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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