. DeSantis markets himself as the guy with the toughness to implement a MAGA agenda, but developing solid foundations to put MAGA governing impulses into law is proving tougher than expected.
Those MAGA failings have a historical precursor, said Steven Teles, a political scientist who wrote a. Some on the right have long embraced a “strategy of opposition to legal liberalism,” Teles noted, that was essentially the legal “version of populism,” like the doomed impeach-Warren crusade. By contrast, other elite conservatives opted for transforming the legal profession from within. Teles says this entailed painstaking institution-building, and the creation of a canon of legal opinion that might flower into Supreme Court rulings once the time was right. That’s what happened after Trump’s presidency and the pilfering of Merrick Garland’s seat created a 6-3 conservative supermajority, leading to the end of abortion rights.