What’s a Republican governor have to do to earn respect from the mainstream media? I’m asking because saving a lot of lives without totally trashing their state’s economy doesn’t seem to do the trick. Meanwhile, certain Democrat governors are portrayed as quietly competent heroes while having the worst infection and death rates in the nation.
AG Hamilton noted on Twitter earlier this morning:
Florida began its reopening process on Governor Ron DeSantis’ orders over a week ago, smartly putting retiree-heavy South Florida on a later, longer schedule. DeSantis also closed Florida much later than other states did — to media howls. Nevertheless, even though Florida has two million more people than New York does, and its population skews older than New York’s, New York has about eight times more COVID-19 cases than Florida has suffered.
Remember the Democrat attack ad from 2012, showing a Paul Ryan lookalike rolling a wheelchair-bound granny off a cliff? All Ryan had done was propose Medicare reforms. Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo got thousands of grannies and grandpas killed with his March 25 directive ordering nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients. Cuomo even forbade nursing homes “from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.” The result was thousands needlessly dead.
In a sane world with a nonpartisan media, DeSantis should be enjoying improved poll numbers, while New Yorkers ought to be gathered in front of the governor’s mansion with torches and pitchforks. And yet, Cuomo’s approval rating has shot up to 72% according to the latest from Quinnipiac. DeSantis, on the other hand, has seen his once-strong approval ratings decline over the last few weeks.
Despite Florida’s impressive COVID-19 numbers, compared to New York or New Jersey’s, the Washington Post felt the need to ask two days ago, “Does Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis know what he’s doing?” If the New York Times gave a damn about its own city, they’d be demanding the heads of Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Bill DeBlasio. Instead, they’re running scare pieces on Florida with headlines like “‘Found Unresponsive at Home’: Grim Records Recount Lonely Deaths.” And Yahoo News felt the need to explain “How the coronavirus undid Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.” The Wuhan Flu didn’t undo DeSantis; the mainstream media did.
Cuomo has received almost nothing but fawning press coverage, particularly from the Orange Man Bad crowd. Eddie Scarry wrote on Tuesday for the Washington Examiner:
So how are the media’s COVID-19 governor heroes doing? Daily press briefings by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, are run top to bottom live on cable news outlets, and his performances are cherished by the press. The New York Times last month called Cuomo’s delivery “articulate, consistent and often tinged with empathy.” The paper also likened the briefings to a “tender embrace.”
That soft hug, however, is currently accompanied by the shockingly high death rate of 139 per 100,000 people, a number that was boosted in part by Cuomo’s appalling decision to force nursing homes to accept any elderly person who had been infected with the virus. This directly exposed many high-risk people to the coronavirus and has probably resulted in many deaths.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is a Republican, but he gets a lot of love from the press because he’s always ready to attack President Trump. His state isn’t doing so hot, either, with a rate of 28 deaths per 100,000. That means Maryland has a death rate more than twice that of Georgia.
New Jersey — where Democrat Phil Murphy is governor — has a population not much less than Georgia’s, yet has four times as many COVID-19 cases. I was unable to find a single negative MSM headline about Murphy in a week’s worth of stories from the mainstream media. The Republican governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, has been given the same treatment as DeSantis, portrayed as a cross between a bumbler and a murderer. Kemp has been accused of “deadly ignorance,” and begged not to “risk virus’ resurgence here.” He was even placed on a list of “The Definitive Ranking of the Worst U.S. Government Responses to the Coronavirus.”
But would you rather be a retiree with existing medical conditions in Kemp’s Georgia, or in Phil Murphy’s New Jersey? Would you feel safer on a Florida beach, or in a New York nursing home?
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