Downfall: Jennifer Canady broke Ron DeSantis and would make Florida a pariah state. What will Charles Canady do about it?

This is the ultimate how-it-started, how-it's going. And we're going to find out soon what really motivates the Canadys.

The images I’ve used may cause this article to truncate in email. Click through to the site if that happens. The article itself isn’t all that long.

---

How it started …

Say cheese, Rep. Jennifer Canady, R-Nepotism (on the left) and Sen. Colleen Burton, R-Who Cares? (on the right)

How it’s going …

Where it ends …

Make sure you watch the full DeSantis “Downfall” video. It is spectacular.

---

What do the Canadys actually believe? We’re gonna find out.

Rep. Jennifer Canady, R-Nepotism, who lied blatantly to the public as a candidate about her forced-birth related intentions, sponsored Florida’s 6-week abortion ban. The Florida Supreme Court, including Jennifer Canady’s husband Charles Canady, will consider if her law is legal on Sept. 8.

So the 6-week ban, which effectively mandates total forced birth with no workable exceptions, hasn’t even taken effect yet. But it has already destroyed Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign and ended his political future after he leaves office in 2026.

I do acknowledge that Canady’s law had significant help from Richard Corcoran and Ron DeSantis’ own personality and corruption. But Canady’s comprehensive forced birth law, which she pursued after openly lying, is the poisoned dagger in his dying career. Trump has already gutted DeSantis with Canady’s law, while Canady rode it to become theoretical Speaker-of-the-House some distant years in the future.

That’s a bad deal for DeSantis. A normal corrupt and selfish politician might have some angry feelings about that. But I don’t even want to speculate about what goes on within the frigid blasted moonscape of Ron DeSantis’ emotional register.

75-25 isn’t great when you’re the 25, Canadys

Consider what the red-state Ohio voting public recently did to the GOP effort to sabotage a referendum enshrining the right for a woman to terminate a pregnancy. 57-43 demolition. Expect the actual anti-forced birth referendum in Ohio to hit 60. Redder Kansas got to 59.

And here’s what polling in Florida has found.

Read how this professional forced birther correctly interprets post-Ohio reality for DeSantis and Canady and Marilyn Paul and all the other forced birthers, who are suddenly very very quiet these days:

Let’s repeat: anti-forced birth crushes forced birth in democratic competition because most people are not gross and crazy. Virtually no one actually believes “life begins at conception” enough to act on it with the violent force of the state, especially for themselves. But they do believe, correctly, that their daughters and wives and mothers are life worth protecting and saving.

Florida’s looming forced birth and medical chaos

Florida is the next, unavoidable, and arguably most important, hot front in America’s forced birth war.

Lakeland’s forced birth power marriage — Supreme Court Justice Charles Canady and Rep. Jennifer Canady, R-Nepotism — are more in the middle of it than any other couple. In fact, I doubt any political marriage in the history of Florida has made itself so central to the power structure and future of our state.

Multiple chaotic Florida and Canady-specific dynamics and events are in motion that could produce a massive range of outcomes in the next year or so.

We might get a complete return to Roe’s full protection.

Or we might get a Grady Judd-enforced hellscape of pregnancy tracking, literal babykilling, blasted-out maternity care, and long-term pariah state status. Good luck hiring anybody young and talented into that — or keeping anyone here long-term who has better options.

Let’s look at the key points at play:

1. The Florida Supreme Court, including Jennifer Canady’s husband Charles, will consider a lawsuit challenging 15-week forced birth, but not 6-week, on Sept. 8. This challenge is based on Florida’s constitutional guarantee of privacy. But if they legally approve the 15-week ban, the 6-week ban will take effect. The gun-shy Court/Legislature politics about allowing pre-trial enforcement for 15, but not 6 is a tell.

2. At the same time, a coalition of anti-forced groups and advocates are working to set a referendum rejecting forced birth in the 2024 general election and essentially returning to Roe in Florida. But they have to get 60 percent of votes, not 50 percent, like Ohio and Kansas. That will be a challenge. I think 58~ish is a guarantee — but 60 is not guaranteed. Even with 75 percent opposition, tribal party voting is a powerful force.

3. Forced birth after 6 weeks is light years more brutal than after 15 weeks. It takes Florida’s 80,000 legal pregnancy terminations each year to zero, overnight. Other than some really awful “no exception” to rape and health horror stories, a 15-week forced birth doesn’t radically change Roe and destroy maternity care. Florida woman can still choose in massive numbers to legally terminate her pregnancy. The “exceptions” in 6-week law are not exceptions. They are completely unworkable and will be granted entirely at the whim of Grady Judd’s addled judgement.

4. This is key: forced birthers like Jennifer Canady behave as they can impose forced birth without actually forcing women and girls to give birth. They want to impose forced birth on paper while pretending like the human and medical system consequences of taking 80,000 abortions to zero don’t exist. Lalalalalalalala. We can’t hear you. We’re the life-loving good guys. Pay no attention to Grady Judd’s guns pointed at every pregnant woman’s womb.

5. Their silence right now reflects a dawning terror of the true consequences, political and real life, of their own supposed “beliefs.” I would be scared, too. Look they what those “beliefs” did to Ron DeSantis — even before the full brutal human consequences are felt. That’s why Canady deceived people about forced birth as a candidate. It’s why she’s not out bragging and cheering about her “accomplishment.” I think the last time anybody saw her in public she was siccing Grady Judd on a woman who tossed balled up panties near her.

