On MSNBC’s All In, host Chris Hayes had on leftist New York Times opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie to kvetch over one of the leftist media’s favorite topic: Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and his efforts to clean up his state’s education system and prevent children from being racially and sexually indoctrinated. Bouie for his part came up with a conspiracy theory that DeSantis was only fighting “culture wars” to distract from his unpopular and “very radical economic agenda.”
“Ron DeSantis has clearly made himself kind of the nation's foremost conservative culture warrior. The attacks on education, laws like the Stop Woke Act, so on and so forth,” Bouie claimed. “And that's really how he is building his national brand as a politician, as a potential contender, for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.”
Bouie then made the ridiculous claim that DeSantis was “trying to essentially triangulate around, downplay" his unpopular fiscal policies.
This was laughable on its face since DeSantis recently won reelection in a landslide, beating his Democrat opponent by 19 points and taking nearly 60 percent of the vote.
Bouie has never been able to accept DeSantis’s electoral victories. In 2018, he cast doubt on the first DeSantis victory by crying voter suppression.
Continuing on his conspiracy driven rant, Bouie bemoaned how DeSantis “hasn’t expanded the Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act, leaving hundreds of thousands of Floridians without health insurance” and cried that he supports “slashing Social Security and restructuring Medicare.”
“I think the attacks on LGBT people are very serious and must be responded to and countered and dealt with,” Bouie proclaimed.
Doubling down on his conspiracy theory, Bouie again insisted that “DeSantis is playing a larger political game here and has everything to do with finding a way to appeal to voters without revealing a very radical economic agenda.”
DeSantis has such a radical economic agenda that he won reelection in a swing state by near record margins and enjoys broad popularity in his state. Bouie should find a new job.
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The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
MSNBC’s All In With Chris Hayes
2/14/2023
8:54:34 p.m. EasternJAMELLE BOUIE: Ron DeSantis has clearly made himself kind of the nation's foremost conservative culture warrior. The attacks on education, laws like the Stop Woke Act, so on and so forth. And that's really how he is building his national brand as a politician, as a potential contender, for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. But I think that we have to understand that with DeSantis, he’s also trying to essentially triangulate around, downplay his most unpopular view, which have to do with the role of government, with the role of the social insurance state, Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid.
Florida, for example, hasn’t expanded the Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act, leaving hundreds of thousands of Floridians without health insurance. DeSantis has written in his books and said as a candidate for the House of Representatives that he would be interested in slashing Social Security and restructuring Medicare, these sorts of things.
These are unpopular, these are so unpopular that if people remember, President Trump when he was a candidate, explicitly downplayed and said I would not do that kind of thing. Although I do think the attacks on education, I think the attacks on LGBT people are very serious and must be responded to and countered and dealt with. I think it's also important not to lose sight of the fact that DeSantis is playing a larger political game here and has everything to do with finding a way to appeal to voters without revealing a very radical economic agenda.
