Hochul Does 180 After She Gets Her Wish and Republicans Vote with Their Feet: 'Clown Show'
It’s a lesson for liberals and children everywhere: Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
During the fall’s contentious battle for governor of New York state, the Democratic nominee made it clear she didn’t get it at all, though in her inaugural speech Sunday, there was a big sign it might be starting to sink in.
The problem for Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Empire State, though, is that it might be too late.
Hochul’s problem with wishes goes back to a now-notorious speech she made in August.
As the New York Post reported at the time, she publicly declared that anyone who doesn’t go along with the liberal agenda for New York should get out of the Democrats’ Dodge.
Check it out here:
New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul told Republicans to “jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong.” pic.twitter.com/FazoHqPAZu
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 1, 2023
The names she used were former President Donald Trump (of course); Lee Zeldin, her GOP rival in the governor’s race; and Marc Molinaro, then a GOP candidate for Congress (now a newly elected U.S. representative). But what came across was that Hochul meant that any New Yorker who is not a Democrat has no place in the state.
The message was an echo of a statement by the man who gave Hochul the governor’s job when he resigned in August. The now-disgraced former Gov. Andrew Cuomo effectively announced during his re-election campaign in 2014 that conservatives weren’t welcome in New York.
There should have been no need for Hochul to get so inflammatory in an election campaign.
She was running as an incumbent Democrat in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost 3-1, so her election should have been a foregone conclusion.
But since Democratic-dominated New York is riven by crime, homelessness and other progressive pathologies (problems shared with Democratic-dominated fellow states such as California and Illinois, which should be telling), Hochul was forced to face a strong showing from now-former Rep. Zeldin.
So, in an effort to whip up the Democratic base, she basically told any New Yorker who doesn’t support a barbarous regime of virtually unlimited abortion and a chaotic criminal justice system all but destroyed by Democratic lawmakers intent on protecting criminal defendants that they should hit the road.
But in her first speech after being sworn in, according to Fox News, Hochul said she wanted to “reverse the trend of people leaving our state.”
She has reason to be concerned. New York is the leading state for population decline in the United States in the pandemic years, as Albany’s WTEN-TV reported last week. And while other states have recovered, New York has not — and chances are, it won’t.
Hochul won enough votes to stay in the governor’s office. Her problem now is that too many New Yorkers, especially Republican New Yorkers, are voting with their feet.
One Twitter user described her contradictory positions in two words: “Clown show.”
Hochul then: Republicans should move to Florida
*Republicans move to Florida*
Hochul now: “We must reverse the trend of people leaving our state”
Clown show pic.twitter.com/bSu4rB9MiJ
— John Hasson (@SonofHas) January 2, 2023
Outside of the most extreme edges of the left and the top levels of the Democratic Party, Americans are far from stupid. They can see that a state that coddles criminals while imposing exorbitant taxes on its wealth-producers and its working class is not a fit place to live and raise a family, much less a place to move to if one had a choice.
That’s part of why Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Florida, which became a beacon of freedom during the worst days of pandemic oppression in deep-blue states, is now leading the country in population growth for the first time since 1957.
The Sunshine State does not coddle criminals and stands up to the woke agenda of transgender activists and so-called educators who want to bring pornography into schools. It has even gone to war with Disney, a giant of a corporation that has a virtual colony in the heart of the state.
Florida is, in short, the anti-New York.
In her ill-advised campaign rhetoric, Hochul essentially ordered any New Yorkers who don’t share her beliefs to head out of the state. Like Cuomo before her, she argued that only those who share the beliefs of the Democratic left even have a right to live in a once-great state.
Now, with the responsibilities of her office settling in, she has apparently decided she doesn’t want them to leave after all.
Hochul might be realizing that the Democratic base is no longer the working class that was such a major part of the party before. Now, it’s socialists such as supporters of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a loud bunch, but not exactly known for their productivity), the mobsters of antifa and Black Lives Matter, and the literal bloodsuckers of Planned Parenthood who call the shots in Democratic counsels.
If the drain of the productive population continues, Hochul might well have her re-election assured by an increasingly Democratic electorate, but she’ll be leading a state that’s already on its way down.
And even now, it might be too late.
Be careful what you wish for: It’s a lesson most children learn at some point. Grown-up liberals are apparently a different matter.
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