Don’t Democrats need at least a few Republicans to vote for them in order to win elections?
You wouldn’t know it based on some of their reactions to the tragic mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that claimed 11 lives on Oct. 27.
What should have been a moment where we all, in one voice, denounce anti-Semitism and mourn the fallen was instead viewed as a political opportunity by liberal punditry to somehow implicate President Donald Trump — and the tens of millions of Americans who voted for him — in the shooting.
On Twitter, New York Times columnist and economist Paul Krugman sarcastically tweeted on Oct. 27 just hours after the shooting, “But none of the white supremacist terrorism has anything to do with Trump, oh no…”
“The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting Is the Inevitable Result of Trump’s Vile Nationalism,” Sasha Abramsky wrote at The Nation.
Yascha Mounk at Slate.com wrote of “The Nature of Trump’s Culpability in the Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre.”
“Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media can’t escape responsibility,” Max Boot declared at the Washington Post.
CNN host Alisyn Camerota declared on Oct. 29 that “You can draw a direct line from all of the vitriol and hate rhetoric about the caravan that’s some 2,000 miles away from our border and the gunman in Pittsburgh, who referenced that, and somehow turned it into an attack on Jews.”
While some elected leaders like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to his credit were careful to say Trump was not responsible for the synagogue shooting, it is still a charge far beyond the pale and must be repudiated.
Never mind that President Trump and Republicans alive today are in no way responsible for anti-Semitism, with centuries of history dating back to the Diaspora.
Never mind that President Trump is the first U.S. president to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Never mind that the President’s son-in-law and daughter and grand children are Jewish or that the President has forcefully denounced the massacre and supports the death penalty for the shooter.
Never mind that the killer himself criticized Trump for not hating Jews.
None of that matters.
The allegations came just days after similar charges were leveled that Trump and in extension his supporters who were somehow all to blame for the mail bombs that were sent to prominent Democrat leaders. But in both cases these were attacks by lone individuals who are responsible for their own actions, political or racist motivations aside. Trump and his supporters were no more to blame than Bernie Sanders was when one of his supporters shot up the GOP Congressional baseball practice last year.
In the least, it was Hillary Clinton who in 2016 said Trump supporters were racist, saying, “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic – Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that.”
Clinton added, “Now, some of those folks — they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.”
More recently, Clinton said that “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for.”
If Democratic leaders like Clinton really believe that Trump and his Republican supporters are simply “racist” and “irredeemable” and that you “cannot be civil” with them, and as some of these liberal columnists write, that they are all responsible for the massacre at the Pittsburgh synagogue or the mail bombs sent to prominent Democrats, then where does that leave Republicans?
If you supported Trump in 2016, you’re a Nazi, in their eyes. You have blood on your hands.
Is this really the message Democrats want to carry to Republicans they need to vote for them in swing states like West Virginia, Florida, North Dakota or Missouri this year?
Like in the Kavanaugh hearings, Democrats and their media allies have overplayed their hand — again.
Perhaps in blue states like California or New York, this has no effect, but in swing states it matters. 10 Senate Democrats are standing for reelection this year in states President Donald Trump carried in 2016: Jon Tester on Montana, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, Debbie Stabenow of Michigan and Bill Nelson of Florida.
Surely, Democrats need at least a few Republican votes to win in these swing states now and in the future. But why should Republicans ever again vote for a party that believes they are Nazis, the slime of humanity?
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
