Republicans' "Tough On Crime" Claim Could Cost Democrats the Midterms--and Beyond
Pardon the cynicism, but it could be republicans actually want higher crime rates to grease the skids for a fascist authoritarian regime.
Ever notice how many times republicans cite “out-of-control crime rates” in their impassioned jeremiads against Democrats?
It’s more than rhetoric.
When Democrats are in power, republican lawmakers, candidates, and right-wing hate media dust off the tried-and-true greatest hit of “Democrats are coming for your guns,” despite the fact it has never happened nor ever will.
As a result, gun sales spike.
Naturally, then, since “Democrats are coming for your guns,” crime rates must skyrocket.
And, of course, “it’s all Democrats’ fault!”
Well, not really.
Eight of the 10 states with the highest per-capita murder rates voted for Donald Trump.
None of those states have voted Democratic since 1996, two years after former president Bill Clinton signed the controversial federal crime bill responsible for harsher sentences and ballooning mass incarceration.
Recent data from the centrist think tank Third Way reveals republican-led states report significantly higher homicide rates; some of the highest murder rates exist in cities with republican mayors.
But republican politicians and propagandists have convinced enormous swaths of voters of the lie that they are not safe so long as Democrats are in power.
It’s worked before, and it may be working again.
If the Democratic party does not confront republican lies about crime, it may suffer the same fate it did in the 1970s and 80s, when both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan successfully scared the daylights out of voters enough to get themselves into the White House.
According to a Washington Post-ABC News poll, the majority of Americans from both sides of the political spectrum regard crime a serious problem. About one third of the poll’s respondents said crime is “extremely serious,” the highest percentage in two decades.
The Nation magazine editor and publisher Katrina vanden Heuvel wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post:
“Unfortunately, Democrats have historically responded to rising crime in two ways. The first is posturing as tough, but not quite as tough on crime as Republicans. This is sometimes a successful electoral strategy (see Eric Adams’s victory in the New York mayoral Democratic primary)—but can result in dangerous policy (see again: Eric Adams’s victory). The second is more problematic: denying crime as a salient issue in the first place, an unconvincing argument that cedes fertile political ground to the GOP. Both approaches also pose potential harm to the Black and brown communities and people whom crime—and criminal justice policy—disproportionately affects.”
This transcends the upcoming midterm elections and the 2024 presidential race.
Pardon the cynicism, but it could be republicans actually want higher crime rates so the public buying into their “tough on crime” facade will have no problem when we trade democracy for fascism.
It’s simple: suffuse the populace with guns, crime, hate groups, domestic terrorism, political violence, and general distrust of democracy, and a strongman authoritarian promising “I alone can fix it” is a welcomed change from a messy system predicated on consensus and compromise.
None other than George Washington warned us about this in his 1797 farewell address, in which he stated:
“The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism.”
The next part is chilling.
“But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism,” he wrote. “The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”
This is precisely what Florida governor (and possible 2024 GOP presidential nominee) Ron DeSantis represents.
Pay attention to the language he uses in a recent message:
“Our country is currently facing a great threat…This enemy is the radical vigilante woke mob that will steamroll anything and anyone in their way. Their blatant attacks on the American way of life are clear and intensifying: stifling dissent, public shaming, rampant violence, and a perverted version of history…A group that will, literally, tear down monuments and buildings but—perhaps in an even more sinister way—tear down the American spirit itself. They go after the family unit, parental rights, traditional moral values, the church, and fact-based education…Over the past few years, we’ve watched horrified as this group has attempted to brainwash our children into thinking we live in an evil, racist, irredeemable country.”
Does that sound like a democratically inclined leader interested in respecting political differences?
Every one of his premises is wrong.
But that’s doesn’t matter to the audience for whom they are intended.
It’s inciteful, bellicose rhetoric from a fascist intent on angering, frightening, and riling up a base convinced Democrats are spawns of Satan that only good “patriotic Christians” can defeat.
And it’s animating the republican party—the so-called the “party of Lincoln”.
The party in which not even Richard Nixon nor Ronald Reagan—two presidents completely comfortable with exploiting fear of crime—would be welcomed today.
If Democrats do not confront this head-on with facts, statistics, and truly progressive policies that don’t resemble the republicans’, they are sure to lose the midterms.
And the White House in 2024.
And then we lose America.
The most frightening prospect about that is that some will like it.
They—particularly white so-called “Christians”—will be perfectly fine with the “stability” and “order” the fascist regime will purport to bring them.
The rest of us, though…