Florida’s Democratic nominee for Senate, Angie Nixon, learned a terrific lesson from Barack and Michelle Obama’s advice about what to do when Republicans go low.
In short, she thinks “we go high” might be nice, but it’s an elegant rhetorical strategy for a more civilized age. After JD Vance smeared her as un-American Thursday, Nixon fired right back, calling Vance “The most ordinary man imaginable” and explaining, “I don’t go high when they go low. I get LOUD. Because the soul and humanity of this country are at stake.”
We’re all for decency and civility, but hopey cognition and ancient lessons are no match for a good rhetorical blaster at your side, kids.
Vance went for the sleaze at a Lakeland, Florida, campaign rally for Republicans Byron Donald, who’s running for governor, and Ashley Moody, the former state attorney general appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to serve out Marco Rubio’s term.
Repeating the one attack line Republicans all use this year, Vance urged supporters to turn out this fall to “send a message to the far-left radicals,” and insisted that Democrats hate freedom, the usual bullshit. Echoing a favorite DeSantis slogan, Vance referred several times to the “free state of Florida,” where you may not be free to read too many books, or free to teach accurately about US history, but you are free to send your kids to school unvaccinated.
Then Vance got all the MAGA chuds to cheer when he said it’s “almost too easy to make fun of” Nixon, adding, “When Angie Nixon calls herself a socialist, I think the right response is to say, ‘Then get the hell out of here! You don’t belong in America if those are your views!’”
You definitely shouldn’t live in the free state of Florida if you have the wrong opinions, after all, That’s what freedom is all about.
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After telling an American citizen she must leave America, Vance followed up with an attack on David Jolly, the Democratic nominee for governor. Vance warned the chuds that Jolly “is desperate to rule over you. He’s desperate to control you, he is desperate to have a job where he gets to tell you how to live your life.”
To the best of our knowledge, Jolly has never told anyone they must get the hell out of the state and nation where they were born. Vance also whined that Jolly has never held a “real job,” which is pretty rich for a guy who owes his millions and his political career to weird venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
Nixon quickly fired back with a delightfully uncivil reply on Instagram and other social media platforms, insulting Vance and reminding voters that Moody has so far refused to debate. This is how you do it:
“I don’t wanna COUCH my words here: I know JD Vance, his eyeliner, and absent Ashley Moody are used to running away from people when things get tough because they care more about themselves and their billionaire buddies than the people they represent. But this is my home.”
Referring to who actually built the White House and the US Capitol — enslaved people, not elegiac hillbillies — Nixon continued,
“The most ordinary man imaginable came to my home state to tell me to ‘get out of America’ while he and Absent Ashley enjoyed the comfort of buildings my ancestors helped build. Imagine standing on the shoulders of the people who built this country and then telling their descendants they don’t belong here.”
Nixon has already made clear the policy points where she disagrees with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), but instead of going on the defensive, she reminded voters of the issues that matter to her, saying, “Wanting lower property insurance and healthcare for everyday families isn’t un-American; it’s what working people deserve.”
As for Vance and Moody, she added, “They can take their tech-bro cash and their weird, intrusive agenda somewhere else, because I’m not going any damn place.”
And that, kids, is how you respond to a bully: Don’t even play on their turf and dismiss their stupid claims, because you have far better ideas.
The fact that Vance had to go to Florida at all to prop up the top of the Republican midterm ticket suggests there’s some unease about the solidity of the party’s hold on the electorate, with two recent polls showing Nixon in a statistical tie with Moody. While other polls show Moody with a comfortable lead over Nixon, Moody invoked the mixed bag of polling in a recent Fox Radio interview, telling the host, “The polls have been all over the place. Some have us up. Two have us tied. But here’s what we do know: It’s close — for the seat Marco Rubio held for 14 years, in the state President Trump calls home.”
In essence, Moody has been campaigning not on any particular policy ideas, or even on the Trump Party’s trademark nastiness, but by treating that “R” behind her name on the ballot as all she needs. Avoid gaffes, don’t throw bombs, and get elected to serve out the two remaining years of Rubio’s term. She does few interviews outside rightwing media, and has tried to simply sidestep questions about whether she knew about DeSantis’s parting political scandal, in which his administration allegedly diverted $10 million from a Medicaid fraud settlement into the “Hope Florida Foundation,” a nonprofit co-founded by the governor’s wife, Casey DeSantis.
Democratic officials have been dogging Moody for her silence on the scandal, holding a recent “Where is Ashley Moody?” rally and calling on her to explain whether she knew about the siphoning of funds when she signed off on the legal settlement.
Now that her name is being linked to the term-limited DeSantis’s dirt, Moody is increasingly going full Red Scare, yelping about how Nixon is a scary “self-proclaimed socialist,” because that’s all she has.
In recent days, Moody has also taken to waving around an August Washington Free Beacon article that accuses Nixon of hating police because Nixon’s coffee shop and social service hub Cafe Resistance has a photo display of several Black Power figures from the ‘70s, including members of the Black Panthers and evil scary “cop-killers” like Mumia Abu-Jamal, H Rap Brown, and Assata Shakur.
Vance mentioned the terrifying bookstore in his speech too, pointing out that Nixon’s bookstore not only carries books by Black radicals who killed cops, but that she’s even willing to “sell you books saying that the real founding of the United States of America was not 1776, but 1619.” Yeah, that scary radical book that dominated bestseller lists for months in 2021-22. (Wonkette affiliate link!) Vance added, “If you think this sounds kooky, of course you’d be right, but that’s who Angie Nixon is.”
We dunno, maybe it’s even more kooky to suggest that people who read books you don’t like should be expelled from America in the name of freedom, but we’re kind of funny that way, the end, please send Angie Nixon a donation here if you can, ‘kay?
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[Florida Phoenix / Florida Politics / Politico / Miami Herald (gift link) / Angie Nixon for Florida]
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I've been seeing a growing number of Angie Nixon signs around town Down Here.
Fingers crossed...
HA!
Angie Nixon Proposes Building Data Center on Mar-a-Lago
https://www.newsweek.com/angie-nixon-ashley-moody-trump-florida-data-center-mar-a-lago-12490702