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Name a disgraced former Congress member, not originally from Florida, whose time in office was marred by shady financial dealings and who ran in yesterday’s GOP primary for Florida’s 19th District.
…This is, amazingly, a trick question. Because TWO candidates who fit that bill ran in FL-19, and neither of them won. (They were Madison Cawthorn and Chris Collins.)
Florida is — how do I put this? — one hell of a drug. And its primary results were no less surprising or chaotic. On the Democratic side, a socialist candidate for Senate came out of (literal) left field to topple an opponent who out-fundraised her 16 to 1. Meanwhile, progressive challengers lost decisively in two other races.
On the Republican side, President Donald Trump’s picks won most of their contests, including the race to succeed Gov. Ron DeSantis. But two endorsed candidates also lost in surprising upsets. Republicans ousted Rep. Cory Mills, for instance, who has been accused of assaulting one woman he dated and threatening another. And Trump’s pick in FL-19, Catalina Lauf, fell not to Cawthorn or Collins, but to the founder of a conservative talk-radio station. Florida!!!
This all makes for a pretty muddled cup of tea leaves. So rather than generalize about Florida’s results, let’s zoom in on one primary race you might not have followed.
That race — the Republican primary in Florida’s Sixth Congressional District — pitted an open Islamophobe (Rep. Randy Fine, who won) against an avowed antisemite (the manosphere influencer Dan Bilzerian).
Both men are shocking in their bigotry, even for a party that has inured itself to shock. Bilzerian, a self-described sex addict and former professional poker player, has fantasized about “exterminating Israel” and “revisiting” the ideologies that precipitated the Holocaust. Fine, meanwhile, has repeatedly compared Muslims to dogs and said that Israel should let Gazans starve.
How did men with such repugnant views emerge as this race’s top finishers? The first reason is dark, but fairly obvious: a significant share of Republicans hold Islamophobic or antisemitic opinions.
The second reason is maybe more interesting: Republicans increasingly treat any perceived limit on speech as an intolerable form of censorship. That new norm has made it less likely that party leaders will condemn hateful views, since the appearance of policing speech is often considered just as bad as bigotry or extremism. As a pair of conservative writers warned in the New York Times last week, this reflex has created “a subculture of racism, sexism and antisemitism” in the GOP.
Some on the left hold hateful views too, of course. But Democrats don’t have those same norms against policing speech.
➨ Stop trying to “sell” yourself to new people. That’s advice from my colleague Allie Volpe’s evidence-backed guide to optimizing your online dating profile, but I’d argue it applies to most social interactions. Other all-purpose gems from Allie: be selective with how much you share about yourself and convey your willingness to get to know other people.
