Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a news conference in West Palm Beach, Fla., Dec.15, 2020.
Photo:
Michael Laughlin/Zuma Press
From “DeSantis’s COVID Gamble Paid Off” by
Helen Lewis
for the Atlantic, Nov. 10:
[Ron] DeSantis takes every chance to hammer home the idea of Florida as the “nation’s citadel of freedom,” as he put it in a campaign stump speech. . . . In the governor’s narrative of the coronavirus, the people of Florida did not cower at home or tentatively venture outside in masks, nor did they labor under vaccine mandates as new variants spread across the country. No, they were free. Free to support their family. Free to attend school. Free to run a business. Free from the constraints of fogged glasses and not being able to unlock their iPhone.
To that, a liberal might add: free to get sick or even die from a respiratory disease for which safe, effective vaccines are available. Which is exactly the point. DeSantis’s COVID policies reassured members of his political base that they were in control: They understood the risks and took them anyway. And although Florida had a relatively high COVID death toll, the welter of confounding factors (weather, demographics, wealth) denied liberals the smackdown they craved.
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Appeared in the November 14, 2022, print edition as ‘Notable & Quotable: ‘Craved’.’
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