Many culture warriors think that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a true-believer. But reality is in my 30 years of being involved in Florida politics I have never seen a more “Pay-to-Play” politician. Yes, politics is a dirty game and transactionalism is increasingly the name of the game on both sides of the aisle, but never has anyone been quite like DeSantis in Florida. We’ll delve more into this topic in the coming weeks.

Add to that DeSantis numerous flip-flops and it become apparent – the image of a culture warrior obsessed with Wokeism and protecting Florida’s working class is a myth forged by Rupert Murdoch’s media companies and insurrection-supporting Florida-based partisan blogs. Remember, DeSantis was for lock-downs before he was against them, for masks before he was against them, and for vaccines before he was against them.

DeSantis was also for Ukraine and against Russia before he flip-flopped to match public opinion among Fox viewers and New York Post readers. Today, DeSantis is a public enabler of the Sino-Russo alliance, despite his performative commentary about the Chinese, has pivoted to match the viewpoints of the biggest Putin-appeasers in Congress (Russia is a effectively a junior partner in the Chinese race for global dominance, so appeasing Russia IS appeasing China).

In fact isolationism in general is appeasement of China – look at how much of a death trap both Pakistan and Sri Lanka are in thanks to the Chinese. The Trump years were a boon for China, thanks to American absentee leadership and disengagement, even if GOPers think banning Tik-Tok while disengaging abroad is going to do the trick.

But back specifically to DeSantis and Russia.

Governor DeSantis’ unwillingness to criticize Russia and embrace Ukraine in the last 12 months despite his repeated engagement on other foreign governmental issues (like his attacking of western allies Canada, France and Australia) was clear. As was his decision to not to order Florida to divest from Russia, something the Florida Democrats tried to make an issue last year, but made a mess out of it with scatter-gun and undisciplined approach to explaining it. But then again, maybe it wouldn’t have worked, because my own anecdotal evidence is I get nastier stares when traveling the state if I wear something pro-Ukraine than anything else, including wearing a mask (which got testy at times in the last few years).

CNN’s K-file has a detailed breakdown of DeSantis previous pro-Ukrainian positions, which now have been reversed as he seeks conformity with the Murdoch media empire and GOP primary voters. DeSantis is never to be trusted. His only true ideology is his own cunning to gain and maintain power while rewarding those who throw campaign cash at him – and he’s quite good at all of that.