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In turnabout, DeSantis, other GOP candidates avoid mention of ‘woke’ [1]
['Mike De Sisti']
Date: 2023-08
Aug 23, 2023; Milwaukee, WI, USA; Republican presidential candidate former Vice President Mike Pence (left) and Republican presidential candidate Biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy argue a topic as Republican presidential candidate Florida governor Ron DeSantis listens in at Fiserv Forum during the first 2023 Republican presidential debate. Mandatory Credit: Mike De Sisti-USA TODAY NETWORK USA TODAY NETWORK
As Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis rattled off his achievements at Wednesday’s Republican presidential debate, one word was notably absent from his pitch: “woke.”
DeSantis didn’t mention the word a single time on the debate stage in Milwaukee, abandoning a term that until recently he had peppered into all of his speeches while describing his opposition to it as a foundational aspect of his campaign.
Over the course of two hours, the governor didn’t use it in his introduction, declined to include it when asked about problems facing America, and conspicuously avoided using it even when recounting parts of his record where he had used the word frequently in the past, like when he bragged on the debate stage about removing local prosecutors he said were not upholding the law. He instead described the prosecutors as backed by “George Soros,” a liberal fundraiser and frequent Republican boogeyman.
“I removed them from their post,” DeSantis said. “They are gone. And as president, as president, we are going to go after all of these people because they are hurting the quality of life and they are victimizing innocent people in every corner of this country.”
DeSantis — who built a national reputation for himself in part on his efforts to fight so-called “woke ideology” in schools, government, the military and public life — still used his time on the debate stage to boast that he had “eliminated gender ideology” from schools and “elevated the importance of American civics”in Florida’s education standards.
READ MORE: DeSantis fights for attention while candidates tussle in first Republican primary debate
But the absence of the word “woke” nonetheless marks an abrupt shift in rhetoric for the candidate, who otherwise stuck closely to his familiar stump speech Wednesday, and comes amid a broader campaign recalibration in recent weeks that saw his campaign manager replaced earlier this month.
DeSantis used the word so much during the early days of his campaign, in fact, that he explicitly defended focusing on it so much, arguing that the ideology made everyday life worse for Americans and was connected to everything from crime rates to a sputtering economy.
Former Florida state House Speaker José Oliva, a senior adviser and surrogate for DeSantis’ campaign, acknowledged the absence of the word “woke” in the governor’s debate performance, but said that DeSantis still spoke in broader terms about the matter.
“I don’t think that you heard the word ‘woke’ a lot, but you did hear a lot about the effects of that type of ideology, whether it’s in crime, or it’s in education,” Oliva told the Miami Herald. “In general, I think that you heard about a decline in America. And what’s causing that decline in a lot of ways is those types of mentalities.”
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The term – which DeSantis has used repeatedly to describe anything and everything that he perceives as culturally or politically liberal – has become a buzzword among conservatives in recent years. Nearly every Republican presidential candidate has used the term at some point. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy famously authored a book entitled “Woke, Inc.” criticizing what he described as the intermingling of liberal politics and business.
Yet only one candidate, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, invoked the term on the debate stage Wednesday night, decrying “a lot of crazy, woke things happening in schools.”
There’s at least some evidence that Republican voters may be tiring of the focus on so-called “wokeness.” A New York Times/Siena College poll released last month found that GOP voters said they are more likely to support a candidate who talks about issues like law and order than about “woke” ideology.
Former President Donald Trump, who’s used the term himself at times, has criticized how frequently it has been used among conservatives, saying during an appearance in Iowa this summer that most Republicans aren’t quite sure what it actually means.
READ MORE: From backbench congressman to debate limelight: The rise of Ron DeSantis, soundbite by soundbite
“I don’t like the term ‘woke’ because I hear ‘woke woke woke,’ ” Trump said at the Western Conservative Summit in June. “It’s just a term they use, half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is.”
This story was originally published August 24, 2023, 9:54 AM.
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https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article278556054.html
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