‘This was a terrible idea’: the incident that broke Republicans’ DeSantis fever

In the end, it wasn't culture war feuding over restricting LGBTQ+ rights, thwarting Black voters or vilifying immigrants that finally broke Republicans' DeSantis fever in Florida.

Nor was it his rightwing takeover of higher education, the banning of books from school libraries, his restriction of drag shows, or passive assent of neo-Nazis parading outside Disney World waving flags bearing the extremist governor's name that caused them to finally stand up to him.

It was, instead, a love of vulnerable Florida scrub jays; a passion to preserve threatened gopher tortoises; and above all a unanimous desire to speak up for nature in defiance of Ron DeSantis's mind-boggling plan to pave over thousands of unspoiled acres at nine state parks and erect 350-room hotels, golf courses and pickleball courts.

The outcry when DeSantis's department of environmental protection (DEP) unveiled its absurdly named Great Outdoors Initiative last week was immediate, overwhelming and unprecedented. The Republican Florida senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott penned a joint letter slamming an "absolutely ridiculous" proposal to build a golf course at Jonathan Dickinson state park in Martin county. The Republican congressman Brian Mast, usually a reliable DeSantis ally, said it would happen "over my dead body".

Scores of Republican state congress members and senators, whose achievements during the more than five years since DeSantis was elected governor have been largely limited to rubber-stamping his hard-right agenda, lined up to denounce the projects. Many noted the plans had been drawn up in secret, with no-bid contracts destined for mysteriously pre-chosen developers outside the requirements of Florida law.

Thousands of environmental advocates and activists swamped multiple state parks on Tuesday in a day of action to protest against not only the ravaging of broad swathes of wildlife habitat, but DeSantis's lack of transparency and intention to limit public comment to only one hour at each state park during meetings that would be held simultaneously.

By Wednesday, DeSantis's initiative was in effect dead, as the governor, clearly chastened by the unexpected all-quarters challenge to his previously unquestioned authority, furiously back-pedaled at an awkward press conference in Winter Haven.

"They're going back to the drawing board," he said of plans he conceded were "half-baked" and "not ready for prime time".

Desperately trying to pin blame elsewhere for a misadventure that was very demonstrably his own, he continued: "This is something that was leaked. It was not approved by me, I never saw that. It was intentionally leaked to a leftwing group to try and create a narrative."

The volte-face did not go unnoticed. On Thursday, a headline in the Tampa Bay Times questioned: "Is DeSantis losing his grip on Florida?", the newspaper citing his disastrous run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination as one possible catalyst for the fast-growing revolt.

"The DeSantis administration is very tightly controlled and micromanaged from the top down, so the thought that he wasn't aware of this or didn't support it, or that somehow the people in those agencies would have pushed a huge plan like that without the governor's knowledge or support, it's just ludicrous," said Aubrey Jewett, political science professor at the University of Central Florida's school of politics, security and international affairs.

"People just don't freelance and come up with these things on their own. This was a totally self-inflicted political wound, a political error by Governor DeSantis and his administration. There's just no reason to pursue a policy where you pave over state parks to build golf courses and hotels, right? There's no demand, nobody was asking for this, and they just decided they were going to do it anyway. It was politically tone deaf."

Jewett said the parks debacle hurt DeSantis on two fronts.

"It shows how ill-conceived this plan was, that you not only have Democrats, progressives, environmentalists, objecting to these plans, you also have mainstream Republicans in the legislature and at federal level all saying that this was a terrible idea," he said.

"It also shows DeSantis has lost some of the grip he's had on Florida politics for the last four years. It didn't seem like anyone or anything could stand up to him, and nor did most Republicans want to. He hit home run after home run, right? He'd pick an issue, exploit it, push it, and Republican conservatives were like, 'Yeah, let's go get those liberals, let's go get those woke people.' He just seemed to be on a winning streak.

"They also didn't want to get on the wrong side of him because he showed time and again that if you crossed him, he would come after you, he'd be politically vindictive.

"Well, now it's totally changed. We have virtually every big-name Republican in the state coming out and saying this was a terrible idea. This incident really highlights perhaps how far DeSantis has fallen in terms of political control and impact on Florida."

DeSantis, meanwhile, denied he ever had such a grip. Pressed further on the state park humiliation at a Thursday press conference, the governor said anybody who thought he was dictating anything was "misunderstanding politics".

"I've never categorized [it] as me having a grip on anything," he told reporters, according to Florida Politics, insisting he merely had "an ability to set an agenda and deliver the agenda" working with lawmakers.

Delighted Florida Democrats, naturally, seized the moment. State party chair Nikki Fried retweeted the article and alluded to animosity during the Republican primary campaign between Donald Trump and the governor he repeatedly demeaned.

"I don't know who is having more fun: Trump watching DeSantis losing power, or DeSantis watching Trump losing this election," she wrote.

Jewett doubts DeSantis, who will be termed out of office in January 2027, can be quite so effective during his remaining months in the governor's mansion - especially with the Republican-dominated Florida legislature rediscovering its spine.

"Without a clear political path forward to something bigger, he really is just one more lame duck governor with two years to go. He can't be re-elected, and it becomes a little more difficult to influence people because they know you're going to be gone," he said.

"It's entirely possible that the legislature may become a more coequal branch again and stand up for themselves. It's still going to be dominated by Republican conservatives and DeSantis is still conservative, so on a lot of things they'll be on the same page.

"But right now, your normal allies on the Republican side are giving you just as much grief as anybody else, and it's entirely self-inflicted. You step on a rake and boom, the handle comes up and hits you right on the nose."