Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s recently released “Blueprint for Freedom” for Florida looks more like a foundation for a run for the White House!
DeSantis rocketed to Republican stardom thanks to his high-profile battles with the Biden administration, the millions he raised from donors, his policies in Florida, and being one of the few bright stars in the Red Wave that didn’t happen in the November midterms.
Right now, he’s the only Republican that polls anywhere close to former President Donald Trump in a hypothetical 2024 nomination race for the White House.
After handily winning reelection in November, his work in Florida isn’t finished. The next few months of proposing and implementing his agenda are widely viewed in political circles as representative of the issues DeSantis plans to run on if he seeks the GOP nomination.
“I think you have seen that over the last four years when we say we are going to get something done, we get it done,” DeSantis said during a press conference last week.
More specifics about what the governor has called his “Freedom Blueprint” are expected in the weeks ahead, including when DeSantis delivers his State of the State address ahead of Florida’s legislative session that begins in March. In that speech, he’ll formally ask state lawmakers for changes to policy and the budget.
From cutting taxes to new policies on schools, DeSantis has begun to lay out what Floridians should expect this year.
DeSantis has said his proposed tax incentives are inflation-fighting measures to provide relief on items such as high grocery prices.
But some analysts, such as Howard Gleckman at the Tax Policy Center, have warned that tax breaks could actually worsen inflation because people will spend and consume more at a time when supplies are limited. Florida is facing an affordability crisis in part due to the influx of out-of-staters with higher incomes who moved there.
His policies that also seem designed to appeal to a broader national GOP base include bans on China buying land in Florida, crackdowns on labor unions, continuing his “war” on the “woke” Disney Company, and loosening the Sunshine State’s already quite liberal gun laws.