“We need to move faster. Hospitals are ready. Businesses are ready. And Texans are ready,” state Rep. Mayes Middleton, chairman of the Texas House Freedom Caucus, said in an interview. He called the outgrowth of protests even in places that are moving ahead with reopening orders “a symptom” of growing frustration that is also being unleashed in calls and letters to officials.
“From what I have seen, people have followed the rules and guidelines. It’s time to allow people to go back to work,” Middleton said. “They want to go back and they are ready to go back to work.”
Trump and political allies are torn over both the precise timing of reopening and the visuals of the demonstrations that swept the country. The president has broadly left it up to individual states to decide their procedures — a stance that critics believe allows him to take any side of the coronavirus debate depending on how the circumstances turn. Before slapping down Kemp in successive news conferences last week, Trump positioned himself as a national leader for the “reopen” side. The president agitated early and has sent supportive tweets calling for the “liberation” of states.
“They’ve got cabin fever. They want their lives back,” Trump said at one point, swatting away at a question about whether he was inciting violence.
Trump met with retail executives and spoke with governors Monday about the virus response and “economic revival,” an approach that could put the president on firmer footing with his base.
Some on the right are distancing themselves altogether from the public demonstrations: Americans for Prosperity — the main political arm of the libertarian-leaning Koch network — backed away from the protests in favor of engaging policymakers to focus on standards to safely reopen the economy.
But the Tea Party Patriots agreed to promote demonstrations to its members, provided they followed social distancing guidelines. Several events are also being showcased by the conservative group FreedomWorks, including rallies in Ohio and across Texas last weekend, and in Arizona and Nevada on Friday along with a big event outside the White House.
“I think that for the first month, the reason we didn’t have protests like this is people were saying, ‘OK, this isn’t going to last forever, and we should be able to get through it,’” said Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder and national coordinator of the Tea Party Patriots.
Martin credited business owners in her home state of Georgia with successfully pushing Kemp to act swiftly to get businesses running again, calling the governor’s order “measured” and a positive first step. She joined with scores of local leaders in imploring supporters to reach out to Kemp to show their appreciation.
Source: politico.com
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