Tipsheet

DeSantis: By the Way, We've Opened a Hurricane-Damaged Bridge Ahead of Schedule

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  October 20, 2022 12:01 PM

Just the other day, I saw a tweet from someone (for the life of me, I can't remember who it, and I wish I could give them credit) noting that the media has been awfully quiet about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lately.  This observer mused that this is the best evidence available that DeSantis is doing an excellent job managing the aftermath of Hurricane Ian.  It's hard to argue with the logic.  If virtually anything at all were going wrong, the Left and their allies in the news media would be jumping out of their socks to 'Katrina' the guy.  They've already tried and failed.  

Incidentally, isn't it interesting that Katrina was President Bush's scandal -- and not the fault of Louisiana's Democratic governor or New Orleans' Democratic mayor -- whereas the clear goal here was to blame any mishaps on a Republican governor, but not the Democratic president.  Odd, that.  I'm sure there's some sort of explanation.  Anyway, the lack of caterwauling and breathless "questions swirling" coverage really does suggest that DeSantis is getting the job done, and quite well at that.  His magnanimous and friendly interaction with President Biden, who notably praised the governor's leadership, seemed to let the air out of that balloon.  Plus, how does even the most hostile press corps, which is what DeSantis has confronted for years, spin the following story into a negative?  Here was the governor's update on a badly damaged bridge just a few days ago:

The bridge had been temporarily repaired enough as to allow one convoy of vehicles and supplies to cross, but the goal was to get traffic flowing again.  As of Wednesday, that realty arrived, in remarkably short order:

The governor's announcement:

This is competence and leadership.  And it's very much the opposite of the type of bureaucracy-drowned ennui that bogs down actual progress in places with other governing priorities and philosophies.  Places where abominations like this are tolerated-to-expected. Places...like this:  

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Here's that story, alongside another depressing vignette out of 'progressive' San Francisco, if you can stomach it.  By contrast, Florida's superb, all-hands-on-deck, hyper-focused response is why I don't reflexively dismiss the possibility of something like this happening (despite not knowing anything about the pollster or the quality of the survey):

Ten points would be astounding, but my over/under is six points at this point, and I think I'd take the slight over.  Maybe not so slight, come to think of it:

The mail-in vote should skew heavily Democratic.  Those Miami Dade numbers are eye-opening.  And check out the overall Florida data on partisan breakdown, as of yesterday, compared to this point in 2020:

Trying to draw any confident conclusions from murky and incomplete early voting data and trends is a fool's errand.  That said, if Florida Republicans are even in the ballpark of competitiveness with Democrats in the early vote totals, with a heavy expected red skew on the election day turnout, this could turn into a real blowout.  In case you missed it in Rebecca's post, I'll leave you with a bruising moment from the Sunshine State's Senate debate this week: