DeSantis Spreads His 'Anti-Woke' Agenda Around While Supporting Mastriano

By Jen Maravegias | Politics | August 22, 2022 |

By Jen Maravegias | Politics | August 22, 2022 |

It’s easy to write off the current crop of Republican politicians as dumb. They aren’t. Their views are mindbogglingly stupid, but they’re evil, passing vile legislation on a regular basis these days. Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, in particular, gives off real Ernst Blofeld energy. Just with more hair.

In the James Bond Universe, Blofeld, as the head of SPECTRE, was Bond’s archenemy whose aspirations ran toward world domination. While DeSantis has not yet declared any intention to run for world-wide dictator president in 2024, he’s building himself quite a fiefdom in Florida. You know he has a secret lair where he sits in an ergonomic chair, stroking a cat while watching the havoc he wreaks playing out on multiple screens.

He’s working hard to make Florida completely unlivable for all but straight, white, Christian conservatives. And now he’s taking that show on the road to bolster support for Republicans in other states ahead of the mid-terms. This was him speaking at a campaign event for Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano last week.

.@GovRonDeSantis: "We must fight the woke in our schools. We must fight the woke in our businesses. We must fight the woke in government agencies. We can never, ever surrender to woke ideology. […] The state of Florida is where woke goes to die." https://t.co/6enR25cPPp pic.twitter.com/xHe4fz9toK

— The Hill (@thehill) August 20, 2022

“Woke” here being a catch-all for basically any progressive ideology aimed at making people’s lives better by acknowledging human rights or addressing the growing climate crisis. Take heart, Republicans of Florida, your state will probably be underwater before the women, members of the LGBTQ+ communities, and other under-served minority groups, can fully take over your state with rainbow flags, scary library books, and gender-neutral bathrooms. Everyone else down there? Take a page from Georgia and Kansas’ playbooks. Organize and vote him out. He only won by 0.4% in 2018. You. Can. Do. This. I believe in you.

We need to make sure that DeSantis doesn’t get any farther than Florida because he’s already working to gather other red states under his “anti-woke” agenda. In a vote set for tomorrow, DeSantis, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, and Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis will meet as the State Board of Administration to vote on new rules for the state’s pension fund that would bar fund managers from considering the social impact of their financial decisions. Essentially, DeSantis is weaponizing the state’s $200 billion in assets to send a message to Wall Street. And he’s inviting other states to help him:

“What we need to do is get other like-minded states to have all of our retirement systems voting rights used as a block basically.”

Speaking of other terrible Republicans, and Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano in particular, the more that guy campaigns, the more terrible things spill out of his mouth. Some of those terrible things aren’t even new! This guy has been bad news for a while — he’s a prominent figure in fundamentalist Christian nationalism, participates in QAnon events, spouts 9/11 conspiracy theories, and was part of the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election — only the best people in the GOP!

On Friday, while DeSantis was speaking at the Turning Points-sponsored rally for Mastriano, Pajiba fave Mike Schur, amplified this Tweet referencing a 2018 Rolling Stone interview with Mastriano:

"Should Black people be able to drive cars?"
"No. That's absurd. This is America."
"Are lesbians human?"
"I've never seen proof of it."
"Do people from Japan deserve water?"
"Trick question — no Japanese people in the Bible, so they don't count as living organisms." https://t.co/jy8a6B28X1

— Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) August 20, 2022

That’s a great Senator you’ve got there, Pennsylvania. The Democrats are holding on to slim leads in the polls coming out of Pennsylvania right now. Fetterman’s social media game is on point. But anything can happen between now and November.

The good news — because there IS some good news — is that more women have been registering to vote in key states since the Dobbs decision was announced earlier this summer:

Remember the surge in registration among women voters in KS leading up to the vote 2 weeks ago? We released a new report today showing increasing proportions of women among new registrants in other key states, all since the Dobbs decision on June 24th. https://t.co/ZW8RHPblSH

— Tom Bonier (@tbonier) August 17, 2022

Let’s get this done, ladies.