Ron DeSantis stands out by not compromising with woke. By Paul Kegnor, reporting on a speech almost two weeks ago.

Ron DeSantis is a testimony to the vital importance of simply winning: “My view was that I may have received 50 percent of the vote,” he said, “but I had earned 100 percent of the executive power and I intended to use it to advance our agenda.” He would now govern as he intended, according to “conviction and not by polls.”

And the voters have responded. According to DeSantis, Democrats in 2018 had a 300,000-plus voter registration advantage over Republicans. There had never been more registered Republicans than Democrats in Florida. Now, it’s 448,000-plus Republicans. … “We have left the Democratic Party for dead in the state of Florida,” said DeSantis.

In a 54-minute talk, DeSantis showed a telegenic element and energy that I didn’t expect. I also didn’t expect someone so thoroughly ideologically informed and unafraid.

I have never heard an incumbent Republican politician make so many references not to “liberals” or “progressives” but to “the Left.” That is indeed who they are. They are not liberals. They are leftists. DeSantis gets it, and he made numerous references to “the Left.” It was refreshing to hear.

It was also great to hear someone on the Republican side brandish terms like “Faucism.” … If you loathed the COVID insanity of the Left, you would have loved every word of this speech. Florida was indeed such a “citadel of freedom” (as DeSantis put it) …

DeSantis referred to DEI not by its deceptive “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” misnomer but by what DeSantis dubbed “Division, Exclusion, and Indoctrination.” He also took on ESG and “woke banking.” He took on CRT: “We have banned critical race theory in our K–12 schools. We’re not going to teach our kids to hate our country or to hate each other.” Conversely, his state is now the only state that formally sets aside one day each year to teach kids about the evils of communism.

DeSantis in this speech took on “woke medicine,” from the COVID fanatics who wanted to shut down businesses to junk-science vaccines — which he rightly referred to as simply “mRNA shots” — to the doctors butchering their Hippocratic oath and butchering minors with “gender transition” mutilation surgery. Of these doctors, DeSantis said to wild applause, “Physicians that do that with minors will lose their medical license in our state. It’s just that simple. It is ideology run amok. It is woke medicine.”

That line brought everyone in the room to their feet. …

DeSantis also spoke of his anti-rioting legislation in Florida and standing against BLM and various other revolutionaries in the summer of 2020. He mobilized the National Guard and dispatched law enforcement throughout the state against the violence that “the Left was fomenting.” “We were not going to let cities in Florida burn to the ground,” said DeSantis. “In Florida … if you riot, loot, and engage in mob violence, you’re not getting a slap on the wrist, you’re getting the inside of a jail cell. We’re going to hold you accountable.” ..

DeSantis also talked hilariously about the Left’s hypocrisy when his state flew illegal immigrants into Martha’s Vineyard, only to have the compassionate progressives there ship them off the next day: “These liberal elites want to impose their policies on you, but they don’t want to have to deal with the consequences of their ideology or policies. We were able to expose that.”

The Pennsylvania audience was thrilled to hear a Republican unafraid to take on the Left and its woke mobsters. “Florida will never surrender to the woke mob,” pledged DeSantis. “Our state is where woke goes to die.”

The whole speech:

Trump:

Finally, amid all of this, Ron DeSantis refrained from saying anything negative about Donald Trump. To the contrary, he called out Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for going after Trump, noting that the law had been “weaponized for ideological purposes.” He called out “these Soros-backed DAs [who are] a menace to civil society; they are a menace to the rule of law.”

Donald Trump has taken shots at Ron DeSantis with names like “DeSanctimonious,” but DeSantis is clearly following Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment: Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.

Is DeSantis just one of the last throwbacks to the old America, or the first in a series of modern politicians who roll back woke?