Step by step, Florida Guard inches toward becoming DeSantis’ personal army | Opinion

The creeping threat of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new State Guard has increased again, this time with the news that a special unit within the organization recently took lessons at a Panhandle combat training center on things like “aerial gunnery” and treating “massive hemorrhages.”

Gun training? “Massive hemorrhages”? That sounds ominous.

This is the same guard that was supposed to be a civilian disaster response organization but has become increasingly militarized, according critics, including some former guard members. As we have said before, the big danger is that DeSantis will turn the State Guard into his personal militia. In a state that is already trying to squelch dissent and target vulnerable groups, that’s a scary prospect. This latest information only bolsters that fear.

Fleeing strongmen

That holds especially true in Miami. The push to give the governor what amounts to a personal law enforcement unit should ring some terrifying bells of recognition: Too many people here have had to flee countries run by authoritarians or strongmen who keep power through force.

The reason for the special training, which was reported by the Miami Herald, apparently is to allow DeSantis to use the guard, which reports only to him — a recipe for abuse — to stop migrants at sea. That’s a far cry from using the group to distribute hurricane relief supplies or help out an overworked National Guard.

That this is happening, though, can’t surprise anyone who has been paying attention. Florida’s governor has gone ever more extreme as he has watched his GOP presidential nomination hopes slipping away as Donald Trump’s have grown. His language has grown increasingly incendiary. He has described his plan to shoot and kill drug smugglers at the U.S. southern border using in bloodthirsty, B-movie terms: “We’re gonna shoot them stone cold dead.”

And yet his poll numbers keep going down. According to one recent Quinnipiac University poll, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has now pulled even with him for second place in the primary — both at a mere 11%. In February, DeSantis polled at 36%. Trump, despite his betrayal of the country that many Republicans once spoke against, now has about 67% support, with less than a month before the first primary votes will be cast.

Political points?

With the State Guard, Florida’s governor is no doubt hoping for a wave of people fleeing their country on the high seas so he can unleash his soldiers on them for political purposes. When the State Guard was revived last year by the Legislature at DeSantis’ behest, there was an actual surge of migrants in the Florida Keys, mostly from Cuba and Haiti. But since then, the surge has mostly dried up.

That makes no difference to the governor. Clearly, DeSantis wants to use the State Guard as a pawn in his fight to stay relevant in the primary by focusing on a sure-fire hit with Republicans: the evils of immigration.

It’ll be hard to go any lower than Trump has, though. He recently launched a particularly horrendous attack, saying that migrants crossing the southern border are “poisoning the blood” of the United States. Afterward, he insisted — in his usual attempt at manipulation — that any similarity between his words and those in Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” manifesto — “All great cultures of the past perished only because the original creative race died out from blood poisoning” — was simply all in our heads.

DeSantis’ push to revive the State Guard during his presidential run was political from the start and has only become more so. This latest weapons and wounds training is part of the progression toward a potential abuse of power in Florida that he has created with the full-on support of the Legislature. And we’re the ones who will be stuck with the results after he’s gone from office.

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