Florida gubernatorial candidate U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis speaks to supporters at a rally Wednesday, July 18, 2018, in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

Republican Representative and victor in Tuesday’s GOP primary for the Florida gubernatorial race didn’t have long to wait before being labeled racist.

Fresh off his victory in the Florida Republican gubernatorial primary, Rep. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday that voters would “monkey this up” if they elected his African-American Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, to be governor, immediately drawing accusations of racism.
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Calling Gillum “an articulate spokesman” for the far left, DeSantis said during an interview on Fox News when asked about his opponent, “The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and bankrupting the state.”

Clock it: Ron DeSantis has been declared a racist by Democrats less than 12 hours after winning his primary election for saying Monkey this up…
That might be a new record time for the DNC. pic.twitter.com/xxKNRXc47b

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) August 29, 2018

To say that progressives pounced is like saying King Kong stepped off the Empire State Building…oops, that was an ape reference, my bad.

This is classic Republican 2-step by DeSantis: say racist thing, which jazzes up racists, then deny it's racist, which jazzes up the racists who don't think they're racists pic.twitter.com/Xg0N9W81Oi

— Tommy X-TrumpIsARacist-opher (@tommyxtopher) August 29, 2018

DeSantis Uses Racist Language Against Andrew Gillum: https://t.co/fmnBFipfj0 via @YouTube

— The Young Turks (@TheYoungTurks) August 30, 2018

Racist terms, like “monkey,” that @RonDeSantisFL uses in reference to his African American opponent, have no place in America. As a veteran, DeSantis running this kind of campaign hurts his fellow veterans, too – not just African American vets, but all of us. #FLGov pic.twitter.com/NPiyO5OUnR

— VoteVets (@votevets) August 29, 2018

Interesting, given that the usual expression is "muck up." Obviously, the Republicans have traded their dog whistles for bullhorns.

DeSantis says Florida shouldn’t ‘monkey this up’ by electing Andrew Gillum https://t.co/WytuMVnFOi

— Leonard Pitts, Jr. (@LeonardPittsJr1) August 29, 2018

https://twitter.com/ZaibatsuNews/status/1035118665279057925

I think the whole thing is on purpose — DeSantis wants to bait the Democrats into "making things about race" while retaining plausible-enough deniability. https://t.co/JzTlSHQKLR

— Josh Barro (@jbarro) August 29, 2018

And you have the Vichy wing of the GOP chiming in:

Former RNC Chair Michael Steele says he doesn't give Ron DeSantis the benefit of the doubt on his "monkey" comment toward Andrew Gillum: "It's how white folks talk about black men who are successful." via @MSNBC https://t.co/LnVsRDpknI

— NBC News (@NBCNews) August 29, 2018

And this total bullsh** from a “neutral” political observer:

I think this is one of the two better takes here. The first is what Josh suggests — which is actually sort of where I fall. A dog whistle, as the OP suggests, is supposed to be sly (say "welfare" when you mean "black"), and this is not that. 1/ https://t.co/Hb8fhkvIMz

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) August 30, 2018

This doesn't exonerate DeSantis at all, but it's a story that at least makes sense. The second, which is similar to something that occasionally happens to me when I speak extemporaneously, is that a *really* bad word pops into your mind, in this case "don't fuck things up." 2/

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) August 30, 2018

and you know you can't say that, so you end up with a garbled locution that merges a similar phrase ("don't monkey around with this"). Anyway, I lean toward "a," mostly because if you're going to go this far to demonstrate how not-p.c. you are, you're going to go whole hog.

— Sean T at RCP (@SeanTrende) August 30, 2018

What you are seeing here is a concerted effort to regenerate the “Macaca” nonsense that derailed George Allen’s campaign for Virginia senator in 2008. The story being peddled here only makes sense if you believe that DeSantis thinks he can win Florida without any crossover vote, without any black vote, and without a lot of GOP votes. Why are they doing this, other than this is the way GOP candidates are treated by our supposedly unbiased media?

Accusations bubbled after McCain aired a campaign ad referring to then-opponent Barack Obama as a celebrity. Following its release, The New York Times editorial board promptly responded calling it a “racially tinged attack” since the ad juxtaposed Obama with young white celebrities.

Other media outlets quickly followed suit: Bill Press, co-host of CNN’s Crossfire, accused the ad of being “deliberately and deceptively racist;” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann said it was “almost subliminal racism” and Talking Points Memo co-founder Josh Marshall contended that McCain is “pushing the caricature of Obama as a uppity young black man whose presumptuousness is displayed not only in taking on airs above his station but also in a taste for young white women,” reported Politico. Ezra Klein, co-founder of Vox, also accused McCain of “running crypto-racist ads” during his campaign.

What started out as a drip metastasized into full-blown accusations of promulgating a racist agenda.

“What I’m seeing reminds me too much of another destructive period in American history,” Georgia Rep. John Lewis said only two months after the “Celeb” ad aired. “[The campaign is] sowing the seeds of hatred and division, and there is no need for this hostility in our political discourse.”

Lewis further signified McCain was complicit in racial segregation, comparing him to the former governor of Alabama and segregationist George Wallace.

“George Wallace never threw a bomb,” Lewis continued. “He never fired a gun, but he created the climate and the conditions that encouraged vicious attacks against innocent Americans who were simply trying to exercise their constitutional rights.”

CNN Anchor Don Lemon implied similar sentiments, telling his followers on Twitter that “the question is” if the McCain campaign was “inciting hate and hate speech.”

The Democrat winner, Andrew Gillum, was a surprise winner in a three-person race. The favorite was Bob Graham’s daughter, Florida representative Gwen Graham. When Gillum won, not only were the Democrats saddled with a profoundly socialist candidate but a deeply corrupt one who is apparently a subject of an FBI investigation.

Everyone is entitled to believe what they wish here. If you dislike DeSantis because he is a Trump ally, then I’m sure the racial slur allegation resonates with you and fits nicely in your worldview. For my part, I’m with Townhall colleague Kurt Schlichter:

I have a different view. How about these lying sacks of shit kiss our collective ass?

He bears zero responsibility for being a victim of a cheesy slander. Our only response should be to tell them to go to hell. https://t.co/iEWxAReEyg

— Kurt Schlichter (@KurtSchlichter) August 30, 2018