To the Washington Post it's a "despicable stunt." To the Venezuelan immigrants it's "a stroke of good luck."

Here at Ringside, we have argued that Ron DeSantis would be a far better Republican standard bearer than Donald Trump. DeSantis isn’t the only Republican of whom this is true, but right now he’s the most plausible alternative to Trump, and it’s easy to see why. DeSantis is governing a large state, picking and winning the right fights, and (from the look of things) maintaining his popularity.

When I’ve compared DeSantis and Trump it’s been mostly in terms of results, not intentions or character. DeSantis understands how to counter the woke left, and he provides the attention to detail and follow through necessary to succeed. Trump, not so much.

But character matters, too. The NeverTrumpers are right about that much. DeSantis has it all over Trump in this regard.

Here’s one example, via Dan McLaughlin:

Four days ago: “DeSantis is putting $2.5 million of his colossal $122.5 million campaign war chest into expanding the Republican majority in the Florida Senate.” He is also, of course, leading the ticket, so he’s going to spend a ton of the rest getting out the Republican vote in Florida for himself, Marco Rubio, congressional candidates, the state legislature, and the rest of the Republican ticket.

Today: “Trump is . . . using this cycle to hoover up grassroots donations that might otherwise go to competitive midterm candidates and so far refuses to commit any of the estimated $99 million in a leadership PAC to his endorsees.”

Anyone surprised by the Trump part of this excerpt hasn’t been paying attention.

It took longer than it should have, but the mainstream has media figured out that DeSantis is more effective, and therefore more dangerous from its perspective, than Trump is. This has become a common theme in the left-leaning press.

In an amusing example, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie writes that DeSantis “may be a more competent Trump in terms of his ability to use the levers of state to amass power, but he’s also meaner and more rigid, without the soft edges and eccentricity of the actual Donald Trump.” Bouie goes on to laud Trump, that merry prankster, for being “funny,” and for his ability to “persuade an audience that he’s just kidding — that he doesn’t actually mean it.”

Trump probably meant much of “it.” He just couldn’t make “it” happen, or stick, consistently. DeSantis, I think, can.

So far, he’s making his transporting of illegal immigrants from Florida stick. The left and its media allies, in turn, are trying to stick it to DeSantis for this.

The Washington Post editors serve up a particularly shrill example in this editorial called (in the paper edition) “Made for TV Cruelty.” For those on whom the Post’s subtlety is lost, the subtitle is “Mr. DeSantis uses asylum seekers as props in a despicable stunt.”

For a good laugh, check out the photo the Post used in the internet version of the editorial. It’s downright bucolic. The immigrants pictured look about as happy as they could be.

The picture doesn’t lie. It turns out that the Venezuelan immigrant asylum seekers don’t think DeSantis’ “stunt” is despicable at all. MSNBC reports that “Migrants are actually thanking Gov. Ron Desantis for having brought them to Martha's Vineyard.”

The Washington Post reported the same thing. Some immigrants, it says, are calling it “un golpe de buena suerte” — a stroke of good luck — that they had landed at Martha’s Vineyard.

I'm not surprised that many immigrants are thankful to have been sent to a lovely part of Massachusetts. I’m somewhat surprised that the Post was willing to disclose their satisfaction.

It will be difficult to sell the American people the notion that there’s anything despicable about sending immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard. It will also be tough to persuade them that DeSantis is a less kind, less gentle version of Donald Trump.

But that’s the conservative-hating media’s story, and I’m sure they’ll be sticking to it.