“Now look, we don’t need big government and Washington politicians coming into our state and trying to tell the people of Florida how to live!”
What is that? It’s the refrain of the anti-regulation Republican, and that’s just one of the standard tropes that Republicans in Florida will be trotting out in the next few months as they insist that there’s absolutely no need for any “job killing big government regulations” regarding the condition of large residential and office towers on the Florida coast. “I mean come on!” they will insist “There was absolutely no way that anyone could have predicted something like this happening!”
And if you point at an article like this one from earlier today, and mention that the first instance of such a violent collapse was a bit of a surprise, but that the impact of salt water on steel beams is well known and this is likely to be the first of numerous buildings on the Florida ocean-front to suffer the long-term and cumulative effects of climate change they’ll whatabout you and say “well if it’s such a huge problem then why haven’t all the other buildings fallen down yet?”
Ignore the fact that stricter enforcement of building codes would help create jobs, because the buildings are dilapidated and require repairs, and people will have to be hired and paid to make those repairs. Republican voters don’t do that kind of “voodoo liberal economics”. If you happen to mention that there is a potential for catastrophic injury and suffering in Florida’s water-front communities if property managers decide to gamble the lives of their residents by refusing to take better care of their properties they’ll call you a “chicken little” and insist nothing like this could ever happen again, and it’s ridiculous to think so.
The one thing Florida Republicans will not hesitate to do is ask for Federal aid if more buildings do come down. Ron DeSantis already asked the Biden Administration to declare the site a disaster area and to give Florida money to help fix the mess made by crooked real estate developers and negligent property managers.
The song remains the same, and the same people who always fell for it in the past will fall for it again. “You can fool some of the people all of the time,” and we call them Republican voters.