With his own state largely underwater, this most political of creatures suddenly discovers a need to “put politics aside.” But again, DeSantis is a secessionist of convenience: He scorned federal aid until he needed federal aid. That word is used not in the sense of a legal breaking away but, rather, in the sense of an emotional and spiritual one, a pulling away from the whole, such that one can be untroubled by ruin that falls on one’s putative countrymen so long as one’s immediate environs are unscathed. But DeSantis is not just a hypocrite, he’s also a kind of secessionist, albeit one of convenience. One suspects any New Jerseyan who stood in the rubble of his life nine years ago listening to this guy tell him to go fly a kite will have a pungent response to that sanctimonious load of bovine egesta. Suddenly, he is singing a very different tune, telling Fox “News” that “when people are fighting for their lives, when their whole livelihood is at stake, when they’ve lost everything – if you can’t put politics aside for that, then you’re just not going to be able to.”
Now, nine years later, here he comes as Florida’s governor, asking Joe Biden – a president he has ridiculed tastelessly and repeatedly, no less – to provide disaster relief for his state, which was swamped last week by Hurricane Ian. Otherwise, all those people wiped out by a freak storm would have had to try paying their bills with DeSantis’ sympathy. Thankfully, the bill passed without his – or 66 other House Republicans’ – support. “I sympathize with the victims of Hurricane Sandy,” he declared, but added that it would not be “fiscally responsible” to increase the debt without a decrease in spending. In 2013, when Hurricane Sandy devastated New Jersey, the then-Florida congressman piously declined to support a bill providing $9.7 billion in aid to those who had seen their homes damaged or destroyed. But Ron DeSantis’ hypocrisy just punched a hole through that ideal.
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