At Moms for Liberty Event, Ron DeSantis Was a Throwback to an Earlier Time

When Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida took the stage on Tuesday afternoon for the first time during the Republican National Convention, at an ornate old theater down the street from the arena where the convention was unfolding, it was possible to glimpse a moment he had imagined a year ago when he started what became his failed presidential campaign.

The convention attendees who had gathered to hear him speak in Milwaukee wore attire celebrating parents’ rights and condemning the “woke” agenda. Earlier speakers had discussed lawsuits against Covid-19 vaccine mandates and successful book-banning campaigns. There were denouncements of transgender athletes competing in women’s sports and of Disney. And Mr. DeSantis was welcomed with applause as the emcee extolled the “new, bold vision” he had brought to Florida as its governor.

The event was hosted by Moms for Liberty, a conservative parents’ rights group closely allied with Mr. DeSantis. The group emerged as a political force on the right in the jittery, discontented early months of the pandemic’s second year in Mr. DeSantis’s home state of Florida. The governor and Moms for Liberty both harnessed discontent over mask and vaccine mandates, library books and school gender policies to become political forces to be reckoned with, first in Florida and then across the country.

Their appearance together, on the edge of the R.N.C., was a reminder of a moment that had, to Mr. DeSantis’s misfortune, mostly dissipated by the time he formally entered the race for president in May 2023.

Onstage at the Moms for Liberty summit, Mr. DeSantis ran through the issues and the résumé that captured the Republican electorate when he first began hinting at his intentions.

“We said we are not going to be indulging in things like gender ideology in our schools,” he told the crowd. He recalled how other Republican politicians in Florida “would cower in the corner like little scared kitties” in the face of the corporate might of Disney, against which he crusaded as governor after the company opposed a state law banning classroom discussions of sexuality and gender.