The latest CPAC lunacy shows why Democrats must get tougher
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference. (Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg)
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Back in the dark ages of the last century, the right-wing culture war was often described with a reference to the three Gs: “God, guns and gays.”
These days, the right-wing culture war is perhaps better described with three Vs: vaccine derangement, validation of white racial innocence, and valorization of insurrectionists.
Over the weekend, the Conservative Political Action Conference treated the nation to a parade of such obsessions. We were told the large percentage of Americans who remain unvaccinated against covid-19 is a cause for ecstatic celebration. We were told “Marxist” Democrats want to indoctrinate your children to be ashamed of their whiteness.
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And, of course, we were told that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. This zombie lie was delivered to CPAC by the former president himself, who previewed this by telling Fox News that the Jan. 6 rioters were “peaceful people” and that they are this current moment’s true victims of injustice.
If there’s one thing that all this lunacy confirmed, it’s that such culture-warring will be central to GOP efforts in 2022. Which means Democrats must stop responding defensively to culture-war attacks, and come up with new ways to put Republicans on defense over it.
In a new interview with the New York Times, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, seems to hint that the party will go on offense on these issues, to hold suburban voters who defected from the Trump-era GOP.
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“The post-Trump Republican brand is bad politics in the suburbs,” Maloney said. He added that Republicans have embraced “dangerous conspiracy theories” and “flat-out white supremacists” and an all-around “harshness and ugliness” that will continue alienating suburbanites.
It’s often said that Democrats shy away from such battles, preferring to campaign on “kitchen table issues,” in the belief that if you deliver good governance, the politics will follow. I don’t know how true that is overall, but it’s certainly true in some cases: As Tim Miller points out, in the Ohio Senate race, GOP candidates are burning covid masks and mocking reporters who were traumatized on Jan. 6 while the Democrat talks about jobs.
Regardless, Maloney’s new quotes suggest Democrats understand this is less of an option these days, and that instead, they will need a serious counteroffensive that prosecutes the case against GOP radicalization.
Echoes of ‘death panels’
Writing at Crooked Media, Brian Beutler offers a stab at suggesting how Democrats might do this. As he notes, today’s vaccine denial and valorization of insurrectionists carry serious echoes of the tea party during the Barack Obama presidency.
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In 2010, protesters confronted Democratic lawmakers with vile slurs and Republicans told endless lies about “death panels.” In 2014, the GOP went all-in on the lie that Obama would allow terrorists to import Ebola across our border. Republicans were in no way penalized for any of this. Instead, they won two smashing midterm victories.
Something similar is happening now. Most GOP lawmakers are not overtly encouraging people to shun vaccines or openly siding with insurrectionists. But Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) can describe officials hoping to encourage vaccinations as “needle Nazis” with little GOP pushback.
And at CPAC, the crowd cheered the idea that many Americans remain unvaccinated, showing the energizing potential of vaccine derangement. Plainly, Republicans are happy to encourage and profit from this form of grass-roots energy, even if it’s endangering American lives.
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Meanwhile, the Glorious and Infallible Leader of the party is making a martyr of Ashli Babbitt. Many other Republicans are actively downplaying the assault while humoring the lie that Trump’s loss was illegitimate, thus encouraging the idea that the insurrectionists were motivated by a core of legitimate and righteous anger over Trump’s victimization, as Trump did again at CPAC.
And Republicans everywhere are spewing all sorts of inanities about critical race theory. Just as “death panels” and terrorists importing Ebola were relied on to supercharge the GOP base while Democratic turnoff dropped off, so, too, do Republicans hope the three Vs will accomplish the same.
But is there some way to make Republicans pay a price for any of this instead?
Put Republicans on the defensive
Crooked Media’s Beutler suggests Democrats should make this their mission. Possible ideas might include doing more to honor officials who want to vaccinate our population or attacking anti-critical race theory Republicans for snooping into your children’s education.
Here’s another overriding principle that might work: Frame everything around the basic goal of ensuring that Republicans are the ones on the defensive.
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This might include asking anti-critical race theory Republicans why they think our cadets are such snowflakes that they must be shielded from hard truths about their country’s past. Or asking why Republicans are doing far too little to encourage GOP voters to endure a little pinprick to protect their friends, relatives and neighbors from dying of a deadly disease. Or why they’re trying to bury the truth about their own party’s complicity in an effort to sack the U.S. government with mob violence.
Ask yourself this: Why is it that Democrats spend far more time denying lies — that they want to indoctrinate your children with white shame and send jackbooted government thugs to kick down your doors and force vaccines on you — than Republicans spend denying any of those charges against them, which are true?
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