As recently as last year, we were hearing from the media about how the vocal and engaged participation of a male candidate’s spouse in his political campaign was a good thing because it a) showed he trusted her and appreciated her willingness to put herself out there on his behalf, and b) helped bring about a turning point in public perceptions of the evolving roles female spouses play in these types of campaigns which, for the most part, has been to blend into the background while the candidate did his thing.
This was a near-constant drumbeat in the media in 2022, where we were treated to one glowing puff piece after another about then-Senate candidate John Fetterman’s wife Gisele, and how she had selflessly stepped in and took control of his campaign after the debilitating stroke he suffered in May 2022, two days before the Pennsylvania Democratic primary.
All the fawning coverage paid off for Gisele Fetterman after the election, culminating in her winning a media award for being “the extraordinary woman behind the victory in a national race for control of the U.S. Senate”:
Fast forward to May 2023, and now some in the MSM have oh-so-conveniently switched gears, as evidenced by a Politico hit piece not just on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is rumored to be on the verge of announcing his 2024 presidential candidacy, but also his wife Casey, who we’re being told is “his biggest asset and his biggest liability.” DeSantis, they also suggest, relies too much on her opinion instead of that of political consultants:
“Have you ever noticed,” Roger Stone, the notorious political mischief-maker who is both a DeSantis antagonist and a many-decades-long Trump loyalist, remarked in a Telegram post last fall, “how much Ron DeSantis’ wife Casey is like Lady Macbeth?” — an agent, in other words, of her husband’s undoing.[…]“He’s a leader who makes political decisions with the assistance of his wife, who was elected by nobody, who’s blindly ambitious,” said a former DeSantis administration staffer. “And she sees ghosts in every corner.”“She’s more paranoid than he is,” said a second staffer.“He’s a vindictive motherfucker. She’s twice that,” said a higher-up on one of his campaigns. “She’s the scorekeeper.”[…]“Does she sort of humanize the robot? Does she push him on the grip-and-grin, the baby-kissing, give him a cleaner, softer image? Yes,” said another former gubernatorial staffer. “Does she also feed into his, I guess, worst instincts, of being secluded and insular and standoffish with staff? Yes.”And it’s not just opponents and others with axes to grind who think this. “She is both his biggest asset and his biggest liability. And I say biggest asset in that I think she does make him warmer, softer,” Dan Eberhart, a DeSantis donor and supporter, told me. “But he needs to be surrounded with professional people, not just her,” he said.“I’ve heard from staffers frustrated that they think the governor’s made a decision, he talks to her, comes back, the decision is the opposite or different,” he said.
The article was quickly panned, not just because of its weak and biased “sourcing,” but also for the substance or lack thereof:
I mean, does Politico – which has become the media’s unofficial headquarters for DeSantis Derangement Syndrome – really think that DeSantis, who won reelection in historic numbers, trusting his wife more than GOP consultants should actually be considered a negative?
Further, is personally attacking the spouses of Republican presidential candidates really a road the media wants to go down? Because a whole lot of Democratic spouses including First Lady Jill Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wife Jennifer will be in for rude awakenings as far as conservative media outlets go if that’s the case.
Relatedly, according to the Huffington Post, apparently we’re supposed to believe that DeSantis being “more informed, tactical and calculated” also “makes him way more dangerous” than former President Donald Trump:
I just can’t with these people anymore. I simply can’t.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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