James Kirkpatrick explains how a refusal to embrace identity politics leaves Republicans at a growing strategic disadvantage in Florida:
A recent poll finds black Democrat Andrew Gillum is building a comfortable lead over white Republican Ron DeSantis in the Florida governor’s race. [New poll shows Gillum leading DeSantis by 6 points, by Tim Swift, Local 10, September 19, 2018] As Conservatism Inc. never ceases to remind its dwindling constituency, Gillum is, like other Democrats this election cycle, essentially a socialist, and DeSantis is a “Reagan conservative”. [For a Florida Governor, It’s a Reagan Conservative vs. a Sanders Socialist, by Neal Freeman, National Review, September 5, 2018] But it’s not 1980 anymore and Gillum’s campaigning for what Governing’s Graham Vyse correctly calls “key Democratic Socialist priorities” isn’t scaring away voters. [How Democratic Socialists Performed in State and Local Primaries, September 20, 2018] The truth is that politics has changed, campaigns are now about identity and demographics, and DeSantis, like the Stupid Party generally, has no idea how to handle it.
Thus DeSantis is currently plagued with yet another case of what the System Main Stream Media terms a “racial controversy.” A supporter, Steven M. Alembik, tweeted “F— THE MUSLIM N—–” after a typically sanctimonious Barack Obama speech, leading the DeSantis campaign immediately to perform a full grovel. This was particularly stupid because Alembik is Jewish and an adroit defense of him, for example attributing his hostility to Islam to his obviously passionate concern for Israel, would have helped DeSantis with a powerful Florida constituency.
And as Politico’s Marc Caputo gloats, this is only the latest “racial controversy” of DeSantis’s campaign, with the first being when DeSantis used the phrase “monkey this up” about the likely effect of DeSantis’s economic policies. Caputo intoned:
The pattern of racial controversies, including the Alembik remarks, highlights a problem that is getting harder to overlook in this racially diverse swing state: Despite DeSantis’ denunciations of bigotry, this is the fifth-race related issue concerning the candidate, the campaign or one of its supporters to erupt since the start of the general election campaign.
The passage is revealing, though not in the way Caputo intends. The reality is this: Because the Democrats have nominated a black candidate, everything DeSantis says or does is going to be called “racist,” no matter how energetically he “denounces bigotry.”
To be honest, that incendiary quote from the Jewish “supporter” sounds very much like a false flag planted by an infiltrator to me. But given the way establishment Republicans are unable to understand the need to accept and utilize identity politics, they are obviously incapable of defending themselves against identity-based infiltration and sabotage.