America’s MAGA Governors are increasingly divorced from reality.
I was struck by the title of a recent op-ed by Eugene Robinson in the Washington Post: “Ron DeSantis’ political War on Disney Makes Trump Look Reasonable.”
You really have to fall far, far off the sanity cliff to make Donald Trump look reasonable, but Robinson makes a compelling case.
I mean, seriously, what kind of governor threatens the revenue of a company that is his state’s biggest private employer, No. 1 corporate taxpayer and most popular tourist attraction? For that matter, what kind of self-proclaimed conservative Republican believes a governor has the right to punish a corporation for publicly disagreeing with his policies?
The battle DeSantis has chosen to wage against Walt Disney World always seemed petty and ill-advised. It now looks obsessive and weird — and I fear it tells us something alarming about the man who is running second in the polls, behind Donald Trump, for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
DeSantis’ obsessive need to punish a private company that dared criticize him has evidently been supercharged by the fact that Disney outfoxed him.
DeSantis wanted to take away Disney’s near-total control over the county Disney World inhabits. An agreement from the 1960s gave the company its own taxing district –along with responsibility for policing, firefighting, road maintenance and other government-like duties.
DeSantis had a tough, “anti-woke” oversight board all set to take charge of the special district and show Disney who’s boss — only to learn, late last month, that the Disney-friendly outgoing board had signed an agreement stripping the new board of its power and allowing Disney to continue operating with near-total autonomy for the foreseeable future.
Rather than walking away from further confrontation, DeSantis is asking Florida’s legislature to reverse Disney’s maneuver while ranting about punishing the company — the state’s biggest employer — by developing the land around Disney World in ways that would repel paying customers. “Maybe try to do more amusement parks,” he said at a news conference. “Someone even said, like, maybe you need another state prison.”
As if attacking the premier tourist attraction in his state for daring to disagree with him wasn’t insane enough, DeSantis and his compliant legislature are also continuing their destructive vendetta against the state’s universities.
But they’ll have trouble out-crazying Texas.
Talking Points Memo recently reported on a vote by the Texas Senate to end tenure at the state’s three dozen or so public universities.
Many observers in Texas think it’s unlikely that the tenure ban will pass the GOP-controlled Texas House. I hope that’s right. But even if it dies there, we have to reckon with how far Texas senators were willing to go.
As the article noted,
SB 18 would eliminate tenure only for newly hired professors and would allow a university system governing board to set up its own system of “tiered employment” for faculty, as long as professors receive an annual review.
But let’s not kid ourselves. Eliminating tenure for new hires would put Texas universities at an extreme disadvantage when recruiting faculty. It would cripple many graduate programs. It would inject politics deeply into university management and administration. It would allow state government to play the same kinds of games with higher ed that they love foisting on elementary and secondary educators.
In Florida, DeSantis has pursued an unremitting assault on state educational institutions–from censoring the books that can be used in its public schools, to “don’t say gay” bills, to a variety of attacks on anything the Governor–in his warped worldview–considers “wokeness” on college campuses.
Recent research suggests these attacks on their universities will dramatically reduce the number of high school graduates willing to consider pursing higher education in either state. Axios has reported on a recent study showing college choices increasingly affected by state politics.
Although both liberal and conservative high school graduates affirmed the importance of the state’s political climate to their choice of colleges, young liberals outnumber conservatives by some 2-1, making this a much bigger problem for Red states. One finding should concern Indiana as well as Florida and Texas.
Among all college students, the support for states that have greater access to abortion is by an overwhelming 4-to-1 margin, including two-thirds of Republicans who said they prefer states with less restrictive abortion laws. It’s also a pronounced winner among women (86%) and men (74%) alike.
Prospective students aren’t the only ones avoiding states with abortion bans. The Washington Post has reported a steep drop in applicants for obstetrics and gynecology residencies in those states–drops that will deprive residents of critically-needed medical care.
DeSantis and Abbott are depressingly representative of today’s Republican lawmakers– a collection of loony-tunes aspiring autocrats pursuing suicidal policies repellent to anyone outside crazy MAGA world.
As my grandmother would have said, “A wellness it isn’t.”
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