A left-wing columnist claimed in Friday’s edition of The New York Times that Ron DeSantis is not truly who he presents himself to be.
Jamelle Bouie, a left-wing political and cultural commentator, claimed that the Florida governor’s political record should draw more direct comparisons to former President George W. Bush than former President Donald Trump. Bouie claims that although DeSantis has worked hard to cultivate a populist media image, that image is mostly aesthetic. DeSantis is “a Bush Republican,” according to the article.
“Despite his pretenses to the contrary, DeSantis is very much the image of a member of the Republican establishment,” Bouie claims. “That’s one reason he has the almost lock-step support of the organs of that particular elite, for whom he represents a return to normalcy after the chaos and defeat of the Trump years.” (RELATED: The New York Times Admits Authenticity Of Hunter Biden’s Laptop)
He claims that much like Bush, DeSantis wants to establish a cultural majority through waging a “campaign of stigma against trans and other gender-nonconforming Americans.” Bouie draws parallels between DeSantis’ policies restricting trans rights and Bush’s opposition to gay marriage in 2004.
“What if we treated DeSantis not as a creature of the Trump years, but as a product of the Bush ones?” @jbouie writes. https://t.co/jzdC6aaDDb
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) March 24, 2023
All of this, Bouie claims, makes DeSantis a favorite of the Republican cultural elite, particularly the college educated. “It is not for nothing that in the fight for the 2024 Republican nomination, DeSantis leads Trump among Republicans with a college degree — the white-collar conservative voters who were Bush stalwarts and Trump skeptics.”
This isn’t the first time that Bouie has taken aim at the Florida governor and potential presidential candidate. In February, Bouie appeared on MSNBC and claimed that DeSantis’ culture wars are mainly a distraction from his unpopular economic policies.
Bouie also wrote about DeSantis back in September, claiming that he did not have the personality that made Trump charming and appealing.
Desantis “may be a more competent Trump in terms of his ability to use the levers of state to amass power, but he’s also meaner and more rigid, without the soft edges and eccentricity of the actual Donald Trump,” Bouie wrote.