Potemkin wrote:But why is he quite successful when he does that, @Pants-of-dog? This is the issue we are trying to address.
For Desantis, the motives are obvious. More power, more money.
For those who end up believing Desantis enough to give tacit consent to his ploys, it seems to be various different reasons.
One factor I think I may have noticed is that there is a willingness to allow these attacks on groups identified as the Other if and when centrists and liberals feel they would profit or would have their current privileges solidified. In this case, it is simply protecting class interests.
In terms of US history in particular, we can look at the economic aspects. Desantis knows he can target trans people and non-whites because trans people and non-whites do not have the economic clout to threaten him, since both of these groups are disproportionately working class or even poorer.
Solidifying racism against Black people would also have economic benefits for the rich, since it would perpetuate the racism that supports and reinforces the US class system, which uses race as the metric for defining which class people belong to. Again, pretty simple class interests.
There is also probably some sort of psychological mechanism as well whereby Desantis's supporters need some sort of reason or excuse to blame the victims of these civil rights violations for these civil rights violations in order to assuage their guilt. But I find musing about the psychological flaws of others to be an unverifiable exercise in vanity.