Florida's Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis garnered national attention this week when he was finally pressured into issuing statewide stay-at-home orders after weeks of footage showing vacation revelers flooding the state's beaches. But DeSantis is hardly alone in his inexplicably weak and craven leadership of a state that some experts fear may emerge as a new coronavirus hotspot in the weeks ahead.
As of Friday morning, the remaining 12 states that had failed to issue statewide stay-at-home orders were all run by Republican governors.
Here's the Republican governors putting an untold number of lives at risk in the name of so-called "freedom."
- Alabama—GOP Gov. Kay Ivey
- Arkansas—GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson
- Iowa—GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds
- Missouri—GOP Gov. Mike Parson
- Nebraska—GOP Gov. Pete Ricketts
- North Dakota—GOP Gov. Doug Burgum
- Oklahoma—GOP Gov. Kevin Stitt
- South Carolina—GOP Gov. Henry McMaster
- South Dakota—GOP Gov. Kristi Noem
- Texas—GOP Gov. Greg Abbott
- Utah—GOP Gov. Gary Herbert
- Wyoming—GOP Gov. Mark Gordon
Some state residents are celebrating the lack of restrictions. "Let's be honest, what country do we live in?” Brian Joens of Iowa City, Iowa, told USA Today. “It’s the USA, which is freedom, freedom to choose. When we get notes from the government saying do this or do that, it feels like that’s not what this country is built on."
Freedom to choose an increased likelihood of death for both you and your fellow citizens isn't exactly on what the country was founded. Individual life, liberty, and happiness was never intended to trump the public good of an entire nation. But this is what you get when the chief executive of the country, Donald Trump, fails to exhibit anything resembling clear and consistent leadership.
Social distancing works. The early measures taken in Seattle and California appear to be paying off, possibly averting the swamped hospitals that come with a glut of cases peaking all at the same time. Not only are all those Republican governors risking an untold number of lives, the economies they think they are boosting now will take far longer to recover to the extent that the coronavirus takes hold in their communities. The laissez-faire policies are as shortsighted as they are misguided and asinine.