Remember former President Trump’s fear-mongering campaigning during the 2018 midterm races, the theme being that caravans of rapists were coming from Mexico and further south, and if the Republicans didn’t win big in the mid-terms, well, just let your imagination roam wild?
The Republicans sustained heavy losses in the mid-terms.
But it appears they’re at it again, if the messaging used by the Republican candidate in the special election to replace Rep Haaland (R-NM), who was nominated and confirmed to Interior Secretary, is anything to judge:
Melanie Stansbury, the Democratic candidate in next week’s special congressional election [in New Mexico], spent last weekend touting Joe Biden’s agenda, vowing to strengthen infrastructure and fight climate change, drought and hunger.
Her Republican opponent used the same preelection push to warn that she would be heading to Washington to “defund the police” and back legislation to close all federal prisons within 10 years, releasing infamous criminals out on the street.
“Think about who’s in federal prison right now: El Chapo, the co-founder of al Qaeda, the Oklahoma City bomber, the Unabomber,” state Sen. Mark Moores told a luncheon of three dozen Republican women on Friday. “That is how radical this agenda is, and we have to stop it.” [Politico]
Close all federal prisons within 10 years? Someone with a fervid imagination, I should imagine, has gotten loose. While the article attributes this to the proposed BREATHE Act, I know of no serious movement to close federal prisons.
No, this is pure fear-mongering.
The temptation, the strong temptation, is to attribute this lack of imagination and abuse of voters to the third- and fourth-raters infesting the GOP these days. I’ll even give in to it.
But it’s important for Democrat Stansbury to directly address these claims and refute them. If her messaging team is clever, they’ll roll a clip of the January 6 insurrection and then Stansbury can ask where those who participated in that treason should be incarcerated, if not in federal prisons?
Perhaps she could ask her opponent, Moores, for his advice on the matter.
