And now, from the "We Have All Been Here Before" file: Gillian Frank and Adam Laats at Slate tell us about the long, long history of right-wing freakouts over schools teaching our kids unpleasant things about race in America. From Harold Rugg's 1930s textbooks to the 1950s American Nationalist to violent right-wing protestors in 1970s West Virginia to contemporary clowns like the one Kyle Whitmire skewers so well here, a pattern emerges: right-wing critics haven't read any of the books or engaged with any of the theories! Republicans truly are the Party of Drama. I mean, seriously, how many stand up to the drama now?
Damn-near-successful 2020 U.S. House candidate may have used campaign funds to bankroll his trip to the January 6 attempted coup. Seems to me Derrick Van Orden couldn't have been campaigning on January 6, having already lost his election and having not declared for the next one. But this guy damn near beat Ron Kind (D-WI), who's no great shakes; if Mr. Van Orden makes the general election again -- which seems likely, since Trumpholes won't like any "reasonable" Republican candidate in the primary -- we'll know all we need to know about how sick, immoral, and decadent we've become as a society. One would hope Democrats would do something beneficial with their power in the meantime; late returns haven't boded well for that hope.
Fox News's Chris Wallace levels a devastating question at Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN): given his vote against the American Rescue Plan, which provided billions of dollars for local police departments, "(c)an't you make the argument that it's you and the Republicans who defunded the police?" Mr. Banks says no, of course not, because of things Ilhan Omar and Nancy Pelosi said, which, again, is very teenage drama of him. Democrats should have the guts to run ads against their Republican opponents saying that Republicans voted against funding the police, but no one ever went broke betting on Democrat weakness.
When I hear that Bill Barr, Donald Trump's former Attorney General, said that Mr. Trump's assertions that fraud cost him the 2020 election were "bullshit," I remember the time a liberal could say something like Trump's own Attorney General says the notion that Biden stole the election is bullshit, but Trumpholes feed off nothing other than their own self-pity these days. "Why does everyone keep betraying us?" they wonder, and none will answer by saying "well, maybe the problem is me," though you'd think it'd be conservative to pose the question.
Finally, Republicans may have hit upon a "blueprint" to take back Congress in 2022, and you won't be surprised by any of its elements: "Biden Democrats are soft on crime, soft and ineffective on illegal immigration, and reckless and wrong with government spending." The platform doesn't "move beyond Trump" very well, since the Trump platform, such as it is, maps so well onto the first two items at least, and the three items comprise, respectively, something that didn't work in 2020, something that didn't work in 2018, and something that did in 2010. More importantly, they're three saucepans they've been banging for decades now; how hard would it be to run ads talking about Republicans saying the same old thing because they have no idea how to govern? Nah, Democrats will say that's too "uncivil." And then the party that tried to overturn a national election will get back in power.
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