Replies

Yeah. Actually, he is conservative! Staunch conservative! His record says it! his rhetoric says it! The hatred of him from the left says it. I notice yall love to claim that everybody else in Politics is a RINO. There are the staunchest of conservative that- like DeSantis, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Clarence Thomas, et al, that yall have started calling establishment and Rinos. Just because you dislike somebody running against a candidate you favor or voicing a quality they don’t like about your candidate, does not make somebody a Rino. Rinoism isn’t determined by unquestioning loyalty to an election candidate. It’s determined by the positions taken on important issues- most centrally being the stances taken on legal & illegal immigration, shrinking middle class, job prospects for US citizens, trade, national sovereignty & international institutions encroaching on American citizens. The biggest issues it deals with is third world immigration, cheap labor and the resulting loss of well paid, middle class American jobs & cultural unity. Lately, it also includes opposition to neocon foreign policy & wars.

It’s a commentary about issues that the establishment (Democrat & Republican) instituted in better times, when most others weren’t looking. They were policies that only benefitted the elites & the establishment. Now that we are no longer in good times, the populace has taken notice and is in full opposition to those policies. The establishment is trying everything it can to stay in power & is paying off people to support their way of thinking.

What it is not is a flippant term to be waved around by one candidates devoted sect against another person or candidate because you prefer someone else. You don’t get to equate those two things. Being a conservative comes down to philosophy, ethics, morality, temperament. It follows a basic standard depending on its society. For us, it is almost exclusively traditionalist in its moral stances and religious faith, constitutionalist in it governing philosophy, market oriented in its economic stances & libertarian in its insistence on freedom.

So far as I can tell from his record in Florida & elsewhere, Ron DeSantis is to Trumps right by any of those measures. He has been solidly against and has strongly opposed to the elites stances on the issues mentioned earlier. He wants illegal immigration stopped & legal immigration reduced. He supports a border wall & huge increases in funds for border security & deportation. He’s skeptical of Nafta & a lot of free trade issues. He’s concerned about middle class & American jobs. He’s not a cheerleader for the Ukraine debacle or international policing generally. He’s focused opposition to wokeness & its supporters insanity. He has been a fighter. He’s no establishment stooge! 😉