I agree that DeSantis’s fight with Disney long ago reached the point of diminishing returns, but that hardly means that DeSantis’s taking on the culture war more generally is a bad move. To the contrary, while running on his record is the first step in a successful DeSantis campaign, leading the charge against Wokeism is, in my view, right behind it.

Why?

It goes back to my opening premise — that the person who becomes President is the one who most clearly sees what the country wants and seems to have the strength and vision to supply it. Many commentators have said (and the polling results, supra, lend credence to this) that, apart from a return to a sound economy, the country wants a return to having a normal person in the Oval Office — a person with at least the normal amount of decency, virtue and common sense we expect in a leader. This would not include a decrepit lifetime pol unable or willing to resist his party’s wild capture by race hucksters and anti-Americans. It also would not include a narcissist largely oblivious to what law and the rule of law, not to mention normal traditions of probity, require.

DeSantis’ willingness openly to take on Wokeism bespeaks what I think the country wants, not so much because of who DeSantis is — not that there’s anything wrong with that — but because of what Wokeism is. Ronald Reagan never had to confront it, but the next Republican President will. It’s a form of subversion of the most important elements of American life way, way beyond anything Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale pushed or even imagined. Liberal policies are merely wrong. Woke policies are poison.

[I fully agree. This is about vision and purpose as well as prosperity. As long as DeSantis can frame it in those terms, it will be a very effective strategy. — Ed]