In Iowa, DeSantis Leans Hard Into Culture Wars
Republican governor continues battle against transgender Americans
Apparently on the cusp of jumping into the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, Gov Ron DeSantis continued to lean hard into the battle against LGBTQ rights which has become his brand in his home state of Florida.
Speaking Saturday in first-in-the-nation Iowa, DeSantis made sure to take a swipe at the transgender community in his remarks at a Republican fundraising event.
The governor, who's spearheaded a number of laws in the Sunshine State aimed at restricting the rights of the LGBTQ community, specifically took aim in Iowa over the use of preferred pronouns by transgender Americans, including trans youth.
“We’re also signing legislation to nix the pronoun Olympics in schools. We’re not doing the pronoun stuff,” said DeSantis, who would be getting into a contest for the Republican nomination far behind frontrunner Donald Trump. “Your teacher can’t make you list pronouns. We're just not doing it.”
DeSantis has made a crusade against the LGBTQ community a highlight of his term as Florida, going so far as continuing to wage war against Disney over the entertainment conglomerate's opposition to the governor's “Don't Say Gay” law.
Even as DeSantis takes steps towards a bid for the White House in Iowa, which will hold the first contest for the Republican nomination next year, there are signs that his furor on such culture war attacks don't play well with a broader electorate.
Even fellow Republicans are turning on DeSantis over his protracted battle with Disney, which is the largest employer in his state.
And public opinion shows that the emphasis which DeSantis and other Republican political leaders are placing their hundreds of laws aimed at transgender Americans and the broader LGBTQ community appears to be backfiring.
Recent polling from Data for Progress suggests that voters are starting to see the GOP’s efforts as weaponization of an issue which they are taking too far in attacking the rights of Americans.
When asked about the more than 400 pieces of legislation working their way through statehouses, “aimed at limiting the rights of transgender and gay people in America,” 64 percent of respondents — including 55 percent of Republicans — agreed with the statement, “This is too much legislation. Politicians are playing political theater and using these bills as a wedge issue,” compared with 25 percent who sided with the statement “This is the right amount of legislation. Politicians are dealing with a real danger that needs to be addressed.”
That figure rose to 78 percent among respondents who know a transgender person.
“This polling finds that voters across all political parties see the Republican attempt to flood state legislatures with anti-LGBTQ+ legislation as political theater,” said Erin Thomas, pollster at Data for Progress. “It also shows that the ideas espoused by today’s loudest anti-trans advocates — that trans people threaten children and that our identities are a ‘woke’ invention — don’t resonate with the average voter.”
Such views could well spell electoral doom for DeSantis in a general election for president, even if he's somehow able to wrestle the nomination from Trump.
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