Rob DeSantis: Florida’s George Wallace?

In the Sunshine State, the Republican gubernatorial candidate is already blowing on that racist dog whistle, only one day after the state’s primaries ended. At least that’s the way leftist commentators tell it. Rob DeSantis’ Democrat opponent escalated the metaphor game and called it a “bullhorn.” Andrew Gillum says DeSantis has taken “a page directly from the campaign manual” of Donald Trump. Strange that DeSantis has outed himself as a racist now that the general election has begun. You would’ve figured that he’d have employed this tactic to attract all those racist Trump voters during the primary.
Nevertheless, I’m sure Rep. DeSantis would change his phrasing if he could, now that his campaign staffers are playing damage control when they could be doing something productive. That’s too bad. Because he did nothing wrong. Here’s the actual quote, taken from his interview on FOX News hours after securing the nomination:
“We’ve got to work hard to make sure that we continue Florida going in a good direction. Let’s build off the success we’ve had on Governor Scott. The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state.”
The offending phrase — “monkey this up” — clearly refers to the possibility of changing Florida’s trajectory for the worse, to socialism harming a productive economy. It’s used as a verb, not the noun, that racists have despicably used to refer to African-Americans. And Congressman DeSantis didn’t even use it as a verb to refer to the person of Mayor Gillum. It’s absurdly dishonest to say otherwise. And plainly stupid. Any student in English class would be marked wrong for drawing that conclusion on a reading comprehension test. Everyone knows it, and yet this lie still dominates the headlines. The temptation to label another Republican as racist is too strong. For using a common idiom. In fact, I didn’t even try to come up with a clever (obviously not racist) title for this piece, because it’s just too risky. You could call that acquiescence, but it’s also self-preservation. As commentator Michael Knowles says: control the words, control the culture. Semantics is the primary front in the cultural battle.
Does this mean that we can never use the term monkey again — outside of its direct zoological meaning? Do parents have to strike that term of diminutive endearment from their lexicon? Can people never use it as a softer euphemism for screwing up? Well, apparently the verdict comes down to whether you’re Republican or not. Barack Obama never got in trouble for using it while campaigning, telling us how Republicans “have monkeyed around with elections in the past.” This doesn’t make our former president an Uncle Tom. He clearly wasn’t using it to refer to black people, the same as the Florida representative. Truth be told, some of DeSantis’ speech mannerisms — folksy, corny, and dad-like — are even reminiscent of Obama’s.
In a racial controversy, the fire must be put out quickly. Political surrogates jump in with evidence that refutes the notion of a candidate’s racism, citing personal friendships or minority-friendly policies. But here, none is necessary. This story says far more about the current political climate than it does about Rob DeSantis.
