Fine article here from NY Magazine with this headline:”
“The GOP’s Addiction to Culture War May
Cost it in 2024”
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is way out of touch on most, if not all
social/cultural issues just like Trump and he growing 2024 GOP field.
Recall that DeSantis was on the far-right fringe of a historically conservative GOP House
caucus just a few years
ago while serving in Congress (he hopes the public has forgotten or didn’t know).
DeSantis pretense was always going to be hard to maintain that in
the face of national scrutiny if he chooses to run for the White House with the
dynamics of a competitive and large GOP primary compounding that.
Ever since SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade last year, public opinion on abortion in the U.S. has moved sharply leftward for obvious reasons (women in America are alert and angry).
Faced with the imperative to win over anti-abortion primary
voters, however, DeSantis, etr al have moved more right on the issue, signaling that he and they are not satisfied with his state’s ban (FL) on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy and that he would gladly sign a six-week ban.
At the same time, DeSantis has taken pains to address virtually every moral panic that right-wing media manages to kick up: (1) banning gender-affirming care for trans youth to (2) ridding Florida
schools of woke history lessons, (3) eliminating
diversity promotion on college campuses, and (4) blocking Advanced
Placement (AP) classes in African American studies.
This has prompted DeSantis’s primary adversary, Trump, to sprint to the Florida governor’s right on such esoteric issues.
Trump recently proposed (1) a ban on federal funding of transition care for trans Americans of
“any age” while (2) vowing to purge
radical zealots from the Education Department, and (3) toss our curricula
hostile to Judeo-Christian teachings from public schools.
Note: Some Democrats are vulnerable on a few cultural issues, too.
Not all of DeSantis’s moral crusades lack popular support. In a 2022 survey commissioned by the AFT, a majority of voters evinced approval for the sentiment that schools “should focus less on racism and more on core academic subjects” as well as “for barring trans-girls from girl’s high-school sports” (one of DeSantis’s many big causes). But these opinions don’t appear to be very strongly held nationally.
AFT SURVEY EXAMPLES:
1. Twice as many respondents agreed with the notion that
public schools are handling sensitive social issues responsibly than with the
idea that they are imposing a liberal agenda on students.
2. The concept of banning books from school libraries
consistently has attracted widespread opposition (kinda like this one did in 1933).
3. For better or worse, the typical voter simply does not
care much about the precise details of school curricula or social policies that
impact a small fraction of the population.
4. As one prime example shows in that same AFT survey cited above, a two-to-one majority of voters said
that it was more important to provide public schools with more funding than having
parents with more say over what is taught there.
My 2 Cents: As I noted above, this is a an excellent article from NY Magazine – long but worthwhile and very
timely in these divisive political and social times all across the country and
more so in GOP-controlled states and localities, and of course in the rabid
GOP-run House under McCarthy and Jordan, et al (i.e., 2020 deniers mostly).
Now as we move towards 2024 (midterm and also presidential election cycle) our collective focus must be on what is right and just and best for our future and NOT just for the revengeful GOP that Trump want or a one-man controlled nation that he and DeSantis both appear to want.
That must never ever happen, so stay tuned which I’m sure most are nowadays.
Thanks for stopping by.
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