Name: The Michigan GOP's secession plan for COVID-19
Brand: freep.com
SKU: freep-com-57
Availability: OnlineOnly

critic

The Michigan GOP's secession plan for COVID-19

preview

Get the newsShare This Story!Let friends in your social network know what you are reading aboutRepublicans think pandemic emergency measures are for metro Detroiters, not the rest of stateA link has been sent to your friend's email address.A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. Join the ConversationTo find out more about Facebook commenting please read theWelcome to our new and improved comments.This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.You will need to register before adding a comment.Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.Please be polite.It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.If you see comments in violation of our , please report them.OPINIONCLOSEVideo from the Michigan State Capitol during protest against Gov. Whitmer's stay-at-home order on April 30, 2020, in Lansing.Last week, during a lull in the global pandemic that has sickened 42,000&nbsp;Michiganders and shuttered&nbsp;businesses from Monroe to Marquette, state tourism officials kicked off a modest promotional campaign under a&nbsp;newly minted slogan: "As we continue to make every effort to flatten the curve in the face of the COVID-19 virus,'" tourism czar Dave Lorenz explained, "we want to remind people that no one is in this alone — we are all one Pure Michigan.”&nbsp;It's a lovely sentiment, especially at a time when nearly all of the state's&nbsp;residents remain sequestered in their homes.The problem is that not a single Republican lawmaker in Lansing, where Republicans happen&nbsp;to control both houses of the Legislature, believes it.&nbsp;Gov.&nbsp;Gretchen Whitmer revealed the real state of the state in a briefing later the same day, when she outlined plans to reopen&nbsp;the state in&nbsp;phases across eight regions. It was a major concession to Republican legislative leaders who consider COVID-19 a largely Southeast Michigan phenomenon and believe their own outstate constituents should be liberated from Whitmer's stay-at-home order and other restrictions.If the phased reopening plan had a slogan, it would be: "One State, Eight regions — seven of which want as little as possible to do with the densely populated one that&nbsp;half of Michigan's 10 million residents call home."At bottom, Republicans are proposing a temporary arrangement in which Michigan's&nbsp;less populous counties dispense with all that "One State" nonsense, hunker down in their reopened bars and restaurants, and hope no one from Detroit or Oakland County gets the notion to pop in for a drink until the plague has passed over them.Good luck, Southeast Michigan, and write if you find work!But if Whitmer imagined that agreeing to carve the state into eight largely arbitrary sectors (sectors whose boundaries, needless to say, no virus recognizes) would appease&nbsp;critics like Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake,&nbsp;and House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, she was disabused of that delusion Thursday, when the Legislature decided that her emergency orders were no longer valid, and that&nbsp;constituents who want to go to restaurants, movie theaters and sporting goods stores should be free to do so.The result was predictably chaotic: Eight regions, One Cluster$#%&amp;.&nbsp;"NO EXTENSION of emergency powers,"&nbsp;conservative radio host Trucker Randy exulted on .&nbsp;But Whitmer issued a new emergency order, whose legitimacy Republicans disputed. It's still uncertain when or whether the state Supreme Court will decide who&nbsp;gets to decide when the bars reopen.In the meantime, it seems likely that a significant number of Michiganders will exploit the legal uncertainty to do whatever they please. And&nbsp;in two or three weeks we'll begin know how much that cost the rest of us.The geo-political schism between mostly Democratic Southeast Michigan and the mostly Republican (but less densely populated and less diverse) counties outside it is not new, and it was probably naive for anybody to imagine that a spanking new contagion&nbsp;whose epidemiological impact has so far been been concentrated in one corner of the state would kindle&nbsp;a spirit&nbsp;of common peril and purpose where none existed before.The GOP legislators' central argument —&nbsp;that it's nuts to apply&nbsp;a uniform set of&nbsp;coronavirus rules and restrictions to 10 million people living and working in so many&nbsp;different circumstances — seems reasonable on its face. So does the notion that free people should be allowed to make their own choices, even risky ones, so long as they don't endanger their neighbors in the process.&nbsp;But these are principles, not policies. And the question is how they apply when&nbsp;what you're running from is an infectious disease, rather than big city taxes and government regulation.When, exactly, are&nbsp;our different circumstances and&nbsp;preferences eclipsed by&nbsp;our common vulnerability to a unpredictable virus? Are statewide restrictions unreasonable until&nbsp;we see significant COVID-19 deaths in every county? In every ZIP code?