Bank failures are due to “woke,” and Russia-Ukraine is a “territorial dispute” with no US “vital interest”

Ron DeSantis was perhaps fatally exposed this week as a not ready for prime time, unseasoned character that’s probably not getting any real savvy advice. DeSantis distrust of expertise and political consultants is legendary in Florida – as is his faith in his own personal instincts on issues. He’s been right when it came to Florida’s electorate on these things, but in terms of national politics, it seems his arbitrary decision making and smarmy “I know more than you entitled elites” attitude is not going to play as well as he had hoped.

The reaction to DeSantis views on Ukraine have resulted in a break from Reagan GOPers who naively thought the Florida Governor was a potential “return to normalcy,” in the GOP. In fact, DeSantis, in his recently released book championed protectionism and clearly has demonstrated he’s not a free market conservative – yet many foolishly created an image of what they wanted to believe he was, until this past week.

While Donald Trump is known for shooting his mouth off in an impulsive and undisciplined manner, but it usually comes with a cadre of advisors no matter how extreme telling him “this will sell to the base,” or “this works well.” DeSantis has no such support system, because quite frankly he’s run off the vast majority of folks that could help in this regard – he still has some competent people around him, but most have left and some believe it or have even found their way into Trump’s camp. I expect this will be more of a talking point when the GOP Primaries draw closer.

All this leads to DeSantis overreach this past week – his comments on Ukraine we’ve already dissected, but they are a major cause for concern as they could not only undermine continued support for the war effort here at home, but given comfort to authoritarians abroad who support Russia. And DeSantis views mirror a certain hard-right narrative of the 1930’s, that protectionism and isolationism is good and the only foreign policy to worry about relates to Latin America and ensuring they are effectively US puppet states.

Equally curious were DeSantis’ comments blaming the failure of a major bank on diversity initiatives while CNN’s K-File has kept the goods on DeSantis own views on banking deregulation and his laissez-faire history when it comes to financial regulation and banking deregulation.

We do need to consider that DeSantis likely has an ulterior motive in everything he advocates publicly – DeSantis often says things and does things because a major campaign contributor is behind the curtain. Despite his efforts to brand himself a progressive-populist who takes on corporations, elites, the medical establishment and academics while fighting for the little guy, he’s actually the most transactional politician, I recall ever seeing in Florida. This is saying a lot considering the levels of corruption that have long been part of the state’s political culture, going back to the days when V.O. Key discussed Florida in his seminal work on southern politics in 1949.

We already know about DeSantis ties to Russian Oligarchs in the past and his steadfast insistence the last year that Florida not divest from Russia. Now Jason Garcia and Judd Legum have recently uncovered how DeSantis ties to the financial services industry directly benefits certain donors and motivates his “anti-woke” rhetoric.

This is par for the course for DeSantis, a faux populist whose actual policy preferences are directly attributable in many cases to whose giving his campaign or political committee money. It’s not an accident DeSantis boasts a unified GOP donor class behind his potential candidacy. While the national media likes to say this is down to Trump being “unelectable,” the truth is DeSantis is more “buyable.”

At some point the core of the national media, GOP intellectuals and concerned Americans will see what DeSantis rhetoric is actually all about.