When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took the stage Sunday to boost Republicans running in Arizona, his live audience was in Phoenix.
But he was grabbing attention from both political parties across the country, thanks to his role as an emerging star in the GOP.
And that had to be unnerving for some households in California and Washington, D.C. – especially the ones with inhabitants named “Pelosi.”
In a speech marked with his usual frank demeanor, DeSantis all but predicted a Republican takeover of Congress in the November midterm elections and looked ahead to the retirement of a certain octogenarian from San Francisco who’s been plaguing American politics since DeSantis was 9 years old.
The midterm elections, he said, are going to be battles over the decisions in the recent past and decisions about the country’s future — and that future won’t include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“We’re gonna be fighting back against lockdown politicians all over this country who ruined people’s lives,” DeSantis told the cheering crowd. “And we’re gonna be fighting back against a failed Congress which will result in the retirement of Nancy Pelosi.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis rips Nancy Pelosi and the crowd roars “…which will result in the retirement of Nancy Pelosi.” For the full rally join us on Rumble: https://t.co/QzklL2gnDb pic.twitter.com/7YOyE0Kc7I
— RSBN (@RSBNetwork) August 15, 2022
From another politician in other circumstances, that might sound like boilerplate for a midterm campaign. Both parties try to project confidence going into the two-year election cycle mandated by the Constitution, when the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate are up for election.
Do you think the DeSantis prediction will come true?
But at 43, DeSantis isn’t an ordinary politician. After his razor-thin victory in 2018 over Democrat Andrew Gillum (the once-great Democratic hope who turned into a disgrace to himself and his party), DeSantis has established himself as one of the leading governors in the country, having dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic without shutting down the Sunshine State’s economy, and giving Florida a reputation for freedom that’s the envy of sane Americans everywhere.
He’s running for re-election himself in November but is apparently confident to be taking his show on the road to help other Republicans.
Sunday’s rally in Phoenix was to support Kari Lake, the former television journalist turned Republican candidate for governor in the Grand Canyon State, and Blake Masters, the Republican candidate for Senate seeking to replace Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.
Both Lake and Masters were endorsed by former President Donald Trump, so DeSantis’ appearance in their support is a signal not only to Arizona Republicans but also to GOP voters as a whole that the scenario of a Trump-DeSantis civil war remains only a fantasy of many on the liberal left (and too many NeverTrumps on the right).
It was the first of several appearances planned for Trump-backed candidates in battleground states going into November’s vote.
And these are no ordinary circumstances. Democrats have leveraged a paper-thin majority in the House and a tie-breaking majority in the Senate – literally one vote, by a woman who’s not even a senator anymore – into the largest spending programs in American history that have driven soaring inflation, and they’re not stopping.
A party that has behaved as though it has majorities on a par with Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal Democrats in the 1930s (an average of 220 seats in the House from 1933-39) is almost certainly going to lose power in the midterms — most likely by painful numbers.
So when DeSantis predicts Pelosi heading out to pasture, it carries a little more power than usual. At 82, the California Democrat took first took her seat in the House in 1987, during the second Reagan administration. It’s long past time she left it — under her own volition, by the ballot box, or in handcuffs.
The governor, of course, didn’t neglect the other burning issue of the day — the FBI’s raid a week ago on Trump’s home in the Mar-a-Lago Club of DeSantis’ home state.
DeSantis has already condemned the raid publicly, but he took the opportunity Sunday — his first public appearance since it took place — to denounce it again.
Specifically, he compared the FBI’s thug tactics this time around with the kid-glove treatment former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton got from the FBI for treatment of her office’s official documents that was far worse, as far as is publicly known, than anything being hinted at about Trump.
Gov. DeSantis calls out the FBI’s raid of Donald Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago.
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 15, 2022
“I’m trying to remember, maybe someone here can remind me, about when they did a search warrant at Hillary’s house in Chappaqua,” he said of her New York residence, “when she had a rogue server and she was laundering classified information.
“I don’t remember them doing that. I do remember them manufacturing a false conspiracy theory about Russia collusion. I remember that. That was not true. That was an abuse of power.”
He summed up with a slam at Attorney General Merrick Garland, President Joe Biden’s appointee who now leads a transparently politicized Justice Department.
“They’re enforcing the law based on who they like and who they don’t like,” the governor said. “That is not a republic. Well, maybe it’s a banana republic when that happens.”
It’s time for the Third World, banana republic days of Garland’s Justice Department to be brought under Republican lawmakers’ oversight. It’s time for the Stalinist kangaroo court of Pelosi’s committee on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol incursion to be closed down for good.
It’s time to stop forcing Americans to think about their country in disparaging cliches!
In all seriousness, it’s time for Republicans, conservative Americans, independents and even Democrats — those who can remember when their party gave a damn about their country — to turn out in the midterms to make sure DeSantis’ prediction comes true.
The country is saddled with the doddering Joe Biden in the White House, but recovery can start in five months when a new Congress is sworn in with a Republican majority — Pelosi turns over the gavel for good.
We know DeSantis had listeners in Arizona. It’s a very good bet he had plenty in California and D.C. Let’s hope the rest of the country heard him, too.
