Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis weathered the mediapocalypse on COVID-19.
As The Free Press readers will recall, this website recently noted that some heavyweights in the left-wing media were grudgingly giving the Sunshine State Republican his due on the virus – even after they spent the past year trumpeting critics who moaned that “DeathSantis” or “DuhSantis” was literally the death of his state.
As The New York Times recently noted, “For better or worse, Florida’s experiment in returning to life-as-it-used-to-be offers a glimpse of what many states are likely to face in the weeks ahead, as they move into the next phase of the pandemic — the part where it starts to be over.”
Now we have one more anti-DeSantis pub admitting the governor may have performed far better than the media’s Democratic heroes in New York, California, and elsewhere.
Late last week, Politico offered a piece that indicated DeSantis had outdueled the doomy expectations his critics parroted for months throughout 2020.
“It’s a year into the pandemic — and the apocalypse has yet to arrive,” Politico noted.
“Approximately 2 million Floridians have tested positive for the coronavirus and more than 32,000 have died, the disbursement of unemployment benefits has been stingy and uneven, the vaccine rollout has been pockmarked by tales of lengthy waits, balky websites, and numerous charges of socioeconomic inequities and political favoritism. Ominous variants lurk.”
“But Florida has fared no worse, and in some ways better, than many other states — including its big-state peers. The most controversial policies DeSantis enacted — locking down later and opening up earlier, keeping nursing homes closed to visitation while insisting schools needed to be open to students, resisting intense pressure to issue a mask mandate — have ended up being, on balance, short of or even the opposite of ruinous.’
Politico added, “His standing looks far sturdier than his gubernatorial counterparts now teetering from Covid-related crises—Gavin Newsom, who faces a recall in California, and Andrew Cuomo, who is on the precipice of political extinction in New York.”
Politico quoted Orlando superlawyer John Morgan, a notable Democrat and successful shepherd of state constitutional amendments authorizing medical marijuana and the $15 an hour minimum wage: “He’s managed the pandemic better than any other governor in the country. On the pandemic — as of this writing — DeSantis won.”
“He could have killed a bunch of us,” Morgan added. “But he didn’t.”
Rest assured, the writer, Michael Kruse, found plenty of Democrats to denounce the first-term governor.
But Kruse was honest enough to admit that he nodded approvingly when he heard DeSantis rattle off the ills of keeping schools closed, the woeful evidence of which we’ve seen play out in blue states afflicted with increased teen suicides and mental health issues.
And Kruse noted that the data – on infections, deaths, vaccinations, unemployment, housing, schools – that shows Florida performed as good or better than most other states – which likely has not earned DeSantis the credit he deserves since Florida has the largest 65-plus population in the nation.
Mike Haridopolos, a former president of the state Senate, told Kruse, “He was willing to take the barbs. He’s reaping the rewards.”
Florida residents might add so are they.
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