This part of the New Yorker‘s profile of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is saying the quiet part out loud:

For decades, the Democratic Party had commanded a majority of Florida’s registered voters. But the state was changing, as Trump’s election helped energize a shift in political affinities. The Republican Party’s rank and file became increasingly radical, and G.O.P. leaders appeared only too happy to follow them. “There was always an element of the Republican Party that was batshit crazy,” Mac Stipanovich, the chief of staff to Governor Bob Martinez, a moderate Republican, told me. “They had lots of different names—they were John Birchers, they were ‘movement conservatives,’ they were the religious right. And we did what every other Republican candidate did: we exploited them. We got them to the polls. We talked about abortion. We promised—and we did nothing. They could grumble, but their choices were limited.

“So what happened?” Stipanovich continued. “Trump opened Pandora’s box and let them out. And all the nasty stuff that was in the underbelly of American politics got a voice. What was thirty-five per cent of the Republican Party is now eighty-five per cent. And it’s too late to turn back.”

Read it all. 

Jeremy Carl is right about the GOP establishment, though I think the NYer piece, though clearly hostile to DeSantis, is worth reading:

I won’t link to the New Yorker profile of @RonDeSantisFL , which only rarely rises above a typical media hit piece, but this quote explains so much of why the GOP establishment is so hated by GOP voters. pic.twitter.com/fkmAB29wM6

— Jeremy Carl (@jeremycarl4) June 20, 2022

Last night I got this text stream from a sophisticated conservative friend back in the US (I changed it slightly to hide his identifying details]:

Having spent a week hiking and rafting in the highways, byways, and towns along or near the Appalachian Trails and river ways, I have a greater appreciation for the Great Disintegration underway in these (Dis)United States:

1. The Blue Collar tradesmen who once formed the backbone of the Democratic Party distrust and HATE the “symbol manipulators” in the coastal Commanding Heights of NYC, Boston, LA, and Palo Alto.

And it is more cultural than political: Republican Romney is despised as much as Democrat Hillary.

The Deplorables are in the verge of revolt — and many are Hispanic business owners who hold to the Old Ways, which explains the Red Wave in South Texas.

2. JD Vance accurately described the disintegration of Hillbilly families wrought by globalization, cohabitation, pornography, and drugs.

I mentally assented to the concept, but was largely insulated from the physical consequences while living in [a major metropolitan area].

Our elites have callously destroyed Middle America and most of these unmarried men will never become computer coders.

Andrew Yang is correct: we better have a game plan for working class Middle Americans who once worked in factories, drove trucks, or served in the military / law enforcement.

No unequal civilization can survive this many “lost boys” addicted to booze, meth, and porn.

3. Racism explains much of the Past, but not much of the Present and probably nothing of the Future.

Hillbillies are still predominantly white, but intermarried, integrated, and organized by regionality and culture — not race.

Main Street [of one town where I vacationed] features Filipino shopkeepers selling NASCAR paraphernalia to whites married to Korean women wearing Harley Davidson leathers and MAGA hats.

CRT does not resonate here because everyone has relatives of every color.

The Great Realignment is underway.

Not since the 1890s have the parties endured such a tectonic shift in constituent loyalties.

David French is laughably wrong: champagne and caviar Think Tank classical liberalism is dead.

Dead, dead, dead.

If Republicans do not jettison The Donald AND the C-Suite Donor Class, we are headed for a Bull Moose moment.

DeSantis 2024

Interesting, the comment about Trump and the GOP donor establishment, linking them both as drags on the Right. I get the point: that the situation is becoming desperate for the kind of people Trump claimed to speak for, and they can’t tolerate another leader who says what they want to hear, but who does not, or who cannot (because of his own personal limitations), do anything substantive to help them. This is why I keep saying we don’t need the Return of Trump; we need an American Viktor Orban: a cunning politician who understands the nature of the fight in front of us, and who knows how to use power to advance the interests of his voters, against institutions captured by the Left.

I sense that the political and cultural moment is more radical than standard Republican politicians think. The other day here in England, I was in a supermarket, and saw a young guy, maybe late twenties or early thirties — stocking shelves there who looked like a plumber — an ordinary working class dude. But then I took a second look, and saw he had breasts, and his ponytail was tied off with a ribbon, and he had done his nails. An English friend who shops there said that’s a male-to-female transgender, a veteran of the British Army.

Obviously I don’t know a thing about that man and his history, and his problems, but it seemed so unbelievably sad. He doesn’t remotely look like a woman; he looks like a plumber with acne scars and boobs. He will never look like a woman, and never learn to move like a woman. What happened to this poor Englishman, a military veteran, to turn him into that? What turned him against his own body, against his own manhood? What kind of society have they created here (and we have done in the US) that celebrates this poor man’s self-destruction as liberation? What happens when ordinary men and women see the sons and daughters of their neighbors turned into that, and are told that they had better approve of it, or else?

That poor shelf-stocker is a condensed symbol for what has happened to the West. The elites who control our institutions in the West are all down with this civilizational suicide. Watch this idiocy from the US Navy. This is why I thank God that my strapping, weightlifting, big-hearted son chose to go to trade school and learn auto mechanics instead of entering the military, as he used to want to do:

WATCH: The Navy is training its members to create a “safe space” by using proper gender pronouns.

Here’s their new instructional video, which is modeled after a children’s show:

Via @Kredo0 https://t.co/9lsBXKFMTa pic.twitter.com/t7DbiVCO2J

— Washington Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) June 20, 2022

Get me a presidential candidate who will end this bullsh*t and fire every damn general and admiral who brought this corruption into the Armed Services, and I’ll vote for him with no hesitation. Whatever else might be said about Ron DeSantis, he stood up to Woke Capitalism and the media, for the sake of protecting the children of Florida, at a time when most national GOP politicians kept their mouths shut. I don’t know about you, but I have no interest in Republicans whose point in life is to make the poison pill go down easier. Mac Stipanovich and I are on the opposite side of this issue, but he’s right about this: “It’s too late to turn back.”

UPDATE: Like I said:

New documents exclusively obtained by Fox News Digital reveal that the U.S. Army is teaching West Point cadets critical race theory (CRT), including addressing “whiteness.”

Fox News Digital exclusively obtained the documents from government watchdog group Judicial Watch, whichhad to sue the military twice under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to get the information.

“Our military is under attack – from within,” Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton said in the press release. “These documents show racist, anti-American CRT propaganda is being used to try to radicalize our rising generation of Army leadership at West Point.”

Here’s one of the West Point slides:

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