If Jennifer Rubin is blaming the Republican Party for all the crime in America, it’s a safe bet that her Washington Post colleague Max Boot will be right there with her. And — surprise! — he is. Right here:
Don’t accept the GOP framing of the assault on Paul Pelosi as evidence of a problem plaguing “both sides of the aisle.”
Political violence in America is being driven primarily by the far-right, not the far left. https://t.co/tDR4wUqHyQ
— Max Boot 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@MaxBoot) October 30, 2022
This is where any fair-minded journalist has to offer an obligatory “to be sure” paragraph: To be sure, political violence is not confined to the right. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot in 2017 by a gunman with leftist beliefs, and in June, a man was arrested for allegedly plotting to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh after becoming incensed about court rulings on abortion and guns.
Republican leaders cite those attacks to exonerate themselves of any responsibility for political violence. “Violence is up across the board,” Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said on Sunday, arguing that it’s “unfair” to blame anti-Pelosi rhetoric for the assault on Pelosi’s husband.
Violence is unacceptable whether from the left or right, period. But we can’t allow GOP leaders to get away with this false moral equivalency. They are evading their responsibility for their extremist rhetoric that all too often motivates extremist actions.
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“Violence is unacceptable whether from the left or right, period.” Except it’s way worse when it’s from the Right, even if there’s no evidence that the Right had anything whatsoever to do with it. Yeah, a sitting Republican congressman was shot and nearly assassinated and a Supreme Court Justice was a would-be assassin’s victim. A guy ran his car into and killed a teen for being a Republican after prominent Democrats and the president himself repeatedly demonized the entire Republican Party, including Republican voters.. bUt ThE GOP, mAn.
If you’re rolling your eyes at Boot right now, you’re not alone. Mary Katharine Ham has just about had it with Boot and his intellectual peers’ brazen attempts to downplay clear left-wing violence in order to paint the GOP as a threat to Americans’ safety:
Man, I can think of 3 attacks on righty canvassers in the last month + a murder + SCOTUS assassination attempt. Don’t accept the framing of anyone who transparently, eagerly uses allegations or incidents of political violence as a means of silencing their political adversaries. https://t.co/c8OhbWJtLL
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) October 31, 2022
A-men!
Another good one. Journalists against political speech! People who do this don’t care about political violence except to extent they can use it to silence their political adversaries. She’s helpfully transparent, even more than most are, which is saying something! https://t.co/38OQnUv49N
— Mary Katharine Ham (@mkhammer) October 31, 2022
We have no problem condemning violence, whether it’s political or not. Right-wing violence is not any more justifiable than left-wing violence. But Max Boot is accusing us of hypocrisy while being egregiously hypocritical himself.
He deserves to be called out, and who better to do it than a straight shooter like Mary Katharine Ham?
She is One of my favorite follows. She will break her foot off in someone's ass in the nicest way possible. https://t.co/gSwHt4Vd7Q
— bluecollar guy (@metal_gear88) October 31, 2022
And that’s one of the many, many reasons we love her.
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