“Ron DeSantis, Angel of Death.” — Vanity Fair, calling the Florida governor “a super-spreader event” after he empowered parents to decide whether to send asymptomatic kids to school, 9/23/21

“I’m actually just shocked by DeSantis… I think he may be more of a lunatic than Trump ever was… We’re going to have dead kids all over Florida… It’s almost as if he doesn’t give a damn who has to die as long as he gets reelected.” — Howard Dean, quoted at Mediaite, 8/27/21

Since the Republican governor was elected in a 32,000-vote-margin-squeaker in 2018 — with President Trump’s endorsement — the media has been in full dds mode, DeSantis Derangement Syndrome. And it got worse once covid hit last year, as DeSantis was cast as the Eeeevil Republican Anti-Mandate Villain Governor against Lockdown Superhero Genius New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. (Former genius governor that is, Cuomo having been done in by hubris, sex-pestering, and killing old people in nursing homes.)

The key point is, Ron DeSantis’ political strength is obvious to all — including his enemies. His governance is consistently successful, judging by the economic health and growth of his state. So, Democrats are desperate to dirty him up however they can, because they already know they likely won’t be able to beat him electorally. Obsessed with using covid to neuter him politically, they are poring over hospital and death statistics to try to head any eventual DeSantis presidential candidacy off at the pass. But to his opponents’ horror, his freedom-based policies are working amidst the ups and downs of the virus. Even Politico reports: “DeSantis Pulls Ahead of 2024 gop Pack as Florida’s covid Cases Fall.”

He’s young — just turned 43 — he’s smart, he’s quick on his feet, he doesn’t take guff from the media, and yet at the same time he is calm in temperament, enhanced by the military bearing of a former Navy Lieutenant Commander. He oozes competence, he’s humorous, he’s got it all. And, he honed his political talents by studying under the greatest of all time, Rush Limbaugh.

Here are the numbers you need to remember:

$53 million. That’s how much DeSantis’ political committee has on hand, according to The Capitolist, having raised over $5.5 million in August alone. Ostensibly for the 2022 re-election campaign.

$2.5 million and $2.8 million. That’s how much his wannabe Democrat gubernatorial opponents’ campaigns have on hand. The political-fluid Charlie Crist, ex-gop governor and now Democrat Congressman, and lefty hero Nikki Fried, Ag Commissioner, aren’t really playing on the same field as DeSantis, though they do get constant tongue baths from the media. Meanwhile, Crist is whining to donors that DeSantis Republicans are “raising ungodly sums of money.”

Translation: DeSantis is going to stomp them. Still, it’s going to be a vicious, knock-down, drag-out race. As The Hill puts it, “DeSantis will have a brutal [gubernatorial re-election] campaign since outside the gop he is considered to be a polarizing Trump stand-in, yet [he’s] feared by Democrats who must take him out before he becomes a 2024 contender.” Prediction: they will fail.

Here’s another important number: 30.

That’s how many electoral votes Florida has after the 2020 census, having gained one. New York, millions of whose lockdown-weary, tax-burdened residents are fleeing south to the Free State of Florida, now has only 28 electoral votes, having lost one. It’s an astonishing shift in political power. As DeSantis told Rush in The Limbaugh Letter last year, “In 1960, New York had I think 45 electoral votes; Florida had 10… Get this. We [now] have a larger population than New York state, but our budget is half of what New York state’s budget is.” That Florida is such a competently-run, fiscally sound state, especially compared to any Blue State, perfectly reflects DeSantis’ management and leadership abilities.

And, since good policy is good politics, under DeSantis the Florida gop is flourishing as never before. More numbers:

700,000. That’s how many more registered Democrats Florida had than Republicans in 2008, when Obama won the state by 200,000 votes.

23,551. That’s the miniscule Democrat registration advantage now, and not even Biden’s trafficked-in illegals can reverse that. According to The Hill, Democratic strategist Steve Schale warns: “Without a full-frontal … effort to turn it around, sometime before the end of this year, there will be more Republicans registered in Florida than Democrats — that has never happened before. And given [gop] voters have higher turnout scores — this isn’t a great place to start.”

Actually, it’s a terrific place to start. But their panic explains why the entire dmc, the Democrat Media Complex, is engaged in a no-holds-barred anti-DeSantis campaign. The Biden Regime, which is clearly gearing up for a race against the Florida governor in 2024, should Trump opt out, is warring directly with DeSantis by punishing Florida, using every federal tool they’ve got. Here is just a sampling of Biden’s hardball tactics:

• Biden is rationing medicine, deliberately cutting Florida’s weekly allotment of monoclonal antibody treatments — which had reduced the state’s covid ER visits by 70 percent — from 72,000 to 28,000 doses.
• Biden is undermining DeSantis’ moves to put decisions regarding masking children firmly in the hands of parents. After the governor began fining schools that imposed mask mandates against state policy, Biden reimbursed the schools so they could continue to defy their governor with no penalty, as reported by Yahoo News: “Biden Administration Awards $150K to Florida [School] District that Resisted DeSantis Ban on Mask Mandates.”
• Biden is jacking up federal flood insurance rates to punish Florida. The New York Times reports that the cost of insuring waterfront homes “is about to skyrocket” as new rates “reflect the real risks of climate change are coming”:

Florida’s version of the American dream, which holds that even people of relatively modest means can aspire to live near the water, depends on a few crucial components: sugar white beaches, soft ocean breezes, and federal flood insurance that is heavily subsidized. But starting Oct. 1, communities in Florida … will see those subsidies begin to disappear in a nationwide experiment in trying to adapt to climate change: forcing Americans to pay something closer to the real cost of their flood risk, which is rising as the planet warms. While the program also covers homes around the country, the pain will be most acutely felt in coastal communities… Federal officials say the goal is fairness…

The governor’s attitude in response to these provocations: bring it. Reports The Epoch Times, 9/11/21: “DeSantis Responds to Biden’s Vaccine Mandate: ‘In Florida, We Will Fight Back.’” He is picking all the right battles, including Big Tech. “In Florida, we are not going to let the terms of the debate in our country be set by oligarchs in Silicon Valley,” DeSantis proclaimed.

In his cpac speech last February, after giving tribute to Rush, DeSantis said:

We cannot, we will not go back to the days of the failed Republican establishment of yesteryear. We reject open borders and instead support American sovereignty and the American worker. Building a movement on the foundation of amnesty and cheap foreign labor is like building a house on a field of quicksand. We reject weakness in the face of the threat posed by China, including their actions in international trade. We reject military adventurism [and] instead support a strong defense solely for the purpose of protecting our nation and its people.

He then declared, “When you do engage in the battles ahead, hold the line, stand your ground, and don’t ever, ever back down.”

Which is exactly why a year ago May, Rush said:

I want to [praise] a graduate, or the closest that we’ve ever had to a graduate, of the Limbaugh Institute, and that would be Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. As you know, there are no graduates from the Limbaugh Institute because the learning never stops. We don’t issue degrees here because there never is a time where we have proclaimed that our students have learned it all, because our curriculum is constantly expanding. There is no set curriculum here. But Governor DeSantis has asked in the past for an honorary degree, and has said that if said honorary degree were ever bestowed, that he would frame it, hang it proudly on the wall in his gubernatorial office. And if anybody has come close to earning an honorary degree from the Limbaugh Institute, it is the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.

Rush didn’t have children, but he has millions of ideological offspring, avid students, and Ron DeSantis is one of them. Indeed, he may well be the first Limbaugh Institute scholar to ultimately attain the Oval Office.

And that is what has them terrified.

Photo courtesy of Governor Ron DeSantis