The Horse Race: Back-of-the-Pack GOP Primary Candidates Borrow Left's Attacks on DeSantis

with Brittany Bernstein

Wednesday, July 26, 2023

Back-of-the-Pack GOP Primary Candidates Borrow Left's Attacks on DeSantis

Republican presidential contenders are looking to the left for inspiration in their latest attack against Florida governor Ron DeSantis.

Former congressman Will Hurd and former New Jersey governor Chris Christie have criticized DeSantis over Florida's new standards for teaching African-American studies — borrowing attacks from Democrats including Vice President Kamala Harris.

Liberal pundits have seized on a line in the curriculum that mentions teaching students that "slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit" and requires teaching "acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans."

Harris claimed in a speech last week that, "just yesterday in the state of Florida, they decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery."

"They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us, and we will not stand for it," she added.

Asked about the standard in question, DeSantis told reporters: "I mean, I didn't do it and I wasn't involved in it. But I think what they're doing is I think that they're probably going to show some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later, later in life. But the reality is all of that is rooted in whatever is factual. They listed everything out."

But Hurd and Christie have criticized the curriculum and suggested DeSantis's response is evidence that he lacks the leadership skills needed to be president.

"DeSantis started this fire with the bill that he signed, and now he doesn't want to take responsibility for whatever is done in the aftermath of it. And from listening and watching his comments, he's obviously uncomfortable," Christie said in an interview on CBS's Face the Nation.

"'I didn't do it' and 'I'm not involved in it' are not the words of leadership," he said. "If this was such a big issue for Governor DeSantis, he had four years to do this. He only started to focus on this when he decided he wanted to run for president and try to get to the right of Donald Trump. And so, I think people see this as politically manipulative."

Hurd made a similar argument during an appearance on CNN: "There is no — there was no upside to slavery. Slavery was not a jobs program." He claimed DeSantis "showed his lack of leadership, by acting like it was somebody else's fault and not something that was done, on his watch."

Members of the workgroup that helped craft the new standards told NR's Ryan Mills there was no intention to suggest that African Americans benefited from slavery. The curriculum instead aims to show that enslaved people were "resilient" and used the skills they developed to better their lives under difficult circumstances.

It's a long-shot argument from long-shot candidates: Christie sits at 2.4 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average and Hurd hasn't even been included in enough polls to register.