New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, has a novel way of getting rid of her Republican opposition: busing them to Florida.
Earlier this month, Hochul called out three Republicans from the Empire State who she thought needed to get lost. Former President Donald Trump, a native New Yorker who’s already moved to Florida, was one. So was her GOP opponent in this November’s election, Lee Zeldin; Duchess County executive Marc Molinaro rounded out the troika.
“Trump and Zeldin and Molinaro — just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, OK? Get out of town. Because you don’t represent our values,” Hochul said during a speech, according to the New York Post. “You’re not New Yorkers.”
Meanwhile, down in Florida, GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis — the governor consistently accused of “divisive rhetoric” by the opposition — is the loudest voice calling out Hochul’s “ridiculous” rhetoric.
“You have the governor of New York saying all Republicans need to get on a bus and leave the state and come to Florida,” DeSantis said during a news conference Tuesday.
“Who would say something so ridiculous? To say if you don’t agree with me, then you don’t even have a right to be here.”
The remarks came as DeSantis warned Floridians about the Internal Revenue Service’s new push to extract tax revenue from everything that moves and works in these United States; as the governor said, “They go after people they don’t like.”
The relevant portion of the speech begins at 15:50:
DeSantis noted Hochul is hardly alone, referring to a recent speech by President Joe Biden in which he referred to GOP positions as “semi-fascism” and told Democrats they needed “to vote to literally save democracy once again,” according to the Associated Press.
“And now you have Biden,” DeSantis said.
“He’s going to say … the majority of the country by the way that opposes his policies are somehow semi-fascist.”
There’s a reason why this kind of rhetoric from Democrats like Biden and Hochul is more than just ridiculous.
A survey from YouGov released this week found that 43 percent of U.S. adults believe a civil war is likely within the next decade. Only 35 percent said it was unlikely, with 22 percent being unsure.
Among Democrats, there seems to be a growing consensus that a serious conflict and divisiveness can be averted — provided, of course, everyone just thinks like them or gets the hell away from them.
Sure, New York is generally a Democrat-leaning state, although this is because of the outsized influence of New York City; go upstate and things start looking a lot more red, politics-wise. It’s not that long ago, after all, that Republican George Pataki was governor of the state; his term ended in 2006. It was even more recent that a Republican was mayor of New York City. Michael Bloomberg didn’t change his affiliation to independent until 2007.
Yet, Gov. Hochul’s message to her opponents isn’t just that she wants them to lose. She literally told them to get out of the state she’s governing because they “don’t represent our values.”
This was coming, mind you, from a governor who wasn’t elected to the post. (Hochul was lieutenant governor under Andrew Cuomo — and when things went bad for the “Luv Guv” and he had to resign, she inherited the position.) If there’s anyone who shouldn’t be telling elected officials to get out of her state — and, by association, telling their supporters they’re unwelcome in New York — it’s her. She’s fanning the flames of division that Democrats claim to abhor.
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Shockingly, this is somehow better than what our president is doing; his method of energizing the Democratic base is telling them their fellow Americans are engaged in “semi-fascism” and that it’s their duty “to vote to literally save democracy once again.” This is demagogy of the worst sort — and yet, totally in line with the leftist narrative these days.
But remember: Ron DeSantis is the one with the “divisive rhetoric.” Did he tell liberals to leave Florida? Nope. Did he say his opponents didn’t belong in his jurisdiction and ought to take a bus to New York? Of course not. It’s just that he has the temerity to be an unapologetic conservative — or a “semi-fascist,” in Biden-speak. If anyone wants to wonder why Americans think we’re careening toward civil war, they need look no further than New York or the White House.