6. Texas shows that its forced birth ban literally kills babies. Up 11.5 percent. Forced birthers could not care less — because it’s never been about babies. I do care about babies, which is another reason I oppose forced birth at gunpoint.

   Congratulations, “pro-lifers.” I will not call you “babykillers” because I am a better, kinder person than any of you are. But you are killing babies. Do with that information whatever your conscience tells you.

7. Other than the DeSantis presidential campaign, the relationship between Charles and Jennifer Canady is likely the single most determining factor of what happens next. And it is complicated by Jennifer Canady’s weird oath to her employer, Lakeland Christian School, which the school expects to supercede any oath to the people of Florida or Polk County. This oath, as written, requires Jennifer Canady to obey her husband, in a manner required by literal interpretation of the Bible. Don’t shoot the messenger. It’s not my oath. (Of course, this oath also requires Jennifer Canady not to lie. So ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.)

8. Jennifer Canady is theoretically in line to be speaker of the Florida House in the somewhat distant future. 75 percent of Florida voters (including 61 percent of Republicans) oppose her 6-week ban, according to a University of North Florida poll. How Canady’s husband rules on her wildly unpopular 6-week ban that killed Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign and his post-2026 career will have great bearing on her future, too.

Gaming it all out

The insulation from most consequences that defines #4 definitely ends when Charles Canady and the Supreme Court rules.

But it actually starts ending on Sept. 8, when the eyes of the entire world will be watching Charles Canady listen to oral arguments on the state constitutional basis for his wife’s brutal and unpopular law. DeSantis will be hiding out in the sky over Iowa that day on the private jet of whichever billionaire will still talk to him.

I promise the Sept. 8 arguments and attention will supercharge the already very intense referendum effort. A ruling imposing forced birth at gunpoint after six weeks and the accompanying surge in baby death would cause an explosion that gives the referendum its best chance to succeed. By contrast, saying anything less than 15 weeks violates the Florida Constitution could make for a potent GOP argument that the referendum in unnecessary.

Nine months ago, the Supreme Court would have likely done whatever DeSantis told it to do. These people crave the direction of dictators. It’s a weird right wing tic. The smartest political play would be for DeSantis to tell them to find a way to make the 15-week ban legal, but anything less illegal. I don’t think that’s on the docket; and I’m not sure there is a legal way to do it. But this is Florida, and there is no law — only power.

My idea would be a corrupt, but rational, approach to saving Florida from endless forced birth war that the forced birthers will eventually lose. That’s exactly the kind of “compromise” this forced birther is pleading for here:

But DeSantis is not a shrewd or pragmatic dictator. And this isn’t nine months ago. Even if he tries to dictate that “compromise,” it’s not clear to me he has the juice to make it happen now. DeSantis’ fear-based dictatorship is crumbling under his own pathetic weakness and vanquished Alpha mystique.

Hard to get off the power train, even when you see the tracks are broken ahead

So I don’t know what the Supreme Court will do. It likely hinges on this question: are the justices more interested in the long-term power of the Republican party or the power of the forced birth movement? I genuinely do not know that answer.

But it also may hinge on what the Canadys care most about. Status? Power? Forced birth dictatorship? I don’t know.

My experience with the power/status class in Lakeland/Polk County is that it lacks any real capacity for self-reflection, even in the name of self-interest and course correction. I think the Canadys are on a runaway freight train of dominance that dates back years and years in Florida and Polk County.

Forced birth is the ultimate act of dominance. This freight train put them in power. I don’t think they’re comfortably enjoying the ride right now. Jennifer Canady’s behavior doesn’t suggest she’s having fun.

But I don’t think they have any idea what else to do.

The inertia of one-party statehood, of mindless tribal attachment to the tribe’s fake priority, is irresistible. They will likely ride it until derails.

The GOP forced birth civil war

Consider this scenario, which is certainly possible, even likely: Supreme Court rules in favor of 15-week, which puts 6-week ban in effect within 30 days.

Chaos ensues. Baby deaths surge. Referendum gets huge boost and gets the signatures necessary to put the referendum on the ballot in 2024. Charles Canady and the Supreme Court could throw the referendum out without letting it on the ballot, which would cause another explosion. Or maybe the referendum goes through, but only gets 59.4 percent of the vote.

Baby and maternity-care killing 6-week forced birth remains in place, with guns of the state pointed at all wombs against the overwhelming majority will of the state — forever. The 59.4 percent will not simply “come around” to accept gnarled Canady fingers reaching into their bodies and the bodies of their loved ones.

That scenario just means war — forever. It makes Florida a pariah state, vastly more vicious to women than Ohio or Kansas or Kentucky, much less the “blue” states, clearly against the will of its voters.

Six-week forced birth will eventually be rolled back after years of useless armageddon — after years of mindless blood and cruelty that the names Canady and DeSantis will own — forever.

And it will be a faction of GOPers who roll it back.

You will see an anti-forced birth Republican politics emerge to make common cause with its wives and daughters and Democrats and Independents to restore some kind of sanity and humanity.

And we’ll all ask ourselves: why couldn’t we just do that in first place.