#The DeSantis moment and other commentary

Conservative: The DeSantis Moment

“The term ‘Florida man’ usually comes loaded with negative connotations, but not if you’re talking about Ron DeSantis,” muses Spectator USA’s Amber Athey. “The first-term Republican governor’s approval ratings have reached 64 percent,” thanks to his deft handling of COVID and unabashed resistance of media bullying. “Enterprising apparel companies are already selling ‘DeSantis 2024’ gear — and a Trafalgar poll of likely contenders (excluding Trump) shows DeSantis leading the pack with 35 percent support among Republican voters.” Excluding Trump is important, though: For DeSantis only has a chance if the 45th president stays away in 2024.

Libertarian: Smart Dems Will Save Filibuster

The filibuster has persisted thus far because “each subsequent Senate majority recognizes that it won’t retain control forever and will someday want to make use of the filibuster to stop the other team’s agenda,” notes Reason’s Eric Boehm. But lately, some Dems have sought to abolish it, so they “can accomplish all of their policy goals at once.” The party should be thankful “that not all of its senators are willing to be so myopic.” If the Senate’s super-majority rules survive the next year and a half, “it will be because just enough Democrats are smart enough to realize there’s no such thing as a permanent majority.”

Education beat: 3 Cheers for Anti-CRT Moms

“The impressive array of courageous and relentless mothers around the country lambasting school boards for their support of vile critical race theory” has been an “exhilarating display of unity and common decency,” cheers Carina Benton at The Federalist. Mothers understand that “students are being propagandized, not educated,” and their “protective instincts are kicking in.” But “the charlatans pushing critical race theory are not going to yield their racist agenda without a fight.” The stakes couldn’t be higher: The “foolish” ideology is “imperiling children’s education and well-being and the preservation of a free society,” so let’s hope moms flexing their muscles are enough “to force ethically delinquent school boards back into the sphere of integrity, intellectualism, academic rigor and basic morality.”

Hate-hoax watch: An ‘Irresponsible’ Mayor

Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Mayor Dean Trantalis watched in horror as a car recently rammed into participants in a Pride parade in his city, killing one — but that’s no excuse, charges the Sun Sentinel’s editorial board, for his “irresponsible” comment calling the accident an antigay “terrorist attack.” Even worse was “his follow-up statement, in which he recanted his jump to conclusions without offering an apology. . . . It’s one thing to exercise poor judgment in the immediate aftermath of tragedy. It’s another thing entirely to put out a statement hours later that you were mistaken without offering anything conciliatory” to those terrified by the original statement. Also guilty: the many blue-check figures who repeated Trantalis’ claim without waiting for the facts.

Foreign desk: Palestinians’ Vaccine Follies

Café life in Tel Aviv has returned to its charming pre-COVID normal, reports Jonathan Sacerdoti at Spectator USA — so it’s “surprising that ­Israel’s offer to advance more than 1 million Pfizer vaccines to the Palestinians has been rejected by the Palestinian Authority only hours after it initially accepted the deal.” The rejection notably comes after many global commentators bashed the Israelis for not vaccinating the Palestinians (an obligation that falls to the PA under the Oslo Accords). Yet once the first batch of 90,000 doses did make it to the Palestinian authorities, “the PA rejected them, arguing that the vaccines don’t meet their standards. Some were due to expire in just 13 days but were, of course, still ­viable if administered in that time frame.” Perhaps the real reason had to do with the ­impression of “normalization” with the Jewish state that ­accepting the ­cooperation might have created. Then, too, “the PA may also struggle to allay fears of corruption in how it distributes its vaccines.” In the event, vaccine redistribution from rich regions to poor ones is essential, but that “can only work if [the latter] accept the help when it is offered.”

— Compiled by Sohrab Ahmari & Ashley Allen