Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s move to punish Disney for its alleged “wokeness” marks a major shift in GOP tactics. ed_kilgore writes
The Mouse is mighty. Photo: Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images As conservatives have leaned even harder into culture-war themes in recent years, they’ve typically chosen easy targets. If your principal audience is conservative Christians primed to believe that traditional values are under attack, it’s not too risky to beat up on LGBTQ+ kids and their adult supporters.
In 1967, Florida gave Disney the power to act more or less as a local government with taxing powers in order to build the original Magic Kingdom theme park. Its special-status territory, which covered 38.5 square miles of mostly uninhabited land, was dubbed the Reedy Creek Improvement District.
For months, DeSantis has steadily increased his rhetoric denouncing “the rise of corporate wokeness,” but he didn’t have a clear target until Disney announced its opposition to the measure, which critics have called the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, on March 9. Since then, the company — Florida’s largest employer — has been a singular focus for the governor as he runs for re-election and eyes a 2024 presidential bid.
To be clear, DeSantis isn’t attacking “corporate welfare” generally, just the perks that state and local governments have offered Disney, as Forbes noted when the governor first attacked the Mouse:
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