He blamed “activists” on both the left and right for “hijacking” the process of banning books, accusing them of submitting book challenges solely to create a media narrative.
Even if that's true, he created the process.
Rule one of government: Don't create something that you aren't ready for it being abused.
All kinds of walks of life exist in a nation. There's conservative folks who abuse shit, there's liberal folks who abuse shit, there's socialist who abuse shit, there's libertarians that abuse shit, and I think we get the point.
Now the interesting thing is DeSantis is trying to apply more government mandate to fix government mandate. Which I don't think anyone needs to remind him how that'll play out. This is exactly the genesis for the mountains of red tape that so many people come to bemoan. This is exactly how it starts. If you have ever wondered how some Byzantine system of government got started, this is it.
Now DeSantis might not be around by the time this program goes full apeshit, but boy oh boy has he given it the fuel needed to get there. That's the thing about these kinds of odd ass programs that have ill defined goals, ill defined structure, and ill defined enforcement they get out of hand at fairly rapid pace. And that's the lamentation DeSantis is speaking to. He's seeing how something he started is quickly turning into a wildfire and he's hoping to not be on the hook for the conflagration.
AND THAT'S WHY YOU DON'T DO THESE THINGS TO BEGIN WITH. It's pretty straightforward governance and fairly obvious shit for anyone who spent longer than ten seconds studying history of governance. You don't invent some random ass broad sweeping bullshit and think, "Oh this couldn't possibly blow up in my face!"
Fucking shit, dude couldn't govern his ass out of a wet paper sack. And he actually thought he could run for President? Man likely couldn't run a Rotary club effectively.
It’s possible that DeSantis is covering his tracks after a lawsuit from PEN America last month was affirmed in federal court. U.S. District Judge Kent Wetherell issued a ruling against Escambia County School Board, which has banned above 1,500 books, including the dictionary, under H.B. 1069. The judge ruled that book removals violated the First Amendment and rejected the state’s argument. (DeSantis is not named in the lawsuit.)
people are still trying to view the Right as rational actors with a coherent agenda.
They do have a coherent agenda though. It just violates every rule of decency and is anti-democratic. DeSantis himself used to talk about his agenda all the when he was still running for president.