Christian nationalist Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is pulling out all the stops, sending his wife in to submit his closing argument for re-election: God endorses me. DeSantis is running to keep his seat from former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, a Democrat.
It's a not uncommon endorsement Republicans are making – or rather, making up. God isn't going to issue a statement of denial or a cease and desist order. Anyone, even embattled GOP Senate candidate Herschel Walker, can do it – and they are. Walker this week told Georgians, "I'm a warrior for God."
DeSantis' campaign is a bit more polished.
Many may not be old enough to remember Paul Harvey, but many Florida voters are.
The DeSantis campaign, via DeSantis' wife, Casey, just released a two-minute black-and-white ad, ripping off a wonderful ode the late ABC News Radio broadcaster Paul Harvey, who died in 2009 at the age of 90, once recorded.
If you have two minutes it's worth listening to the beautiful, original recording by Harvey, "So God Made a Farmer."
DeSantis' ode to himself is less poetic, but it does enshrine his legacy as a Christian nationalist.
"On the eighth day, God looked down on his plant in paradise and said, 'I need to protect her.' So God made a fighter," the DeSantis ad begins, clearly taking from the Paul Harvey classic.
"God said, 'I need somebody willing to get up before dawn and kiss his family goodbye. travel thousands of miles for no other reason than to serve the people, to save their jobs, their livelihoods, their liberty, their happiness.' So God made a fighter."
"God said, 'I need someone to be strong advocate for truth in the midst of hysteria. Someone who challenges conventional wisdom and isn't afraid to defend what he knows to be right and just,' so God made a fighter."
"God said, 'I need somebody who will take the arrows, stand firm in the wake of unrelenting attacks, look a mother in the eyes and tell her that her child will be in school. She can keep her job, go to church, eat dinner with friends and hold the hand of an aging parents taking their breath for the last time.' So God made a fighter."
"God said, 'I need a family man. A man who would laugh and then sigh and then reply with smiling eyes when his daughter says she wants to spend her life doing what dad does.' So God made a fighter."
In 2013 Ram Trucks used the Paul Harvey ode to farmers in an elegant Super Bowl ad, but at least they credited the author. DeSantis did not.
DeSantis is getting highly criticized for this last-ditch closing argument, just four days before the November 8 election.
"New DeSantis ad says DeSantis was created by God on the 8th day to protect freedom," observed Talking Points Memo founder Josh Marshall.
Economist and frequent political commentator David Rothschild slammed DeSantis by responding with a quote from Exodus.
""You shall have no other gods beside Me. You shall not make for yourself any graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of any thing that is heaven above ... You shall not bow down to them, nor serve them, for I, the Lord Your God, am a jealous God ..."
Florida Attorney Daniel Uhlfelder, who closely tracked DeSantis' possibly unlawful shipping of migrants to Martha's Vineyard, was less eloquent but more specific in his response.
"God created this asshole on 8th day?" he asked.
"If Barack Obama had made an ad like this, evangelicals would have burnt down the country in a ragegasm," wrote Lee Papa, better known as The Rude Pundit.
VICE News' Paul Curst said, "I'm not an expert on Christian theology but I did go to Catholic school for a while and I don't remember reading 'God created the governor of Florida in order to save America from the libs' in the Old Testament."
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but is it not kinda heretical/blasphemous to suggest DeSantis is some kind of prophet sent specifically by God to save us?" asked MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan. "Is it also not weird that Republicans seem to need to create cults of personality around all their leaders? Idolatrous even?"
Rev. Ben Crosby, an Episcopal Church priest, asked: "Under the imaginary Christian nationalist republic that exists in the minds of some of these Twitter guys, would the creators and approvers of this ad be punished with jail time for blasphemy?"
Many others are labeling it "blasphemy."
