Florida – or God’s Waiting Room, as locals call it – has always had a siren song attracting snowbirds. The combination of beaches, golf, warm weather, and no income tax draws seniors to the Northeast and the South Midwest, often permanently.

But recently, Ron DeSantis’ Don’t Call It a Presidential campaign convinced many others to performatively move to the Sunshine State. Seen in a way, Florida now looks like something of a MAGA mega-church, with Donald Trump as God and DeSantis as the smiling, well-heeled pastor.

Donald Trump has always been a New Yorker to the core, but halfway through his presidency he said he would now be a resident of Florida, as New York authorities were investigating him.

Understandably, the Kushners followed Daddy Trump to Florida, less because of an investigation and more because the New York social scene had soured somewhat on them, with the tiki torches and white nationalists and brown children taken from them. their parents and kept in cages. It wasn’t fair, of course – Ivanka and Jared have always been the voices of reason! They tried to temper daddy’s worst instincts! Imagine how much worse everything would have been without them.

But New York socialites aren’t known for their ability to think nuanced thoughts. And so, the poor Kushners scampered into the dirty south in shame, punished for the sins of the father.

So began the exodus. Even as COVID cases in Florida skyrocketed and Ron DeSantis’ surgeon general tried to ‘unroll’ the psychology of testing for COVID, people from the MAGA world turned their lives upside down and moved to Florida to own the libraries .

There was Benny Johnson from Turning Point USA, who obviously benefited from telecommuting. (Turning Point is headquartered in Arizona.) Pastor Ron brought the heat and Benny had to join us. Although there are probably synergies here. Johnson has a show on Newsmax which is obviously based in Florida.

Over the past year, DeSantis has made the bold move to insist that the power of government must expand to include the ability to prevent private companies from requiring vaccination of its employees. It seems to be somewhat, uh, contrary to traditional conservative orthodoxy. But times are changing and CPAC, which hosted its annual conference in Washington for half a century, has moved its 2021 conference to Florida as an act of defiance against the socialists in the grand government now in power in the nation’s capital.

New York To post writer Karol Markowicz moved from his beloved Brooklyn to Florida and made a big deal out of it, with several columns and TV appearances. Among other reasons given, she seems to have decided to move because she wants her children to go to school without wearing masks. The good thing is ! Each family has its own priorities.

In Missouri, State Representative Justin Hill, a. . . racially aware anti-vaccine. . . resigned from the Missouri home to move to Florida to become a “consultant.”

Even some guys from Silicon Valley are moving to Florida, although Eric Newcomer reports that these are usually individuals and not entire companies.

It’s all very exciting!

Politically motivated micro-emigration is not new. Libertarians once dreamed of a marine settlement, in which independent minds would congregate on ships in international waters so that they could live free from the yoke of government in their own Galt’s Gulch. You might be shocked to learn that none of these projects ever came to fruition.

A slightly more realistic movement was the Free State Project, which attempted to convince 20,000 libertarians to move to New Hampshire under the theory that that number would be large enough for them to take control of the state government and then remake it. the state of granite according to. . . whatever the libertarians want. This project also failed, although today you can marry gay and smoke legal weed just about anywhere without having to experience a winter in New Hampshire. So maybe the Libertarians pretty much won?

One of the beautiful things about America is our urge to travel. It’s easy to pick up and move for any reason, or no reason at all. Want to be near Broadway shows? Move to New York. Don’t like the weather? Direction Florida. Do you like hiking? The Pacific Northwest awaits you. It is not Europe. You do not need a visa or a work permit. You just put the U-Haul away and go.

So I don’t blame anyone for wanting to move to Florida, Texas, Oregon or elsewhere. I celebrate it!

But there’s something a little weird about moving to a state because you love the politicians who live there. Ron DeSantis won the governor’s race in 2018 by 34,000 votes. If Andrew Gillum was governor and former President Trump returned to the Big Apple, would all of these people change their lives and move to Florida?

I think they wouldn’t. Again, it is their right. But “scary” wouldn’t be too strong a word. This is all less like Okies migrating to California than people leaving Indiana for Guyana.

Hopefully Florida’s great migration ends happier.