In the end, it wasn’t culture war feuding over restricting LGBTQ+ rights, thwarting Black voters or vilifying immigrants that finally broke Republicans’ DeSantis fever in Florida.
Nor was it his rightwing takeover of higher education, the banning of books from school libraries, his restriction of drag shows, or passive assent of neo-Nazis parading outside Disney World waving flags bearing the extremist governor’s name that caused them to finally stand up to him.
It was, instead, a love of vulnerable Florida scrub jays; a passion to preserve threatened gopher tortoises; and above all a unanimous desire to speak up for nature in defiance of Ron DeSantis’s mind-boggling plan to pave over thousands of unspoiled acres at nine state parks and erect 350-room hotels, golf courses and pickleball courts.
The outcry when DeSantis’s department of environmental protection (DEP) unveiled its absurdly named Great Outdoors Initiative last week was immediate, overwhelming and unprecedented. The Republican Florida senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott penned a joint letter slamming an “absolutely ridiculous” proposal to build a golf course at Jonathan Dickinson state park in Martin county. The Republican congressman Brian Mast, usually a reliable DeSantis ally, said it would happen “over my dead body”.
My grandfather was a lifelong Republican but also a great lover of the outdoors and the national and state park systems. The idea of putting up golf courses on park land would have sickened him. He wanted people in the future to have the same opportunities he had to enjoy camping, hiking, etc.
I don’t know why Rubio and Mast chose this moment to publicly fall out with DeSantis, but among the rank-and-file Republican voters there have always been individuals who cared about conservation.
The parks system was created by a Republican, but still, in recent years the GOP has been the party of resource extraction and climate change denial. It seems odd for them to pick an environmental issue, of all things, to beat Desantis over the head with.
It’s basically environmental nimbyism, they want those areas for themselves. Unfortunately, they honestly don’t think climate change is a thing or can’t appreciate how it will affect those areas.