THE FEW REMAINING DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN THE TRUMP GOP AND THE "ESTABLISHMENT" GOP COULD BE ERASED BY RON DeSANTIS

Jonathan Chait writes:

There are many examples of the sickness of the Republican Party’s internal culture — perhaps none more pure than its position on vaccines....

[Ron] DeSantis has instead repeatedly taken steps to cast doubt on the efficacy of the COVID vaccine itself.... DeSantis recruited Joseph Ladapo, an idiosyncratic vaccine skeptic, and made Florida the only state not to recommend the COVID vaccine for children. That is not an expression of opposition to mandates. It is an expression of opposition to the vaccine. He officially declared that the state “recommends against males aged 18 to 39 receiving mRNA COVID-19 vaccines” on the grounds that it is allegedly unsafe. That is an anti-vaccine stance, not an anti-mandate stance.

It is a stance that runs contrary to the overwhelming consensus of experts in the field.

... recently, Ladapo appeared on the QAnon-supporting program X22 Report, where he called the mRNA vaccines unsafe. “Basic questions about safety have either been spun, ignored, or suppressed,” he charged.

And after that, where did Dr. Ladapo's vaccine denialism show up? The august pages of the Wall Street Journal opinion section, naturally:

Under my leadership, the Florida Department of Health analyzed overall mortality and cardiac-related mortality risk associated with Covid-19 vaccination. We found an 84% increase in the relative incidence of cardiac-related death among men 18 to 39 within 28 days following mRNA vaccination.

The left has smeared these results as “anti-science,” as Holden Thorpe, the editor of Science, recently stated in an editorial.

Mainstream science is now part of "the left."

Even the Journal's opinion section is (occasionally) resistant to the kind of edgelord extremism that's entered right-wing politics in the Donald Trump era. But we may be entering the DeSantis Epoch, and if so, it appears that nearly the entire right will be along for the ride.

Look, here's Jeb Bush -- a prominent member of a family that's regularly lambasted by Trump and his fan base. Jeb might resent the Donald, but he apparently loves the Ron:

[JAKE] TAPPER: The current Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is in that new generation.... Would you support him if he ran?

[JEB] BUSH: ... I can tell you, he's done a great job as governor. He's governed very effectively. His response to the Pandemic, I think, was extraordinarily good. His education policies are solid. He's made a real commitment to protecting the water resources and the natural environment of our state.

He's kept the legislature in line. He's done the things that I admire, as governor. And he also has a strong appeal, outside the state, because he's tackled these cultural issues that have pretty broad appeal, in the Republican mindset, right now.

And if DeSantis peddles junk COVID science, or campaigns with Trumpian election denialists like Kari Lake and Blake Masters, no big deal -- Jeb Bush, a paragon of establishment Republicanism, says he's okay.

We might still be living in the Donald Trump Era -- possibly until January 20, 2029. But if we're really moving on, the Age of DeSantis could be an age when any lingering GOP resistance to paranoid conspiratorialism simply disappears.