One of the first things that Charlie Crist did when he won the Democratic primary for the governor’s race in Florida was to step in it big time by insulting Floridians who might support Gov. Ron DeSantis. He told them he didn’t want their vote and claimed they had “hate in their heart.” He then dug the hole deeper with his hilarious praise of Joe Biden which isn’t going to go over well in Florida.
But Crist wasn’t finished stepping in it yet. He attacked DeSantis, “I’m not one to use those sort of strong words, unless they’re true… He’s a barbaric, wannabe dictator.” It’s hard to get someone more wrong than Charlie Crist.
One of the things that makes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis such a perfect candidate is that, unlike Charlie Crist, he has a pitch-perfect natural response. When he was asked what he thought of Crist calling him a dictator, his response was gold, especially the dismissive little smiling head shake movement at the beginning.
“Over the last couple of years, you had people who kept wanting to lock people down, I was one of the few in this country that lifted people up,” DeSantis declared. “We protected people’s freedoms, jobs, businesses. We made sure kids could be in school, and we liberated 22 million Floridians from local mandates and restrictions. We protected them against vax mandates so they could keep working.”
DeSantis noted how the Democrats wanted to lock everyone down, “And I would note, you go back to the summer of 2020, I got a letter from every Democrat member of the U.S. House saying: ‘You need to shut down Florida,’ in July of 2020. If we had done that, this state would be in the toilet right now. We made the right decision by keeping the state open…So I think the people that are dictatorial are the ones that want to lock you down. I think the people that are dictatorial are the ones who wanted to lock kids out of school for a year, which all of them wanted to do here in Florida and I stopped it and made sure the kids could be in school…I think it’s dictatorial to say that someone should lose their job based on their choice about whether to get a COVID shot or not. So that’s just the reality.”
That letter was signed by Charlie Crist, among others. So Crist would have helped to destroy the state — if DeSantis had paid attention to Democrats.
DeSantis finished with the fact that people have been fleeing Democratic states for Florida because of that, “And the reason why we’re setting tourism records, the reason why we’re the number one state for net in-migration is because people understand that we’ve stood for freedom.”
Now that’s a priceless reaction. Unlike Crist, DeSantis is not attacking people or saying he doesn’t want their vote — he’s saying why Florida is the place to be, and why protecting people’s freedoms is the choice that should be made. Some dictator.
Indeed, DeSantis has spoken out against authoritarian regimes. DeSantis had previously said it was insulting to the people of Florida who fled real dictatorial regimes to come to Florida to refer to Florida as a dictatorial regime.
DeSantis also skewered Crist on Tucker Carlson’s show, and said it wasn’t about “hate” in people’s hearts but people’s appreciation that a governor would fight for their freedoms.
But that’s the problem with Democrats like Crist — they falsely toss around the term while not taking a look in the mirror about how they themselves are acting. It’s the Democrats who are taking steps every day down the road toward a leftist dictatorship.