“I will be able to destroy leftism in this country and leave woke ideology in the dustbin of history,” the Florida governor (Ron De Santis) told Fox News. 

Okay, the governor has my attention today.

In one of his first primary policy addresses, Presidential Candidate DeSantis said liberalism was a “malignant ideology” that he would wipe out along with the “elites” destroying the country.

Gov. DeSantis has done the impossible for me, making Donald Trump seem thoughtful and reasonable.

In the Republican Party of 2023, no extreme is too extreme. DeSantis is trying to out-Trump Trump so he can win the Iowa Primary and build some momentum for his campaign.

If he loses Iowa, it probably means 200 million dollars in donations down the drain.

DeSantis’s policies have nothing to offer me so far except destruction and persecution, and that’s no accident.

To me, a former political writer, that is not only hateful but amazingly stupid.

Why mimic the worst of Donald Trump when Americans have made it clear they don’t want him in charge of the government?

While mimicking Trump, DeSantis has failed to learn the biggest lesson he can offer a former acolyte: don’t offend everyone; you need someone to vote for you, including some who disagree. So far, there aren’t enough haters in America to vote for people like Trump and DeSantis in national elections.

Promising to destroy half the country isn’t the wisest path to victory.

Aside from politics, there is something creepy about Ron DeSantis – even more creepy than Trump -and I am getting closer to grasping it. His bloodless and angry campaign is clearly and only about strong man”dictator” talk.

The Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves.

I’m a history buff. I recognize his “agenda.” He will crush the opposition, which he describes as evil, corrupt, perverted, and elitist – not just some, but everybody.

Not just some people.

But me. Little old powerless me, sitting on my farm in the beautiful countryside. Why do I keep getting the feeling he’s talking about people like me?

I feel in an awkward position.

I’m not a hater, and I have no desire to see Governor DeSantis “destroyed” because we have different ideas about things.

This is un-American. It’s both sad and disturbing. Pure and simple, this is hate speech, familiar to anyone with a good history teacher. Every Jew in the world will recognize this language and this intent.

So will many other people – blacks, gays, immigrants, feminists, transgender people.

I’m not much on labels, I don’t apply them to myself, but I do have this curious feeling that DeSantis is losing his mind and all perspective when he vows to destroy liberalism and “put it on the dustbins of history.”

You will find if you look that this isn’t Trump DeSantis channeling if you read history; he’s gone well beyond that.

To lure Trump’s base away from him, he aims to convince them that he will do all of the things President Trump promised to do but couldn’t or didn’t do. And that his opponents are evil and degenerate scum. Good lord, is he really talking about boring old me?

Trump is winning the Middle School name-calling marathon, but he isn’t much for thoughtful policy positions, good or bad. His battle with DeSantis is more about hate speech than governing. Trump has always been a great talker, and people love him.

But he’s never been convincing as a true hater. (DeSantis is ahead of him already on that score.)

But Trump isn’t much of a doer. That’s hard work, and he’d rather play golf.

It seems the best hater wins is the idea of the Republican primary.

I admit to taking this personally, especially after this speech.

I’ve never had a presidential candidate target me or my wife and friends in this way. Presidents are historically supposed to represent all people, not destroy them. That’s what the Constitution says.

Why do the people who most frequently invoke the Constitution want to ignore it and tear it up?

DeSantis is never pressed on what he means when he says things like this, he only talks to social media like Fox News and various crackpot podcasters.

If I were interviewing DeSantis  (God Help Me), I would ask him exactly what he means by “destroying liberalism.”

Liberalism is a vague and ill-defined term, but it generally means people who are not conservatives and have soft and squishy ideas about spending too much money and helping people experiencing poverty, relieving students of their choking debt, and treating refugees humanely.

I am most comfortable in the center-right.

I have conservative ideas and “woke” ones. Would I be “destroyed” if I had ideas on both sides? Would DeSantis permit it?

When the governor says he wants to “destroy” people like me and bend them to their will despite their free will, he evokes not Trump but Mussolini and Stalin. They both used the exact words and did the same things.

No candidate for the American President has ever vowed to destroy opponents and label them “malignant.”

Only one did that and followed through. Adolph Hitler was the world leader most often associated with this kind of pledge.

As a Jew, I don’t quite laugh off this talk like the mainstream media does. The corporate media sees politics as just another football game; they make a lot of money reporting on it and rarely stop to think about it.

They don’t want any trouble; advertisers don’t like it.

Hitler was nothing if not honest. He said he would “destroy” (he used that term often) the Jews in Europe, and he did manage to kill six million of them before he was defeated.

Almost any presidential candidate would know that and think about the words he is using. I believe  DeSantis’s mind is a bit bent. This isn’t smart politics. This is creepy.

Why isn’t it enough for him to be elected? Does he have any ideas about inflation, the homeless, the housing crisis, or the violence in American cities?

Does he have even one other idea? Maybe about climate change or gun violence? Do we all have to be in Florida? I don’t want to live there; it isn’t the Holy Grail to me.

Where did he get the idea that it was okay to view to destroy his political opponents if he got to the White House? Demonizing his enemies is always the dictator’s tactic. First, you turn them into monsters, then you can dispose of them safely and with little resistance.

I have never invoked the idea of Hitler or used his name on my blog. But this stuff is way over the top, win or lose, and it is right out of the fascist playbook. Talk about legacy thinking.

I think of Hannah Arendt, the great moral philosopher who says evil is often carried out by the bland, complacent, and thoughtless.

The idea is that all good people have to do is nothing for evil to triumph. Sounds like Americans and much of their “mainstream” media to me.

The pundits wink at this; oh, it’s just politics. They need to refresh themselves on the history of dictators. The first people to get “destroyed: are the journalists, the people the nerd Governor calls “legacy media.”

DeSantis is responsible for nothing but his face in the mirror.

Much of America seems indifferent to the idea that in America, we can openly promise to “destroy” people who disagree with us and win an election.

I would love to get DeSantis in front of me and ask him what he means by “destroying” leftism and how he would do it. Does he understand what evil is?

Since millions of “leftists, “a/k/a “democrats a/k/a “progressives live in America and are supposed to have the right to their beliefs, I don’t know of any way for DeSantis to destroy people like me without killing or jailing me since I sound exactly like the people he hopes to eliminate, as do many of the blog readers, left or right, few of them seem murderous.

How awful to have our country further divided in such a bitter and hateful way by this robotic pretender. What fun the trolls will have online threatening to kill the liberal fungus. Some of them will try to do it.

Given the state of extremist media, DeSantis will likely never have to answer these questions during his entire campaign. I should say that even if he did win, he could never “destroy” all of the people who disagree with him.

That would mean destroying tens of millions of people.

America is not there, not nearly.

I’d love to hear a far-right journalist (the only kind he speaks to) asks him that.

I don’t want Ron DeSantis to be destroyed because I dislike his values. I would love to see him defeated, just like Americans are supposed to do to politicians who won’t protect our Constitution or our freedom.

I don’t believe he will either defeat Trump or become President. He can’t “destroy us.” His campaign is really dumb.

But he can do much damage if he legitimizes the idea of destroying political opponents and branding them as malignant perverts.

One of the questions I’d love to ask DeSantis is why he should expect people who define themselves as liberals or progressives – that’s a lot of people – to vote for someone who has voted to destroy them and obliterate them by throwing them on the dustbins of history.

DeSantis has never in his career been a right-wing extremist crackpot. His hatred is both cynical and entirely opportunistic.

Even Donald  Trump can’t bring himself to do it.

I take comfort in the idea that he cannot be elected this way. I take no comfort in ever having to write about politics in this way.