Ron DeSantis Would Kill Democracy Slowly

Jonathan Chait: “Unlike the Eisenhower-era Republican Party, and unlike the conservative parties in every other democratic country, the conservative movement never accepted the democratic legitimacy of the welfare state. Conservatives considered the ability of majorities to vote for economic redistribution a threat to liberty and placed the preservation of liberty (as they defined it) above democracy. And so, while Trump’s almost feral contempt for democracy and the rule of law represented a unique threat, the longer-term danger to the Republic was the institutional power of a movement that had never truly made its peace with democratic principles.”

“DeSantis is a flawless sample of this belief system. The conservative argument that democracy is dangerous lies so close to his heart that he wrote an entire book dedicated to the precept that ‘when the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.'”