U.S. Rep. RONALD DION DESANTIS held a "Town Hall" meeting in Palm Coast February 19th, mostly peopled by local Republicans and Tea Party members, who distributed ephemera, including huge bumper stickers for FlaglerCountyTeaParty.org, bearing American flags and the logo: "Take Back AMERICA!!!" (Amateur capitalization in hokey original).
In fact, Rep. DESANTIS' putative Town Hall meeting was a phony -- by strange karmic coincidence, it was held in the precise location and precise day of the month as the regular monthly meeting of the Flagler County Tea Party, to wit, the third Tuesday of the month, at 6:30, in the Flagler Palm Coast High School Cafeteria -- it was a Tea Party event, masquerading as a "Town Hall" meeting, See http://flaglercountyteaparty.org/ , and three daily newspapers did not report that fact.
Thus, as a gathering of Tea Partiers, many of the colorful questions were from Right Field, including the man who asked whether President Barack Obama is "a Socialist or a Communist?"
Rep. DESANTIS had no answer for the lady who asked what he was going to do about Flagler County's eroding beaches, which require federal beach renourishment funds to keep tourism stoked -- no beaches, no tourists, and the beach is terribly close to A1A all up and down Flagler County. DESANTIS would do well to study the St. Augustine National Historical Park and National Seashore legislation, www.stuaugustgreen.com, as a vehicle for environmental and economic sustainability for our 6th Congressional District.
Rep. DESANTIS was also asked about the Newtown, CT school shootings, by two former DeLand residents who have personal knowledge. Mark and Jackie Barden are the parents of the late Daniel Barden, a seven-year old murdered in his Sandy Hook Elementary School classroom by a gun-toting madman.
Rep. DESANTIS had earlier answered questions from gun-loving goobers, including one who asserted he could no longer buy enough ammunition, speculating that the "federal government is buying up all the ammunition."
None of Rep. DESANTIS' answers went against the Tea Party line.
Then the Bardens spoke, and the crowd got quiet -- you could hear a pin drop.
The crowd, described in one account as sometimes engaged in rude heckling, listened as DESANTIS said "I'm sorry for what happened to you." DESANTIS did say he would support background checks and means of preventing criminals and insane people from obtaining guns.
However, here are three things that Rep. RON DESANTIS didn't do:
1. Show empathy and kindness, the way Bill Clinton or Barack Obama or Bill Nelson could or would -- DESANTIS seemed curiously disengaged compared to the interest he showed in sequestration and other Tea Party apparatchik talking points -- he said he was "sorry" for what happened, and mused about the mind of Adam Lanza.
2. Approach the Bardens, the grieving parents of a murdered seven year old. Like a statue, DESANTIS stayed stiffly, primly, preppily, pompously at the front of the high school cafeteria, as if he were the principal being questioned by radical students. In terms of body language, DESANTIS did not move closer to the Bardens, despite having modern wireless microphone technology -- I observed no hugs, no embrace, no milk of human kindness. Rep. DESANTIS acted more like a robot, not unlike President Bush (or the other President Bush) would do.
3. Show maturity, never once admitting that his prior assumptions about guns are errant nonsense: his views on guns, like everything else, are shared ideological perversions of the Tea Party and the Koch Brothers that he has swallowed hook, line and sinker.
Rep. DESANTIS' "Tea Party" gathering was changed for the better by the Bardens, and I thanked them for speaking out. Before they left, the Bardens distributed a few wrist bracelets in honor of their son, with the bracelets poignantly asking in their son's name, "What Would Daniel Do?", with a Facebook page urging people to treat each other more kindly. Rep. DESANTIS got a bracelet. I spoke with the Bardens, and I know that in the end, their concerns about guns will be heard and heeded, with or without a Rep. RON DESANTIS re-elected to the 114th Congress.
Rep. DESANTIS is intelligent, well-educated, disdains earmarks, refuses perks and says he dislikes corruption. That's all good.
DESANTIS quotes James Madison and the Federalist Papers (even though he doesn't really understand them) James Madison in Federalist 10 says that regulating factions is the most important thing a legislator can do, referring to the economic elites whom The Tea Party in Congress worships and takes handouts from -- the Tea Party and the Republicans don't believe in regulating anything, except they are against Gay marriage -- as Josh said on the West Wing, they want to "shrink government just small enough to fit in your bedroom.").
Rep. DESANTIS is the darling of the most corrupt, venal and narcissistic political party in American history. The Republican Party and its Tea Party faction are bankrupt of ideas, so they can only foment hatred. Some 22% of the American people identify with the Republican Party. Hatred is bringing down the erstwhile party of Lincoln.
RONALD DION DESANTIS, at 35, is a Yale and Harvard educated trained military and corporate lawyer, is blessed -- he had "the right stuff" to get elected, but is he capable of governing?
DESANTIS showed seeming insouciance toward the parents of a child murder victim -- in the midst of a room full of unhinged Tea Party madness and seediness.
DESANTIS is still wet behind the ears, like a male Yale Bulldogs baseball team version of a "Stepford Wife" on Steroids. On election night, not unlike Robert Redford's character in "The Candidate," one can imagine DESANTIS' shock, asking someone "What do we do now, Marvin?"
The day after the Palm Coast "Town Hall" meeting, Rep. DESANTIS held a "surprise" speech here in St. Augustine February 20th -- at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast. The Chamber of Commerce is most noted as the local affiliate of the national cartelist business lobby that has lobbied for the Fortune 500 against the New Deal, Fair Deal and every piece of consumer, worker, environmental, safety and health protection ever proposed in Congress. DESANTIS would fit right in atthe local Chamber of Commerce, whose members don't realize they and millions of other Chamber of Commerce members are nothing more than shills for the 1% and the Fortune 500, who take their money and laugh at them behind their backs.
We need a Congressman for the rest of us -- a Congressman who visits regular people, not just the Tea Party and the Chamber of Commerce. What do you reckon?
Two news accounts of Rep. DESANTIS' Tea Party dominated "Town Hall" meeting:
Daytona Beach News Journal:
http://www.news-journalonline.com/article/20130219/NEWS/302199942/1040?Title=Parents-of-Newtown-shooting-victim-address-gun-control-in-Flagler&tc=ar
Jacksonville Times-Union and St. Augustine Record:
http://jacksonville.com/news/2013-02-21/story/sandy-hook-parents-stun-desantis-forum
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