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July 7, 2023

The DeSantis team dropped an extraordinarily powerful ad

By Andrea Widburg

My drumbeat for months now has been that, if the leftist takeover of America is to be stopped before our nation is irreparably damaged, the energy will come from parents. Someone on Team DeSantis understands that and put together one of the best campaign ads I’ve ever seen.

Americans will put up with a lot. Thanks to decades of indoctrination about climate change, they’ve been fairly meek as their standard of living, the highest ever attained in world history, is under perpetual attack. Although they hate the open border, they feel there’s not much they can do about it. They’re divided on Ukraine, but even those who dislike America’s weapons and wealth going there passively grumble. Indeed, for most of the indignities visited on American values, wealth, and traditions since 2008, ordinary Americans put their heads down and, grumbling or not, get on with it.

As part of this adaptability, generosity of spirit, and passivity, Americans have become increasingly receptive to gay rights. In my lifetime, we’ve gone from homosexuality being criminalized to its being celebrated. We were all libertarians who felt that, in a free country, people should be free to love whomever they wish and build the families they desire. When the Supreme Court, in 2015, issued its constitutionally unmoored decision supporting same-sex marriage, conservatives grumbled, but everyone got with the program.

Image: Twitter screen grab.

And then the left went too far: It began to use so-called transgenderism as the way to break apart the family and turn mutilated, mentally-damaged children into the new foot soldiers for the leftist battle to obtain permanent political power. Two things made parents aware of what was happening. First, the leftists shut down schools, moving the classrooms to home computers where parents could see what was being “taught” in their children’s schools.

Second, Libs of TikTok, using videos that leftists proudly posted on TikTok, exposed to everyone what was happening in schools, doctors’ offices, and other “kid-friendly” places over the years.

What we saw was appalling. The invaluable Chaya Raichik, who really deserves a Medal of Freedom for her work, provides examples from just the last few days:

That’s just the schools. There are all sorts of other videos from transgender activists talking about the values they wish to impose on America, including your children. You’ve seen them, whether on Libs of TikTok or on other conservative sites, so I won’t belabor the point. The logical culmination was a Pride march in which the LGBTQ cohort announced, “We’re coming for your children”—and we’ve seen that they really are:

It turns out that, in America, you can come for our cars, our jobs, our gas stoves, our border, and our military, but don’t you dare come for our children. Suddenly, apolitical people and leftists alike are looking at their healthy, wholesome, innocent little children and saying, “No, you’re not coming for my children. You’re not surgically mutilating their bodies and giving them potent hormones that can give them cancer, destroy their bones, and sterilize them. You’re not taking advantage of a small child’s imagination and naivete or of a teenager’s normal anxiety. No way are you warping my children’s minds so that they embrace a lifetime of anger and misery.” Even Democrat women began looking askance at their own party.

And that’s where some genius on Ron DeSantis’s campaign came up with possibly the most powerful political ad I’ve ever seen. I’m not saying this to endorse DeSantis. (I’m not endorsing anyone.) I’m just saying this because it is an ad that taps into a parental zeitgeist that is reeling from the establishment’s relentless assault on children:

There are campaign ads that we never forget, such as Ronald Reagan’s 1984 “Morning in America” ad or LBJ’s 1964 “Daisy” ad. I wonder if, in 2023, the year of the left’s war on children, Ron DeSantis’s ad may be the memorable one or, at least, will open the way for other pro-child, pro-family ads that change how people view the political landscape.

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