The Trailer: The resistance to stay-at-home orders rises from the right - The Washingto... - 0 views
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Uncertainty and fear over the economic impact of stay-at-home orders is fueling a sort of culture war between conservatives, whose political strength now comes from rural America, right now less affected by the virus, and liberals, whose urban strongholds have been most affected by it.
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uncertainty over the White House's plans, from an abandoned idea to waive restrictions by Easter to a confusing set of business advisory groups, has led to greater uncertainty about when it would be safe to work and shop again. That uncertainty has mobilized conservatives and Republicans in the states. Like the tea party protests of 2009, the “reopen” protests were heavily touted on conservative radio and Fox News, which helped fuel turnout, which then became part of the story.
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Resistance to the stay-at-home orders has grown fastest in Michigan, for two reasons: Whitmer has issued especially strict limits on movement and commerce, and she is increasingly being discussed as a running mate for Joe Biden
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One week ago, the governor restricted in-person shopping at outdoor supply stores, the use of motorboats for recreation, and most recreational travel inside the state. The state had absorbed some of the highest infection numbers and the highest job-loss numbers; all of a sudden, it had the toughest regulations on how residents could behave.
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In multiple segments this week, Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested Whitmer's “authoritarian” orders were designed to help her in the veepstakes. During an online “Women for Trump” event, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, who previously ran the party in Michigan, claimed that Whitmer had “turned this crisis into a platform to run for vice president.” At Wednesday's protest, conservatives who spoke took as given that Whitmer was angling for a bigger job and that it would backfire.
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Whitmer's approval rating actually had surged since the start of the pandemic, with two-thirds of Michiganders approving of how she was doing her job, though no poll had been released since she ordered the new restrictions. North Carolina's Roy Cooper and Ohio's Mike DeWine, a Democrat and a Republican, had also seen big boosts to their personal popularity, right before facing protests outside their offices this week
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“We’re to the point where the state is restricting every move we make,” said Ashley Smith, a co-founder of ReOpenNC and a participant in this week's protest in Raleigh
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“We need to consider how we’ve behaved in every other viral outbreak. These decisions have been based on models, not actual data.”
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“I feel that most of America feels the way that we do right now,” said Garrett Soldano, the founder of the Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine Facebook group, on a Wednesday live stream for its 350,000 members. “Keeping healthy people at home is tyranny.” (According to polling, the vast majority of Americans remain nervous about reopening businesses if there is a threat of spreading infection.)
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“They want to keep us away from churches and synagogues. They want to make sure we don't go back to work,” Fox News personality Jeanine Pirro said on Wednesday. “What happened in Lansing today, God bless them: It's going to happen all over the country.
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“It's really similar to the DNA of the tea party movement,” Brandon said. “No one I know is saying this is a sham, that the virus is fake. But I do hear small-business owners say, hey, I was forced to shut down, but my business doesn't even require me to get close to customers. And the whole idea that you can have ‘essential’ and ‘nonessential’ businesses is funny to me. Every business is essential, or else it wouldn’t exist.”
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And while states have begun putting together plans to reopen businesses, some Republican elected officials have also started freelancing, asking whether places with few or no reports of the coronavirus could return to normal.
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“It may be that when people go back to work that they wear a mask and gloves for some period of time, to limit the spread of disease,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said yesterday.
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The protests have been less measured. On his Wednesday live stream, Soldano talked to one quarantine skeptic who warned that the restrictions on Michigan's housing supply and gardening stores were in sync with Agenda21, a U.N. plan for sustainable development that for years has been seen on the right as a plot to restrict freedom
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Soldano suggested that if restrictions lifted, protesters could enter “phase two” of their plan, holding rallies and campaigning to “strip not only the Michigan governor, but other governors, of the right to do this again.” There was even a push to recall Whitmer, which would require more than 1 million valid signatures collected over 60 days.
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the multitude of Trump campaign flags, signs and merchandise led to Whitmer criticizing the rally, as a distraction from the issue it was designed to highlight: when to reopen Michigan.
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“It wasn’t really about the stay-at-home order at all,” Whitmer said on MSNBC on Wednesday night. “It was essentially a political rally, a political statement that flies in the face of all of the science."