Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ war on Disney justly blew up in his face last week as the theme-park giant announced it was scrapping an almost $1 billion planned new corporate campus in Orlando, in part because of DeSantis’ relentless punishment of the company for criticizing his “don’t say gay” policy.
The First Amendment problems with DeSantis’ cynical vilification of one of his state’s largest employers have long been obvious. Now it has also cost his state about 2,000 jobs. It’s the latest evidence that virtually everything the GOP once stood for, including an unfettered free market, is being sacrificed on the altar of populist pandering.
DeSantis, whose presidential aspirations are now official, has based his coming campaign largely on pushing culture-war buttons in hopes of drawing over supporters of former President Donald Trump. He’s hardly been subtle about it. From undermining and belittling pandemic precautions, to sending southern-border migrants to blue states, to declaring Florida a place “where ‘woke’ goes to die,” he’s been using his office for a performative appeal to the worst instincts of America’s political right.
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A key component to that scheme has been DeSantis’ championing of state legislation to ban discussion in Florida schools of topics that touch on LGBTQ issues. As if, with all the genuine dangers facing young people today (including endemic gun violence that DeSantis and his party refuse to confront), a top priority should be ensuring that students have no exposure whatsoever to this societal fact of life.
Disney did what big corporations have always done: It reflected today’s mainstream societal values, for economic self-preservation if nothing else. Its criticism of DeSantis’ demagoguery was relatively mild but was enough for DeSantis to launch a frontal assault that included attempting to strip the company of the special property rights Florida has long provided. DeSantis’ accompanying rhetoric — including a musing threat to build a prison near Disney property — left no doubt that this was outright punishment for the company’s expression of opinion. Disney is suing on First Amendment grounds and, with any fair reading the situation, should win.
But far more damaging to DeSantis should be Disney’s yanking of those potential Florida jobs, for what the company called the state’s “changing business conditions.”
Former President Donald Trump is largely responsible for the GOP’s abandonment of so many of its once-core principles — family values, law and order, national security — but DeSantis has now undermined an arguably more key one: respect for unfettered free enterprise. He kneecapped that principle in order to push messages of intolerance and grievance that he thinks he needs to win his party’s nomination — and he did it at a significant cost of employment to his state.
That should make an interesting campaign bumper sticker.