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DeSantis' epic shenanigans plucks educational nerve on the left

AP Photo/Lynne Sladky

You know you’ve struck just the right jangle of nerves when Trevor Noah — the one and only Trevor Noah! — calls you out.

Engulfed in rage over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis orchestrating the all-expenses-paid trip-of-a-lifetime to Martha’s Vineyard for 50 Venezuelan might-be refugees, the Daily Show host buried target-hit indicators into deep red territory.

Sweet.

And Noah was just the crude tip of a glorious, highly educational iceberg. The left’s meltdown response to DeSantis’ instantly legendary ante-upping calls to mind the moment from Animal House when, atop a knoll practicing their fairway woods, Otter and Boon disparage the abuse of a Delta Tau Chi pledge by the rival fraternity’s chief bully.

Otter: “He can’t do that to our pledges.”

Boon: “Only we can do that to our pledges.”

If only the remedy were as simple as smacking the antagonists with a couple of well-struck Titleists. Alas, except for certain Jeb Bush-style Republicans tangled in no-man’s land barbed wire, both sides are entrenched.

In a nutshell, the positions seem to be these: 

Progressives: Normalize all the border-crossers now and provide a path to citizenship, and we’ll talk about how to secure the border later.

Conservatives: Secure the border now. Prove it’s leakproof until we’re satisfied. Invite — *wink* — everyone here illegally to head home. And at some point, we’ll talk about what’s to become of the undocumented remaining among us.

Just now, in this age of politics-by-resentment, nobody is willing to budge. And with porous-borders leadership dominating Washington, pawns useful to progressives’ endgame have crashed upon the southern border states like an endless human tsunami. Meanwhile, blue state voters have swanned about with their “sanctuary” virtue signaling.

Then the Florida governor charters a couple of luxury jets to deposit sanctuary seekers in New England’s island paradise, and it’s Boon and Otter all over again. DeSantis can’t do that to our political pawns! Only we can do that to our political pawns! (See: Biden airlifts unvetted asylum-seekers in the dead of night.)

As inflation follows record federal spending, our progressive countrymen inevitably rose up in one voice: We call political shenanigans!

OK, maybe. What about it?

Know what else was political shenanigans? The Boston Tea Party. George Washington leading the militia against farmers in the Whiskey Rebellion. The Louisiana Purchase. Firing on Ft. Sumter. The Emancipation Proclamation. More recently, DACA, diverting Pentagon funds to erect the border wall, and student loan forgiveness.

President Biden’s duplicity on the nation’s southern border is yet another example of a political stunt.

In each of these examples, and dozens more they used to teach high school sophomores in American history, the idea is twofold.

No. 1, of course, is to achieve some immediate desired goal. Something done is difficult to undo, as the Trump administration discovered when it attempted to roll back DACA provisions. Who knew executive orders could bind future administrations?

No. 2 is to provoke a useful dialogue. Do something about this problem we’ve poked you on, and maybe we all leave the table with something to boast about to our friends and constituents, or maybe we bring out the really sharp sticks.

With official Washington aligned against them, the endlessly fascinating governors of Florida and Texas (that would be Greg “Luxury Motorcoach” Abbott) have snatched the headlines and triggered social media in an attempt to shift the momentum.

Aww, 50 immigrants yearning to breathe free arrived unannounced on your doorstep? Your beautiful, expensive, polished doorstep not more than 38 miles (as the crow flies) from Plymouth Rock? (Talk about your unannounced arrivals!)

That’s an eyedropper compared to the deluge of tired, hungry humanity sweeping across small towns along the American Southwest every week. 

So, is chartering busses and private jets to redeploy Joe Biden’s invitees showboating? Yer dang tootin’. Will it change the conversation? Probably not in the short term. We’re still too invested in lobbing mortars into each other’s trenches.

But there’s an election looming just the other side of Halloween. And if, by restoring immigration and the border to the front burner, the parallel relocation strategies employed by governors DeSantis and Abbott energize their targeted audience, those setting the message and the rules come January could shift dramatically and, more important, agreeably.

If not, we’re going to need a much bigger bucket of Titleists.

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John Sexton 7:00 PM | December 04, 2024
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David Strom 3:30 PM | December 04, 2024
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