&nbsp;And if everyone who doesn't have immunity is a potential carrier, how can any of us engage in risky behavior without foisting the&nbsp;same risk,&nbsp;or an&nbsp;even greater one, on our neighbors?Early last&nbsp;week, after Shirkey and Chatfield complained that Whitmer wasn't moving quickly enough to relax restrictions on Michiganders living outside metro&nbsp;Detroit, I sent Shirkey and Chatfield a list of questions about their proposals for an accelerated&nbsp;reopening, and invited them to respond in an online conversation with the Free Press editorial board, over a phone call or by email.&nbsp;Among the&nbsp;critical questions I wanted to put to them:• How could the state&nbsp;relax&nbsp;restrictions on working, dining and shipping in some parts of the state without prohibiting&nbsp;interstate travel? With Memorial Day looming,&nbsp;wouldn't the&nbsp;movement of people&nbsp;between "hot zones" (like metro Detroit) and relatively cool ones (like Traverse City) risk accelerated transmission throughout the state?•&nbsp; You say some industries have already demonstrated their capacity to reopen safely. But how&nbsp;can we know that until more people are tested? What evidence supports your assertion that&nbsp;people can return to working and socializing safely before diagnostic and antibody tests become more widely available?• In contrast to Gov. Whitmer, you've&nbsp;declined to say whose evidence or expertise you're relying on in crafting your pandemic policy for Michigan; Sen. Shirkey has said only that Republicans&nbsp;are&nbsp;“stealing shamelessly from best practices around the world.”&nbsp;Can you identify other populous states you believe are dealing with the virus more responsibly than Michigan has, or whose&nbsp;best practices you’d like to see adopted here? What convinces you those states are doing a better job?I had other questions. I'm as eager as Shirkey to return to my favorite restaurants, but I was puzzled by his televised assertion that restaurants throughout the state could safely reopen immediately, if only diners would overcome their fear. I can understand how a combination of hygiene and social distancing could make dining out safer for customers.&nbsp;But has Shirkey ever been in a cramped restaurant kitchen? Are workers somehow less susceptible than diners to the risks of&nbsp;close contact?I think these are reasonable questions. I thought they would appeal particularly to Shirkey, who likes to describe himself as an engineer drawn to practical problem-solving.But in four days, neither Republican leader found time to answer them, or similar questions posed by other journalists and media outlets.I'm not sure why.Maybe it's because&nbsp;the majority of their caucuses'&nbsp;members represent voters&nbsp;in the seven corona-regions outside Southeast Michigan, and they can't spare the time to talk to a newspaper whose circulation is concentrated in the more-Democratic hot zone they wish to secede from.Maybe they're busy deciding how far to pursue a legal challenge they know is likely to end in a ruling upholding Whitmer's authority to extend her emergency orders.But I suspect it's because they haven't thought this through, and have no convincing answers to questions people concerned about the virus are asking.&nbsp;I worry that&nbsp;their ambitions to reopen the state in the next week or so are a response&nbsp;to opinion polls, not to hard data about what the virus is doing and what it's likely to do next.Surely they know their approach contradicts what public health authorities recommend, which is that Michigan and other states need to know more about who's infected and who's&nbsp;immune before they can safely lift restrictions on social distancing, workplace operations, and group activities. Only then will we know if the lines&nbsp;they want to draw between regions at risk and regions at less peril are more than wishful thinking.Brian Dickerson is the Editorial Page Editor of the Free Press. Contact him at bdickerson@freepress.com.Read or Share this story: https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/brian-dickerson/2020/05/02/republicans-reject-statewide-emergency-measures/3064305001/to help improve our site experience!More Stories

Get the newsShare This Story!Let friends in your social network know what you are reading aboutRepublicans think pandemic emergency measures are for metro Detroiters, not the rest of stateA link has been sent to your friend's email address.A link has been posted to your Facebook feed. Join the ConversationTo find out more about Facebook commenting please read theWelcome to our new and improved comments.This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.You will need to register before adding a comment.Typed comments will be...

public

Brian Dickerson

The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, US. The Sunday edition is titled the Sunday Free Press. It is sometimes referred to as the Freep (reflected in the paper's web address, www.freep.com). It primarily serves Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, Washtenaw, and Monroe counties.  The Free Press is also the largest city newspaper owned by Gannett, which also publishes USA Today. The Free Press has received ten Pulitzer Prizes and four Emmy Awards. Its motto is "On Guard for 189 Years".

The Michigan GOP's secession plan for COVID-19

No article scores yet.

CRITIC REVIEWS

PUBLIC REVIEWS