The DeSantis Doctrine: How the New York Times Accidentally Endorsed Conservative Federalism
This morning I detected, upon reading the New York Times, a particular strain of discomfort—like a baroness forced to compliment the help. It’s the sound of America’s self-appointed intelligentsia realizing, to their mounting horror, that real governing is happening—but not in the salons of Georgetown or the editorial boardrooms of Manhattan. No, it’s happening in Tallahassee, of all places, where a governor with more policy acumen than PR consultants has been busily doing what Republicans once claimed to admire: winning arguments by changing reality, not just yelling about it on cable news.
This has led to an unforeseen tragedy in elite circles—the emergence of what they might call “competent conservatism”—a phenomenon so rare in Washington that it’s now being studied like a lunar eclipse. And at the center of this cosmic disturbance stands Governor Ron DeSantis: irritating the Left, terrifying bureaucrats, and—worst of all for the Times—making it all look rather… effective.
What they fail to grasp—and what the rest of us are beginning to rediscover—is that the real seat of American power has never been the Oval Office, but the states. That is the animating principle behind the New Federalist movement: that our Republic was never designed for central management by Beltway courtiers, but for distributed authority, resilience, and reform from the bottom up.
And nowhere is that more obvious than in education, where DeSantis hasn’t merely talked a good game—he’s rewritten the rules, restructured the institutions, and reminded a lazy political class that policy is still possible.
The Gray Lady on DeSantis: Like Sister Mary Margaret Explaining Nietzsche—With a Wince and a Ruler
The Gray Lady clutches her pearls while confessing—grudgingly—that DeSantis leads, innovates, and reshapes American education from a perch far more powerful than D.C.: a governorship that knows how to use it.
You can always tell when anyone at the New York Times is trying to be fair—they start sounding like my Catholic school teacher when she talked to me about Nietzsche. It’s not that they’re incapable of objectivity; it’s that they find it distasteful. Such was the case in their latest attempt at begrudging praise, which reads less like an article and more like the internal monologue of an liberal editorial board caught watching Ron DeSantis govern competently.
The piece, ostensibly a comparison between President Trump and Governor DeSantis on education policy, is in fact a fainting-couch lament disguised as journalism. One can almost hear the chorus of Ivy League-trained sighs as the authors recount—between horror and awe—that while Trump rants about shutting down the Department of Education, DeSantis is too busy doing it, piece by piece, from Florida.
Yes, dear reader, the article admits—almost wistfully—that it’s DeSantis, not Trump, who pioneered what has become the modern conservative education agenda. But like any seasoned Times piece, this truth is delivered with the finesse of a tantrum in a blazer.
“The Trump administration has moved to withhold funding from schools and colleges with diversity practices it opposes…”
Yes, and somewhere in Washington, bureaucrats are preparing sternly worded letters and advisory memos. Meanwhile, in Florida, DeSantis signed a law that nuked DEI bureaucracies from orbit, abolished the gender studies department at New College, and replaced its administration with people who don't treat biology as a social construct.
But let’s not let actions get in the way of federal press releases.
A Governing Model That Actually Governs
Here’s the reality—painful as it may be for the Gray Lady: Florida’s governor is not waiting for Congress to clear its throat. He’s using the levers of state power precisely as our Constitution intended. It’s what the New York Times would call “dangerous” and the rest of us would call “governing.”
When DeSantis implemented a statewide curriculum focused on constitutional originalism and civic literacy, offering teacher bonuses for participation, the Times didn’t challenge the facts—they questioned the motivation. Because in elite media circles, motive matters more than metrics. Never mind that Florida’s education system jumped to No. 1 in U.S. News rankings or that parents are fleeing blue states for school choice programs in the Sunshine State. What matters is that DeSantis isn’t doing it their way, and worse—he’s succeeding.
This is a man who, in the middle of the COVID hysteria, reopened schools, resisted teacher union pressure, and made a national case for parental rights—all before it became a talking point for primary candidates.
It wasn’t Trump. It wasn’t Tucker. It was DeSantis.
Federalism vs. Federal Theater
The Times feigns confusion at how DeSantis was able to do so much so quickly while Trump—despite executive orders and podium flourishes—has struggled to implement similar reforms nationally. One wonders whether the editorial board has ever read the Tenth Amendment.
But for those needing a refresher: 90% of public K-12 funding comes from states and localities. The federal government contributes less than 10%, and even then, it cannot dictate curriculum. That’s not a loophole. It’s the design.
In other words, DeSantis is effective not because he’s authoritarian—but because he’s playing on home field.
Which leads us to the Times’ second quiet admission: states are where reform happens. Yes, they mumble through it like a smoker reciting lung cancer stats, but they admit it nonetheless. That alone should be carved in marble.
DeSantis didn’t just identify the levers. He pulled them. He used ESA expansions to give parents universal school choice. He passed curriculum transparency laws. He gutted institutional rot in higher education. And when he faced opposition, he didn’t write op-eds—he replaced boards.
That’s the part that scares the New York Times. And, frankly, it scares some in his own party.
The Swamp Strikes Back
Just this year, the feckless Florida House—led by Speaker Daniel Perez—attempted a political sneak attack in the form of House Bill 1321. This quiet and failed mutiny would have stripped the governor of key appointment powers over university boards, including his influence on presidential hires at reformed institutions like New College. The bill passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support, but it didn’t survive DeSantis’ veto threat. The Senate quietly killed it before it could reach his desk.
In other words, they tried to kneecap him—and he stopped them cold.
The bill would have shifted final hiring authority away from the Board of Governors to each university’s local board of trustees—many of which are still infested with the same bureaucratic rot DeSantis was trying to excise. Even in the Free State of Florida the Swamp continues to fight reform.
It wasn’t about transparency. It was about control.
This isn’t just about education policy. It’s about whether conservative governance is real or merely rhetorical. DeSantis made it real—and that has drawn fire not just from the Left, but from the establishment and courtiers on the Right who prefer campaign slogans to institutional change.
Because DeSantis isn’t just fighting the culture war—he’s winning it. Legally, surgically, and with receipts. And even when the resistance comes from inside the tent, he doesn’t blink.
The Drama of Deference
Throughout the piece, the Times quotes characters like Tiffany Justice (of Moms for Liberty) and Christopher Rufo, careful to present them as useful populist actors in DeSantis’ script, all while downplaying the one obvious truth they can’t quite say aloud:
He’s the only one in the Republican Party actually doing the thing.