether Trump runs or not, there are major challengers to him. Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the UN, has been making it clear that she is running for the Republican nomination. Yet all eyes are on the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. A poll out this week, taken in the primary battleground state of Michigan, showed DeSantis and Trump neck and neck among Republican voters. Other recent polls have shown DeSantis polling above Trump.
There are reasons for this. Some are obvious. Trump has serious opposition to his candidacy not just among swing voters but among some Republicans too. The drip of revelations from the admittedly highly partisan January 6 committee has begun to have an impact. Many Republicans may still like Trump, but it is clear that he is a millstone around their party as well.
DeSantis, by contrast – at half Trump’s age – spells a break from the past as well as a continuation of it. These things are not mutually exclusive. The 43-year-old could thank Trump for some of the good things he achieved, but promise to take it from here without the overweight baggage that Trump has come to be.
Best of all is that, as Governor of Florida, DeSantis has some serious successes behind him. He was the Governor who during Covid made sure that his state did not lock down. It was an exceptionally tough call, made in spite of the consensus in most of the other states and indeed most other countries. DeSantis spoke to medical experts but he concluded that Florida should stay open. And it did. And not only did it not have any great excess mortality rate (when compared to size and age of population) it has had a boom of people from other states choosing to visit, or even move to, the free state of Florida.
Worth reading in full.
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Never mind left or right, conservative or liberal, what impresses me about Ron DeSantis is that he genuinely seems to embody the Gettysburg principle of Government of the people, by the people, for the people. When he said;
“If you’re running for office, whether you’re involved in any other capacity, and if you just show people that you’re willing to fight for them, man they will walk over broken glass barefoot to have your back.”
He sounds like he truly means it. Maybe I am easily fooled but when I listen to his speeches;
https://twitter.com/GovRonDeSantis/status/1548798791146512384
I feel he is speaking for people like me in a way that no UK politician has done for a long time.
‘ Gettysburg principle of Government of the people, by the people, for the people.’
The full quote is: “This Bible is for the Government of the people, by the people and for the people”.
The principle is self-government, not so-called democratic Government by the State which certainly is neither by nor for the People, just for the mob in charge.
Lincoln lifted it from the foreword to the Wycliffe Bible and it is oft recited as a cover for the protection and extortion racket called Government, legalised Mafia.
Sadly all the candidates for MP are chosen centrally and not by the local constituency memberships. Cameron was not Conservative. He made Libdem and Greens members of the House of Lords. This explains why Liz Truss is one of the final two.
This is why most Conservative MPs don’t have a Conservative bone in their bodies.They want to destry us with Net Zero,
Neil Oliver – ‘…that’s what’s coming, it’s all about control’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Jk4dt-VjE
Neil Oliver
Stand for freedom Yellow Boards By The Road
Fight the humiliation from wearing masks to eating insects
Monday 25th July 11am to 12pm
Yellow Boards
Junction A329 Reading Rd &
Station Approach
Wokingham RG41 1EH
Stand in the Park Sundays 10.30am to 11.30am – make friends & keep sane
Wokingham
Howard Palmer Gardens Sturges Rd RG40 2HD
Bracknell
South Hill Park, Rear Lawn, RG12 7PA
Telegram http://t.me/astandintheparkbracknell
‘..another centrist political party..’
Centre of what – the spectrum on the Left between Marxism and Fascism?
Trump/DeSantis 2024.
DeSantis/Trumpjnr 2028.
DeSantis/Trumpjnr 2032.
Trumpjnr/OtherTrumpjnr 2036.
…..
Meanwhile in the UK, now that all the other national emergencies are looking threadbare, Rishi Sunak has declared yet another national emergency. Remember, this is the candidate who told the WEF “our third action is to rewire the entire global financial system for Net Zero” – note the use of “our”.
The UK Conservatives could not copy DeSantis because they do not believe in traditioinal values or conservatism, and they have not done so for decades.
Indeed, the “British conservative” doesn’t really exist as a political force in the same way that conservatives do in the US. The Conservative Party is not conservative. Where is the UK equivalent of Trump or De Santis or Fox News or Tucker Carlson? The only thing that comes close is the Brexit movement, but the energy from that has dissipated.
The stitched-up British system is designed and intended to prevent a real Conservative and anyone who would “rock the Establishment boat” from gaining power.
It only failed with Mrs Thatcher because they all assumed she was unelectable when she became Conservative Party Leader in 1976 …. until she proved them wrong (and not for the first time). They got rid of her when she threatened to derail the creation of the EU and then ensured that in future, only a LibCON who would toe the Establishment line would be allowed to become Prime Minister.
We desperately need a Ron DeSantis …. but we’ll never be allowed to have one.