While it’s easy to laugh at this projection, we hope Democrats will take seriously and counteract this messaging that positions Republicans as the protectors of democracy and Democrats as its enemies.
Yesterday, on Fox News’ Your World show, Sen. Roy Blunt, chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee, blasted President Biden’s push to protect voting rights. Blunt called it "an attempt to once again federalize something that's been working well for a couple hundred years. I think states and local election officials are the place for elections to be conducted."
FACT CHECK: 19, mostly Republican-controlled states, passed 34 laws restricting access to voting and more are pending, the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice found. Even worse, legislators introduced bills to allow partisan actors to interfere with election processes or even reject election results entirely.
Not surprisingly, host Charles Payne did not point any of that out.
Instead, Payne, who is Black, asked, “How dangerous” is the Democratic narrative that “lots of folks, including Black Americans, will lose the right to vote?”
“It’s very dangerous,” Blunt said, “and what the Democrats are doing here is destroying faith in a system people should have every reason to have faith in.”
Blunt claimed, “I haven’t found a state yet that hasn’t made steps forward in this process.” He added, “They generally have more early voting, more places to vote, more days of voting than states like New York, or Connecticut, or Delaware. I think the idea that Republican legislators are trying to take away voting rights and Democrat legislators are not is just not true," Blunt said, also without any challenge from Payne.
That, of course, gave Blunt free rein to criticize the Democratic bill as anti-voter integrity.
You can see how Republicans are gaslighting their attacks on democracy below, from the January 13, 2022 Your World.
I may have been confusing our right-wingers with yours, B. Beside a general distrust of spendthrift liberals and a ‘let them eat cake’ attitude towards the disadvantaged – mainly Maori and Pacific people – our National Party voters are mostly interested in their own back pocket. About 30 years ago, we changed to a proportional system similar to Germany’s, and that has helped give everyone a voice in Parliament.
When exactly was that era, John? I must have been taking a nap when that happened. Average conservatives have always been motivated by fear of losing what little of anything they may have. With your permission, I’ll be using the last sentence of your first paragraph.
I am nostalgic for the era when the average conservative voted with only one thing in mind – his or her own selfish interests, and to hell with what was good for the nation.
communication systems across all media as the scum pond inhabitants do but I fear that even if one appeared out of thin air tomorrow and started running at full steam ahead, we’d be so far behind the curve, we’d never catch up. Sigh.
