He aimed to puncture the admiration for DeSantis by asking Floridians to come to California where people still believe “in freedom to choose, freedom from hate and freedom to love.” His reference was partly to abortion that California allows and Florida doesn’t and what he skipped of course is whether an unborn baby should have the freedom to keep living. He was also referring to Florida forbidding teachers from teaching gender complexities to students from kindergarten to the third grade, a subject almost as baffling for children as regulated teachers still struggling to teach arithmetic and reading.
What Newsom didn’t mention in inviting Floridians to California is that they are needed because 100,000 are annually fleeing the second highest cost of living and grotesquely ambitious taxes shredding businesses and incomes.
Yes, more millionaires hang out in beautiful California than in any other state. The seeming contradiction is that half of the nation’s homeless live there, too, as rich San Francisco considers it somehow humane to allow sidewalks to become feces-imbedded bedchambers without beds. The virtual freedom to loot has caused looting to go up. The electricity system frequently allows lights to go off, keeping citizens in the dark as they vote for incompetents responsible for all the above. Or maybe miswrought ideology is the cause.
It is not as if all the above is solely Newsom’s fault, but consider the horror of California wildfires and then consider how he failed to follow through on projects that he endorsed, once vowing he had engaged in making 90,000 acres safer when it was just 12,000. He also cut millions of dollars from fire prevention as some of the worst fires the state had seen did their devastating thing.
DeSantis is not perfect and Florida has its problems, too, but he is by and large a capable champion of good causes now at war with progressive repugnance concerning everything that made America great, including the idea that it is great. DeSantis will be elected president unless what really happens is Biden beating Trump again or vice versa or who knows where the real truths resides.
What’s more important than predictions is looking hard at possible candidates.