For many parents, a week in the human anthill of Disney World, marching sunburnt families through crowds of exhausted tourists as canned music plays on a loop like some form of sensory deprivation, is a prison sentence. The forced labour of standing in long lines for Pirates of the Caribbean under the broiling Florida sun is a form of penal servitude almost as cruel as the chain gangs who once dotted highways across the American south.
How fitting then that if Ron DeSantis is serious, the next attraction to open in Orlando, right alongside The Happiest Place on Earth, will be a state penitentiary. This isn’t some twisted new theme park idea the creatively tough-on-crime Florida governor has dreamt up. It’s punishment for Disney itself.
DeSantis is hunting America’s largest entertainment company with the sort of targeted ruthlessness that did for Bambi’s mother. Last year Disney’s bosses, eager to align themselves with the progressive canons of American culture, denounced a new state law, backed by DeSantis, that forbade the teaching of sexuality and sexual identity to seven-year-olds and under.
Longstanding state regulations have given Disney an unusual level of autonomy over the locale in which it operates. So, in retaliation for their woke lese-majeste, DeSantis created a new state supervisory body for the district, threatening to impose restrictions on the company – only to discover late last month that, before the new board could begin its work, Disney had quietly pushed through changes under the old system to preserve its autonomy for decades.
Enraged, DeSantis this week upped the ante, floating new measures to hurt Disney, including that idea of building a state prison next door. He might have been joking, but who knows? Behind this cartoonish struggle is a political reality. DeSantis is trying to find a way to convince Republican voters across America that he should be the next president, and taking on woke capitalists is a sure way to appeal to conservatives.
Standing in his way is a figure more daunting than even Mickey Mouse: the very real-life figure of Donald Trump. Since his politically motivated indictment this month, the former president seems to have solidified his status as the favourite for the Republican nomination. Polls show him enjoying a widening lead over the field of candidates with DeSantis, re-elected last year with a huge majority in Florida, as the only plausible challenger.
The problem for the governor, who has not yet declared his candidacy, is to find a path past Trump without alienating the large number of Republicans for whom the former president retains a cult-like standing. The obvious way is to focus on Trump’s greatest vulnerability: his deeply flawed character – and the fact that most Americans seem to continue to find it disqualifying. Trump has lost the popular vote in two straight presidential elections, and through his rebarbative behaviour and support for a host of freak-show candidates, has cost Republicans seats in two straight midterm congressional and state elections. But in the weirdly self-immolating extremism of modern Republican politics, Trump’s apparent lack of electability doesn’t seem to trouble his voters.
Events on the other side of the political aisle may also help him: while Joe Biden is expected to announce he will run for re-election next year, there have been murmurs from senior Democrats that he may decide not to run after all. Should the Democratic field open up, the prospect of a candidate such as Kamala Harris, the vice-president, emerging will surely vitiate the problem of Trump’s apparent electability gap.
So instead of directly denouncing the man head-on for his misdeeds, including the continuing refusal to accept the results of the last election, DeSantis is trying to weave a political route to the right of Trump, to appeal to Republican primary voters.
As well as leading the charge against the left-wing takeover of American institutions and companies, DeSantis has this month endorsed a Florida legislative proposal to limit abortions to the first six weeks of pregnancy. Just last year he signed into state law a 15-week limit, a broadly popular measure in line with many states since the Supreme Court removed the constitutional right to abortions last year and, as it happens, similar to the law in many European countries. But the six-week limit is much more controversial. And while it may play well with Republican voters, it seems like a loser in a general election.
Trump wasted no time in mocking the governor over the Disney imbroglio. “Disney’s next move will be the announcement that no more money will be invested in Florida because of the Governor,” he wrote on his Truth Social media platform. “In fact, they could even announce a slow withdrawal or sale of certain properties, or the whole thing. Watch! That would be a killer.”
The former president has so far maintained an uncharacteristic silence on abortion, seemingly trying to straddle the pro-life sentiment of the Republican base (including his own supporters) and the more permissive views of independent voters, though he has been telling supporters privately the party needs to avoid appearing extremist on the issue. But he has eagerly attacked DeSantis from the left over other issues, accusing him of wanting to cut social security and Medicare, the popular state pension and health insurance benefits for the elderly.
The odd truth about Trump is that he was never much of a hardcore Republican in any case: his appeal was always more personal and iconoclastic. The biggest challenge of all for DeSantis is this: the search for a Trumpism without Trump, which is as elusive as ever.
The Times
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