New York Democrat Kathy Hochul, the plastic politician elevated to the governorship after her predecessor resigned in disgrace, has a message for political opponents: Leave the state and relocate to Florida.
You know, that warm, far-southern state that’s far more successful than New York.
(Florida has a $20 billion budget surplus while the Empire State has a $13 billion empire of debt. The Sunshine State also handled Covid far better.)
At a Monday evening rally in Kingston, Hochul said that she’s “fighting to bring government back to the people and out of the hands of dictators.” Now there’s a campaign slogan — for her gubernatorial opponent Lee Zeldin (R).
New York has been controlled by Democrats for decades.
(Perhaps Kamala Harris is Hochul’s political advisor.)
As for the governor’s threatening her opponents with a good time, she referenced not just Donald Trump and Zeldin, but also Dutchess County executive Marc Molinaro, saying, “Trump and Zeldin and Molinaro — just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong, okay? Get out of town. Because you don’t represent our values.” (Video below. Note: Trump had already gone south, changing his residency from New York to Florida in 2019.)
Whether those “values” include lying about Covid data for political reasons, which New York’s government did, was not reported.
Hochul’s predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, had opined likewise, saying that conservatives “who are right-to-life, pro-assault-weapon, [and] anti-gay … have no place in the state of New York, because that’s not who New Yorkers are.”
This was in 2014 — before Cuomo learned he had no place in the governor’s mansion.
A couple of Hochul’s targets were quick to respond, with Zeldin tweeting, “You’re losing your marbles lady,” and Molinaro calling her statement “shameful.”
Many interpreted the governor’s comments as meaning she wanted all her state’s 5.4 million Republicans to depart; for Hochul’s part, she might say her unwelcome mat only applies to the few politicians mentioned. Yet the former interpretation is understandable; after all, if persona non grata status applies to the “moderate” Zeldin and Molinaro, why wouldn’t millions of their co-ideologists be included?
Of course, this wouldn’t exactly work wonders for the Empire State’s tax base, already eroded by the departure of 1.5 million residents during the last decade. (On the plus side, New York is getting some new arrivals from Texas — regular busloads of them.)
Speaking of south of the border, commentator Monica Showalter noted Monday that in seeking to send political opponents to Florida, Hochul is in some “creepy” company. For instance, back in 2006, Venezuela’s late dictator Hugo Chavez told state oil company workers opposed to his socialist revolution to go to the Sunshine State.
Then, “Chavez’s mentor, the late, unlamented … Fidel Castro of Cuba had an obsession with sending dissidents to Florida, too,” Showalter added. While speaking of the seizure of stores from some businessmen in 1962, Castro said that “the owners of the businesses taken over were left something to live on until they adapt themselves or go to Miami.”
Showalter then wrote:
Castro also opened his prisons and mental institutions with the aim of sending them all explicitly to Florida, whether they wanted to go or not. Most did, creating the great Mariel boatlift of 1980.
Which brings us back to Hochul, who seems to have cribbed from the well-trod territory of Latin America’s socialist thug dictators, who have been telling dissidents to move to Florida for decades.
What a gal. What does it make her, given her socialist agenda and the company she keeps?
It could make her practical, in a way. As Showalter also points out, these calls to depart can be a tactic for “clearing out dissidents without having to go to the trouble of setting up a GULag” — something that even in New York, which a study found to be our least free state, is not legal (yet).
In reality, though, Hochul’s statement (and Cuomo’s earlier one) reflect a wider phenomenon. A recent poll found that 43 percent of Americans expect a civil war within 10 years. This is not surprising, as divisions are intensifying — and dividing lines are becoming clearer.
Consider that there’s evidence of not just blue states becoming bluer, but also red states becoming redder. This is at least partially a result of migration, and there may be a snowball effect.
It’s sort of how, as a newspaper becomes more left-wing to cater to its mainly left-wing readership, more conservatives and moderates cancel subscriptions — making the remaining readership more liberal still and thus creating pressure on the paper to tack even farther left.
Likewise, as liberal states become increasingly “woke” and normal people feel ever more alienated, they’re more likely to leave for greener (redder) pastures.
Moreover, traditionalist Americans are getting the message that the federal government, a burgeoning leftist bastion disgorging politically correct policy, is a hostile entity. Why, January 6 has proven that they can’t even protest in their own nation’s capital without fear of persecution. Meanwhile, conservative states are pushing back against unconstitutional federal dictates with traditionalist lawmaking and nullification efforts. The result is that we’re more explicitly and starkly becoming two nations. Take this process to its logical conclusion, and what’s the result?
Leftists, and to a lesser extent conservatives, often make clear that they don’t want to share a country with the “other side.” Many of them may one day get their wish.
