Monday, October 15, 2018

GOP: Always Looking for Someone, Anyone to Blame Except Themselves

A truism if ever there were one ...

Po’ whittle GOP – they want us to feel sorry for them while praising and supporting their new tactics and apparently their new motto which seems to be:
“Don’t blame us for anything, blame the DEMS, Hillary Clinton for losing, the failed NY TIMES, Fake News, and the Russian hoax chased by Mueller and congress.”

Two links and similar stories:
(1)  This one with this headline“The party of personal responsibility is now the party of “the libs made me do it”

(2)  Then this one with their headline“CNN's conservative pundits are helping the GOP fear monger over scary liberal protesters”

A few points:

In the run-up to the 2018 midterm elections, right-wing media and Republican officials have found a new favorite scare tactic: hyping nonsensical claims of radical Democrats and an “angry mob of scary, violent, liberal protesters trying to disrupt American values and take over the country.”

This transparent effort at turning out Republicans to the polls has been parroted by a number of right-wing pundits paid by CNN for their political analysis.

Right-wing media, especially the Trump-aligned Fox News Channel, responded to the confirmation battle of now Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh by accusing Democrats, protesters (many of whom were sexual assault survivors) and the left broadly of violent radicalism. Republican politicians, including the president, have been quick to echo these claims.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) argued that Democrats “encouraged mob rule” during the Kavanaugh hearings, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) commended Republicans for standing “up to the mob.”

During an October 9 rally in Iowa, Trump – who regularly called for actual violence during the 2016 campaign and who said last year that there were “very fine people” at a white supremacist rally that resulted in one person dying – condemned Democrats as an “angry left-wing mob” that is “too dangerous to govern.” Trump insisted that the party cannot be trusted with power because “you don't hand matches to an arsonist.”

Conservative denouncements of left-wing violence are obviously absurd, and markedly hypocritical, but that hasn’t stopped right-wing CNN pundits from fear mongering about the supposed “mob behavior” of the left.

Examples:

1.  On CNN with Anderson Cooper 360 commentator Steve Cortes called it “scary that the left has been using mob tactics and “violence to a dramatic degree.”

2. On CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, political commentator Alice Stewart claimed that the GOP was correct in calling protesters a “mob because they were banging on the doors of the Supreme Court and chasing senators out of public restaurants and yelling at senators in an elevator.”

3.  CNN Matt Lewis equated protesters to the alt-right and specifically white supremacist Richard Spencer before host Don Lemon interrupted him. He then accused the protesters of “mob behavior,” and got into a heated exchange with Lemon about whether activists disrupting people who are complicit in the administration’s inhumane policies constitutes mob action.  

4.  Then on “The Lead” with Jake Tapper, network contributor Scott Jennings argued that the Kavanaugh hearings showed conservatives “what life would be like if you let the angry mob take over,” and claimed that if he were running a campaign he would use “video of this angry mob.” 

There is, of course, tremendous irony here:

1. CNN hired Corey Lewandowski as a political commentator after Lewandowski was forced out of the Trump campaign for assaulting a reporter.

2. CNN was also duped by conservatives earlier this year into fretting over “civility” as it conflated examples of liberals being rude with conservatives being racist.

3.  CNN’s model of false balance and “both sides” punditry and its obsession with employing and hosting a roster of right-wing ideologues is nothing new, but it does continue to lead to the espousal of extremist opinions on the network.

Thanks for stopping.

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