[Back to the serious discussion after duly noting the mod’s strong advice about limiting ourselves to good-faith exchanges]
It was great, and he’s keeping the momentum rolling. In assessing this we have to consider the consequences of doing something like this for Filipkowski based on who he is and what his probable goals are rather than how delightful the fireworks are for us.
One doesn’t get an appointment like his (which as @scientist notes is a sinecure/status symbol more than one of real power) without putting in a lot of time and/or money on behalf of the Florida GOP. That means that, like The Lincoln Project people, he’s not a friend to liberals and progressives and serves the traditional interests of the GOP (corporation- and billionaire-worship, militarism, relatively quiet white cishet male supremacy). But it also does not mean he’s bought completely into the fascist push. He knows that if he wants the party to continue as it has in that Reaganite mold that’s benefited him then the right-wing populists like DeSantis and Biff have to be loudly opposed before right-wing populism becomes the norm for Republicans (I’d argue it’s too late, but he’s operating from a different perspective).
If he’d just accepted the direction the party is going and made quiet, earnest and increasingly quaint objections within that structure then my bet is he’d have been shuffled off into a role with even less power (and likely replaced by DeSantis with a true loyalist), perhaps with results like Hartinger’s. He’s cynical enough to understand that, one way or another, he was going to be sidelined by DeSantis in favour of a crony. I can see how he would have come to the conclusion that it was better go out on his own terms in the hope that he’d be welcomed back in once the party was taken back by the moneyCons and neoCons (again, I personally think that won’t happen), perhaps being rewarded for taking a leadership role against DeSantis and his ilk. If not, he’s a privileged old white guy who can ride things out in relative comfort or, if things get really bad, run to a safe haven with adequate warning from old friends. What he knows for sure is that now no-one can say he acceded to the requirements of DeSantis’s thuggish regime.
While I’m sure DeSantis will try to punish him for his disloyalty, there’s now not much he can do to Filipkowski as a party man. Filipkowski being a former ADA, I’m also guessing he has his financial and legal ducks lined up in anticipation of whatever BS revenge that DeSantis and his toadies will try to inflict on him (they’re not going to SWAT him), and someone with kompromat hanging over him wouldn’t have resigned so loudly. It all strikes me as a safe gamble with a big payoff if his people win and only a minor downside if they don’t.
It will take a different form, since history doesn’t repeat but rhyme. Right now we’re seeing a power struggle within the Republican party, one that the fascist wing is winning but hasn’t fully taken over either the party or the state. But people who study the history of these processes seriously and who aren’t foolish enough to believe that fascists can be controlled to the benefit of capitalism and the “free” market understand how these things usually play out.
Put simply, once a fascist regime is done consolidating power it expects total loyalty from those who actively and affirmatively participate in its apparatus, complete with public loyalty oaths for all the world to see. High-profile or low-profile, people like that who are later caught defying the will of the regime usually end up dead or wishing they were dead – such is the nature of states that have abandoned the ideals of liberal democracy and social justice.* If the regime falls and they didn’t get caught they’re slated for trial, imprisonment and/or de-Nazification (or de-Baathification, or what have you), as happened to Hartinger despite his efforts to expose what was going at Dachau in the Nazi regime’s very early days.
In practise, of course, the de-Nazification is often superficial if not a mere formality for functionaries and servants of the old regime who are seen as being useful in the post-fascist period. Wernher von Braun is the classic example here.
[* autocrats like Putin and Orban are experimenting with methods besides blunt force, but in the end they’re still about severe retribution and punishment]
