GOP Florida Gov Candidate Wrote Book Arguing it was Right NOT to Abolish Slavery

[JI7]

<American Ledger, a project of the super PAC American Bridge, has unearthed a series of toxic arguments put forward by DeSantis in his 2011 book, “Dreams from Out Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama,” which he wrote while first running for Congress to bolster his credentials against President Barack Obama.

One of the most disturbing claims he made in the book was that Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court justice, was wrong to suggest the founding fathers’ failure to abolish slavery in the Constitution was a fundamental flaw.

“For someone like Marshall, this failure overshadows the numerous and long-lasting political achievements embodied in the structural foundations of the government that have nothing to do with the institution of slavery,” DeSantis said. But in fact, he went on, the “philosophical foundations of the Constitution are incompatible with slavery,” and bargains like the Three-Fifths Compromise, which counted enslaved persons as 3/5ths of a free citizen, actually “benefitted anti-slavery states.”

If DeSantis had simply left it at the fact that tolerating slavery was essential to get the Southern states on board, he might have had a point. But for him to claim the Constitution somehow preordained the end of slavery as written is pure whitewashing, given that it took a bloody civil war to amend it to do so. Furthermore, his claim that allowing slave owners to get extra congressional apportionment for each enslaved person they owned was somehow a gift to “anti-slavery states” simply defies logic. Not to mention, it is highly offensive for DeSantis to condescendingly say all this as proof that Thurgood Marshall — one of our nation’s great constitutional thinkers, and himself a descendant of slaves — didn’t know what he was talking about.>

https://www.rawstory.com/2018/10/florida-republican-gubernatorial-candidate-ron-desantis-wrote-book-arguing-founding-fathers-right-not-abolish-slavery/

[BumRushDaShow]

1. If anything, one of the liberal Super PACs needs to put this out there...

which would hopefully gin up the black vote in FL.

[Buckeyeblue]

2. The constitution enabled slave owners

Even Lincoln was skeptical that it was constitutional for the president to end slavery. But he did it anyway--because sometimes moral certainty outweighs constitutionality.

In many ways the constitution was short sighted in that the founders didn't anticipate the massive growth of the country and made it too damn hard to change.

[peekaloo]

3. He's trash.

Never fails either when there's a camera shot of his rally "crowds" there's at least a-hole flashing that "ok" finger sign.

[Cha]

4. What a heinous insecure jerk this "don't monkey this up" guy is.

One of those that it just killed him that Barack Obama was President for 8 years.

And, he's a trump sycophant which says it all.

It will be so Just Desserts if Andrew Gillum beats him.