Though Ron DeSantis’ “Courage to be Free” is embargoed even from reviewers ahead of its Tuesday release, political enemies are offering a preview.
The latest example comes from an arm of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The so-called “DNC War Room” is spotlighting the Governor’s new book by quoting purportedly politically inconvenient lines from his previous release, the less-heralded Dreams from Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama.
Per the DNC, DeSantis’ first book “before his first congressional campaign … gave a window into his ideology. In his book, he laid out his extreme policy visions, dabbled with fringe conspiracies, heaped praise on the Tea Party movement, and railed against Medicare and Social Security.”
The juiciest material on offer finds DeSantis having “obsessed over President Barack Obama’s name and background” in the same way Donald Trump and the birther movement did.
“Obama called attention to his own Muslim roots, hoping to connect with the people of the Muslim world. During the presidential campaign of 2008, the mention of Obama’s middle name of ‘Hussein’ was considered to be outside the bounds of political decency. … Once Obama was in office, though, he highlighted the fact that he was ‘an African-American with the name Barack Hussein Obama’ as a way of endearing the United States with Muslims throughout the world.”
That was a recurring refrain for DeSantis: “Obama’s attempt to ingratiate himself with predominantly Muslim countries by showcasing his father’s Muslim roots and his middle name of Hussein was anything but a sound approach to diplomatic relations.”
DeSantis used Obama’s intersectional identity as a cudgel to chide the President for not being committed enough to the trope of American exceptionalism throughout the book, as highlighted by the Democrats.
“Obama also habitually called attention to (and in some instances unfairly exaggerated) America’s supposed flaws, even offering unsolicited apologies. He seemed to think that characterizing his country as a deeply flawed giant would endear him to other nations and foreign audiences. Within a week after taking office, he told the Al Arabiya news network that his presidency marked the chance to improve relations between the United States and the Muslim world, suggesting that the tension in the relationship stemmed from the behavior of the United States.”
DeSantis also took Obama to task for expressing regret for the nuclear attacks on Japan that ended World War II.
“Obama made international news when, in August of 2010, he became the first American president to send a representative from the United States to the annual Hiroshima remembrance ceremony ‘to express respect for all the victims of World War II.’ … Such a de facto apology served to create a moral equivalence between the actions of imperial Japan and the United States.”
Likewise, DeSantis condemned the President for talking about America’s “issues” with racism and associated oppression in a foreign speech, saying that decision to “invoke” subverted America’s moral authority.
“At a speech before the Turkish Parliament, Obama invoked what he called ‘our own darker periods of our history’ — slavery, segregation and the mistreatment of Native Americans. There existed no need to invoke these issues on foreign soil, and it simply reduced America’s moral authority in the eyes of the rest of the world and provided enemies of the United States with grist for their habitual criticism of America,” DeSantis chided.
Some of the other insights spotlighted are of the “water is wet” variety, including the unsurprising assertion that DeSantis embraced the “Tea Party” at its zenith.
“If anything, the fact that the tea party’s focus on the country’s founding principles represented a peculiar addition to modern political discourse demonstrates that the nation’s ruling class has not been faithful to such principles,” the budding politician wrote.
DeSantis “chastised Republicans for adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare and praised Paul Ryan’s plans to make cuts to Medicare and Social Security,” the DNC preview also notes.
“Other than the case of welfare entitlement, Republicans have, if anything, enhanced the welfare state through programs such as the addition of a prescription drug entitlement to Medicare, which was passed in a Republican Congress in 2003 and signed into law by George W. Bush. And even those Republicans most ambitious about reigning in federal spending, such as Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, have advocated changes that modernize but maintain the social safety net.”
While readers and reviewers eagerly await the Tuesday drop of the second DeSantis book, Democrats note there are lessons for 2024 even in his less-heralded first release.
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