Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) has made his record as governor the centerpiece of his presidential campaign, and it contrasts with the dire conditions in much of the country. At Erick Erickson’s Gathering in Atlanta on Friday, DeSantis cast a vision for how the U.S. can improve its situation.
Erickson tossed him the first opportunity to make his pitch for overcoming the struggles of the country as a whole with his first question. After congratulating Florida’s mortal enemy the Georgia Bulldogs on their football success — the man knows his audience — DeSantis painted a bleak picture of our national economy.
So, you know, part of the thing, I think, with the economy are still legacies of the COVID policies that this country did that did not work, and I think we just have to be honest about that. Because we cannot go down this road again when you stop the economy, when you pay people not to work, and we keep kids out of school; all of that has an effect. When you print trillions and trillions of dollars, that has a major, major impact.
People were predicting that we would have the inflation that we’ve seen… and so you now have a situation where middle-class families working hard and playing by the rules to get the most out of their God-given ability are struggling to be able to raise families, to afford a house, to afford to purchase a new car, and our country can’t do well for those people who are doing everything right. We’re just not going to be successful as a country. And a lot of this has been government-driven.
The governor added that reviving America’s economy comes down to opportunity and competition. “Our country is going to succeed or not based on whether we can have small businesses thrive and individual entrepreneurs do well,” he declared before stating that he will undo all of the Biden-era executive orders on the first day of a DeSantis administration — including restoring energy independence.
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With next week’s Republican debate on the horizon, DeSantis addressed the two narratives driving this campaign cycle: rehashing the past versus tackling the future.
“I hope that we will be focused on the future of the country rather than some of the other static that’s out there right now,” he said. “Because a lot of the static, a lot of the things about looking backward, that is not going to help us secure this border; that is not going to help the middle-class families who are struggling to even afford groceries. It’s not going to help them get better.”
“There’s nobody that wants us to be looking backward more than the Democrats in the media,” he added. “They would love to have us have to re-litigate all this stuff from 2020 and 2021. Because what does that do now? It lets Biden sit in his basement again and not have to answer questions or face scrutiny.”
Naturally, DeSantis addressed the issue of parents’ rights. He talked about how his kids have spent the summer on the campaign trail with him before going back to school, and he expressed his relief that his young children don’t have as much leftist indoctrination in Florida schools as they may have had before. He stated that, under his watch, the left won’t be able to use public schools as indoctrination centers.
Erickson shifted his focus with DeSantis to the military. The governor stated that one of the biggest issues in our military is the drop in recruitment, and he blamed vaccine mandates and the emphasis on wokeness in all branches. He said that leaders in the Pentagon “are clearly pursuing social experimentation, political agenda, and vax ideology at the expense of the mission.”
He added that “we’ve got to do more here in the United States because our national security really is at risk, and we let this go for a long time. And we’re going to end up paying the consequences if we don’t reverse it very soon.”
DeSantis hit the nail on the head when he said, “It’s really up to us to ensure that the 2024 election is a referendum on what actually matters for this country’s future.” That’s what the stakes are this time around.
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