I noticed Erick Erickson’s having to pick his words carefully in the context of the two putrid Parties making up our political system these days.
Law and order is a winning issue for the GOP.
He says that about a President with 34 convictions and lost two civil suits for sexually assaulting E. Jean Carroll. Does he really want to remind folks of the guy who keeps losing in Court? And then there’s all the pardons he’s handing out to embezzlers, violent insurrectionists, corrupt politicians, and what have you. President Trump is fully bought into doing favors for criminals who’ll then owe him, and that’s a terrible look.
But people could see the videos online for themselves. People could see the weak local response. People could see the harassment and violence of those hoisting the Mexican flag. And most Americans support deporting illegal aliens.
Could they? Speaking from long observation, the answer to Erickson is a horse’s laugh. The films could be edited, they might not be recorded in Los Angeles, what happens across a set of streets is easily non-linear.
We are witnessing events that, through the narration of the national press corps, do not watch what our eyes have seen.
An extraordinarily ugly, confusing sentence, and a reminder not of the alleged perfidy of the national press, but of President Trump’s own words in 2020. Which, it turned out, was bad advice.
In an exchange with Jim Acosta, McEnany said, “So let me first address: No tear gas was used and no rubber bullets were used.” Acosta pushed back, “Chemical agents were used.” McEnany doubled down, “So, again, no tear gas was used.” Acosta asked McEnany why she was drawing a distinction between the use of pepper balls and tear gas canisters – since both have the same effect of causing burning and irritation of the eyes. “Well, no one was tear-gassed,” McEnany insisted. Except that viewers saw it happen. And reporters tasted it in their throats and felt it in their lungs. The AP published a fact-check on Wednesday that said “any difference is semantic.” So why is the WH arguing semantics? Perhaps to spread seeds of disbelief…
Erickson has this right, at least.
And if you can’t understand the American public is on the side of law and order, you are going to miss what happens next.
But law and order is not a winning issue for the GOP; it is a losing issue for the Democrats, who, convinced that blind, performative passion will overwhelm their adversaries, cannot bring themselves to sit down, think, and ask if they’ve made any major errors recently[1 – yes, go read it!]. They run around, screaming at the top of their lungs about their goodness and their adversaries’ evil, and, for all we know, have sabotaged their own cause, even their own nation.
Meanwhile, both Parties lose out. How so? Displaying their indiscretions, perfidy, lack of standards, and a dozen other mistakes made by both Parties, these Parties become less and less appetizing. Will, for example, a sincere church-goer continue to buy into the despicable behavior of President Trump, former Rep Gaetz, Justices Thomas and Alito, Secretary Hegseth, the corruption of which a number of former GOP Representatives have been convicted, and then were forced to resign? How about Rep Ogles (R-TN)? Sincere and theologically knowledgeable church-goers should be fleeing all them, and the profound corruption of the prosperity churches should have them screaming in horror.
For the Democrats, Erickson’s point concerning riots may come true; the corruption of the BLM leadership; the defunding the police debacle; the botching of the management of the transgender issue; the appointment of Harris as the nominee for President, rather than running a primary. It can be argued that their autocratic inclinations, while not of the same magnitude as the Republicans’, are there to be seen.
Perhaps leading to implicit disqualification of both Parties from candidacy for running the American government.
Erickson wants to bury the Democrats because they’re “baby-killers,” but his side is arguably even worse. Neither side is appetizing, the Sullivan interview of Tapper and Alex Thompson suggests that both sides are unworthy of our votes.
1 Which is, not so incidentally, a flaw they share with the Republicans.
