Neocon: A 2nd 1st Impression for DeSantis?
A “peculiar problem” for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign is how he’s already “overexposed,” argues Commentary’s Abe Greenwald.
That is, “after his midterm landslide last November,” he “became The Only Republican Who Can Beat Trump.
This scared the daylights out of liberals,” so “DeSantis began to draw obsessive coverage from a hostile media,” with endless “negative framing.”
In reality: “The ‘don’t say gay’ bill has nothing to do with saying ‘gay.’ His effort to ‘erase black history,’ in fact, restores black history to its prominence in African-American studies. His ‘book banning’ doesn’t empty library shelves of classic works; it removes blatant pornography from children’s schools.”
At least “he can now push back on the lies.”
Energy beat: A Warning on Green Megaprojects
Watch out: “The Iron Law of Megaprojects” will hold for giant offshore wind farms, snarks James E. Hanley at RealClearPolicy.
The Iron Law warns “megaprojects reliably come in over budget, over time, over and over,” from Boston’s Big Dig to the MTA’s East Side Access.
It’s often through “a failure to spend enough time on careful planning,” but some sponsors resort to “strategic misrepresentation” for fear “that accurate cost projections could scare away public support.” Now the cost of the Port of Albany’s massive state-funded turbine manufacturing plant “has already doubled from $350 million to $700 million.”
Connecticut and Massachusetts projects are troubled, too. Uh-oh: New York’s overall $250-billion-plus climate plan “is a gigaproject composed of numerous individual megaprojects.”
Media watch: Debt-Limit Coverage ‘Insufferable’
No one “expects Democrats to unilaterally surrender” in debt-ceiling talks, but the media cover negotiations as if the only “reasonable place” isn’t between the “two competing political parties” but “wherever Democrats happen to reside,” grumbles The Federalist’s David Harsanyi.
In this framing, “one side is trying to save the nation” from economic ruin; the other is “a reckless ‘hostage taker’ intent on rolling back progress.”
In truth, “those who demand reforms are no more taking hostages than those who demand unfettered spending.”
The left wants tax hikes; the right suggests rolling back spending to last year’s levels.
“Reasonable people can disagree about who’s right.” Yet the Washington press corps thinks anything other than a “clean” bill is “some kind of attack on democracy.” It’s all so “lazy” — and “insufferable.”
From the left: Press Ban on Normal Views
“It’s not just that corporate media reject Americans’ views,” notes Glenn Greenwald on Twitter: “They don’t permit those views to be heard.”
Per a new Harris-Harvard poll, “majorities of Americans believe” that “Hunter Biden engaged in criminal influence peddling” and that “Joe Biden participated.”
They also think “the materials on the Hunter Biden laptop are real.”
More: “Large majorities of Americans have serious doubts about Biden’s mental fitness to be President,” while the three political figures “viewed most favorably by Americans are Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis.”
Yet “the views held by majorities are all but banned on NBC, CNN, NYT and WPost.”
It’s “not a mystery” trust in the media is at historic lows.
From the right: The Dodgers’ Anti-Catholic Insult
The Dodgers sided “against Catholic fans and Catholic employees of their team” by planning to give a “Community Hero Award” to the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” — “an insult and a betrayal” that is “openly celebrating and honoring anti-Catholicism,” fumes National Review’s editorial board.
The Sisters are “drag queens whose shtick is to dress up as Roman Catholic nuns and mock them and their faith in ways that range from the lewd to the sacrilegious,” going “by various sexual and blasphemous stage names” and ridiculing Catholic traditions.
The Dodgers responded to a public outcry by retracting the award, then reversed course again after pressure from the Los Angeles LGBT Center.
“It is one thing to tolerate bigoted satire and public lewdness as the prices of a free society; to actively celebrate them is to take sides against their targets.”
Compiled by The Post Editorial Board