DeSantis suffers a stinging defeat

In the last gasps of his presidential campaign, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to brag that he made his state the place where “woke goes to die.” He has made his war on woke a central plank in his ongoing effort to secure the Republican nomination.

There has been nothing subtle about DeSantis’ effort to promote himself as a leading culture warrior or to take credit for slaying the woke dragons. That self-promotion was quickly put on display in his victory speech after he was re-elected governor in a 2022 landslide. Standing behind a banner with an image of Florida and the words “Freedom Lives here,” DeSantis proudly proclaimed, “We reject woke ideology.” He then listed in his ongoing battles against that ideology: “We fight the woke in the legislature. We fight the woke in the schools. We fight the woke in the corporations. We will never ever surrender to the woke mob.”