When the Great Big Book on Effective Conservative Communication is finally written, its author may well acknowledge Ron DeSantis as her inspiration.

DeSantis, the first-term governor of The Free State of Florida, is a fearless counterpuncher with a big right hand — one that he’s been using to great effect against a corrupt and woefully biased mainstream media. Whereas the Doles and the Bushes and the McCains and the Romneys of the Republican world have always led with their chins and wondered, from the seat of their pants, why they kept getting their clocks cleaned, DeSantis keeps his dukes up.

Like the third guy in the ring says just before the opening bell: Protect yourself at all times.

Such was the case this week when COVID-deranged Democrats and their media trucklings nearly threw a clot in response to DeSantis having encouraged a group of Florida high school students to remove their masks. The students were arrayed just behind DeSantis, who was just about to speak at the University of South Florida to announce $20 million in funding for cybersecurity and IT training opportunities.

DeSantis, whose unwillingness to be bullied is matched only by his willingness to put in the work and do the research, was simply following the science. Knowing that the CDC itself had recently acknowledged the worthlessness of cloth masks among children, and that this particular age cohort is at greater risk for dying in an auto accident than dying of COVID, DeSantis was merely telling them that this long national nightmare was over; that after two long and brutal and inhumane and unscientific years, it was now okay to show their beautiful faces once again. And the Left went ballistic. Here’s the exchange between the governor and the students:

“You do not have to wear those masks,” DeSantis said just before taking to the lectern. “Please take them off. Honestly, it’s not doing anything. We’ve got to stop with this COVID theater. So if you want to wear it, fine, but this is ridiculous.”

“Good Lord,” squealed one-time Florida Republican Congressman and current Useful Idiot of the Left Joe Scarborough. “Where was that guy raised? In a barn? I’m serious, was that guy raised in a barn?”

“Those students should have been comfortable wearing a mask,” said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky to an audience of sadly ignorant lemmings on Scarborough’s MSNBC. “It is absolutely their choice.”

But was it? Was it really the choice of every one of those students behind the governor to don their face diapers, or did some teacher or administrator, just prior to the event, tell them to put their masks on?

As DeSantis told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Thursday night, “I think it needs to be said because people have been lied to for two years.” He continued:

They talk about, “Oh, by letting someone have a choice to take off their mask and welcoming that choice” — that that’s somehow bullying. Bullying is locking kids out of school, which they did. Bullying is forcing kids to wear masks for eight hours a day, which they did for two years and are only stopping now because the politics changed. … I say every time we go, if we’re at a big event and the servers are wearing it, they should be liberated from those masks. It is political theater. They’re doing it for the appearance. They’re not doing it because it’s having any meaningful medical impact.

Those are the facts about masking, and the Left is only now grudgingly admitting them — and only because political lives are at stake.

Having said all this about Governor DeSantis’s willingness to counterpunch, you may be wondering why we hadn’t mentioned The Ultimate Counterpuncher. Donald Trump is indeed the heavyweight champ of mainstream media belittlement, but the Florida governor’s approach may well be more effective. DeSantis hits hard, but he never swings wildly. He’s precise, disciplined, measured, and always right on the mark.

But regardless of one’s preference, neither Trump nor DeSantis takes any guff. And that’s the winning formula in an era of unapologetic and unrelenting mainstream media bias.