Crime on the rise and Republicans see it as an opportunity to use a wedge issue.
BLACK LIVES MATTER
PROTECT BLACK WOMEN!
STOPASIAN HATE!
PROTECT AAPI WOMEN!
FREE PALESTINE🇵🇸!
WEAR A DAMN MASK! SAVE A LIFE! TRUST SCIENCE AND MEDICAL EXPERTS! THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC IS FUCKING REAL!
GET VACCINATED! IF THE OPPORTUNITY TO GET THE VACCINES ARE AVAILABLE, GET IT WHILE IT'S STILL FREE! THE MEDICAL EXPERTS SAY THE VACCINES DO WORK AND IT REDUCES THE RISK OF CORONAVIRUS INFECTION.
HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE NOW! VOTE THESE DUMBASS LAWMAKERS OUT OF OFFICE! STOP SUPPORTING ALL FORMS OF EXTREMISM!
GIVE PUERTO RICO, GUAM, AMERICAN SAMOA, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS AND NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS THE RIGHT TO VOTE IN THE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS! GRANT STATEHOOD TO THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. MAKE IT THE DOUGLASS COMMONWEALTH.
GOOGLE'S BLOGGER IS STRAIGHT UP TRASH! THE BLOGGER INTERFACE IS A TOTAL DISASTER AND IT'S RIDICULOUS!
WHITE PRIVILEGE IS REAL! IT'S "SUIT AND TIE" WHITE SUPREMACY ON TELEVISION, RADIO, THE INTERNET AND AMERICAN POLICY!
YOU CAN'T FIX STUPID!
EXPECT MORE!
So here we go again!
Republicans are returning back to their old ways! Drive up fear to make White voters turn against the Democratic Party. They can't help themselves. We know what they're objective is!
Dog whistle politics. If you're a Black, Latino, Asian, Native American, Muslim, immigrant or part of the LGBTQ community, you're a target of the far-right's campaign to dehumanize and demoralize. You will find yourself in a campaign of negative advertising.
The dangers of the culture war.
Karen McCarthy wants chaos and gridlock.
The same party not willing to investigate the 1/6/2021 insurrection is obsessed with the crime wave sweeping the nation. And as expected, crime goes up during the summer months.
With viral videos of Americans shoplifting from stores in San Francisco, the far-right are calling President Joe Biden and Democrats, the party of crime. Rehashing an old canard that the Democrats are "soft on crime."
The same party that allowed 620,000 Americans to die from the coronavirus. The same party that refuses to criminally indict members of Washed Up 45's allies for their roles in meddling in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. Elections. The same party that is running on false claims of voter fraud and voter intimidation. The same party that continues to believe their policies are popular with the general public.
Oh yeah!
Jonathan Allen wrote that the Republicans are dusting off their playbook of divisiveness.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Friday showed that Americans disapprove of President Joe Biden's handling of crime by a 48 percent to 38 percent margin. And 59 percent say crime is an "extremely" or "very" serious problem. Additionally, 55 percent say more funding for police would result in a decline in violent crime.
President Biden continues to push for bipartisanship despite the QAnon Caucus of Republicans opposing him.
Ultimately, Republicans are unified rhetorically on funding for traditional policing and Democrats are divided over that.
Washed Up 45 is leading the charge for the GOP on the policing message.
"After just five months, the Biden administration is already a complete and total catastrophe," the former president said at a rally in Ohio in late June. "I told you, crime is surging. Murders are soaring. Police departments are being gutted. Illegal aliens are overrunning their borders. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it."
It's not just Republicans who see Democrats vulnerable on the issue.
Biden rejected the framing of the "defund the police" movement during his 2020 bid for the White House, calling for additional resources for state and local law enforcement. In retrospectives conducted by Democrats about the 2020 election, the lack of clarity about where they stand on policing was cited as a cause for their disappointing results in several congressional races. And Democratic activist groups are trying to figure out how best to respond — if at all — to the Republican line of attack.
Democrats defunded the police.
Crime in those cities skyrocketed.
Now Democrats are trying to blame Republicans.
But everyone knows the truth: Democrats are the party of defund the police.
n recent days, the Biden administration and its allies in Congress have tried to turn the narrative around by pointing to lawmakers' votes against an American Rescue Plan law that provided $350 billion to state governments.
"Republicans are very good at staying on talking points," White House director of public engagement Cedric Richmond said on Fox News on Sunday. "But the truth is, they defunded the police, we funded crime intervention.”
Republicans argue that Biden bears responsibility for the members of his party who want to take money away from police forces — or reallocate it to programs that address systemic issues that sometimes result in police interactions, such as mental health challenges, homelessness and poverty.
"President Biden’s failure to hold his own party accountable for defunding police is endangering communities and triggering a spike in crime across the country," said Emma Vaughn, national press secretary for the Republican National Committee. "American small businesses, families and communities are experiencing the devastating effects of anti-police rhetoric and police department budget cuts at the hands of Democrat politicians."
What's not in dispute is that violent crime is surging. For example, the murder rate in the United States increased by 25 percent in 2020, ending a quarter century of decline, and that trend has continued into this year.
In some cities, rates in 2021 have been higher than the same periods in 2020, but that has been attributed to the relatively low crime rates in 2020 that were caused by pandemic lockdowns. Critics of Republican messaging have argued there isn't a surge, but a return to normalcy.
It's also indisputable that many major Democratic-run cities cut their police budgets in recent years, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Some are now reversing or softening those decisions.
Lynn Vavreck, an expert on political messaging at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that identifiable examples of crime going up may be more important than the context of long trends or the rates at the time of the midterms.
"All that the reality needs to do is put that stuff on the table and then it will take on a life of its own," she said, adding that crime rates are a proxy for the cultural issues that remain infused in the national political debate in the post-Washed Up 45 era.
"Identity-inflected Trumpy issues have redefined this political moment," said Vavreck, who is working on a book about the 2020 election. "You know what’s going on here in your gut. This is about the BLM movement, the defund the police, the response to that. It’s about race and identity," she said, referring to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Republicans say that, come election time, it won't matter that Biden himself has proposed spending more money on police because voters understand that many Democrats disagree with him.
"The heart of their party has stamped loud and clear for the country how they feel about police and what specifically they want to happen to police departments," Conston said. "They are behind the eight ball."
No comments:
Post a Comment