How Florida became a conservative bastion

[In It to Win It]

How Florida became a conservative bastion

Florida has become the nerve center of the modern Republican Party.

Once the nation’s largest and most volatile swing state, Florida has lurched to the right in recent years, becoming a mecca for the GOP’s most influential luminaries and wealthiest donors.

Republicans now hold supermajorities in the state legislature, and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has solidified his grip on the reins of political power in the state, turning Florida into a laboratory for conservative policy experiments. For the first time since Reconstruction, there’s not a single Democrat in statewide elected office.

But Florida’s transition from coveted political battleground to the premier haven of modern conservatism has been decades in the making, owing to a perfect storm of demographic changes, Republican power plays, pandemic politics and Democratic missteps, according to more than a dozen strategists, experts and officials interviewed by The Hill.

“Republicans focused on the ultimate goal,” said Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based Democratic pollster who helped former President Barack Obama win the state in 2008 and 2012. “They thought things out in 10-year cycles. They built a permanent campaign apparatus. They started recruiting candidates to run for local office and springboarding them into higher office. They registered voters and managed the margins.”

“Florida is now mecca for MAGA,” he added. “It is the one safe space and lighthouse for Republican MAGA voters across the United States.”

[RKP5637]

1. All part of a plan, I fear what is next. n/t

[Aviation Pro]

2. Joke's on the new transplants

Wait until they lose their insurance and are forced into an underfunded state insurance entity.

Also, wait until they can't find any services to maintain their homes because the immigrant population has moved out.

[TheRealNorth]

3. Maybe "d"Santis will bring back slavery.....

I could see that fascist fucker using the prison population as a labor pool for contractors.

[CrispyQ]

4. Repubs have been playing the long game. Our side's been playing catchup.

The long game is to make the red states so inhospitable the dems & libs all move out. Get enough states under repub control & rig a few more with election suppression, then call for a constitutional convention & put the racists & zealots in charge. Sounds like a science fiction novel until you start thinking about it. Dem leadership is going to appeal to us to GOTV to save the country when every election the process is rigged more & more against us. Our side isn't taking this seriously enough.