Republicans just gave something away

| 11:00 pm EDT June 22, 2021
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A good way of determining what the Republicans are planning at any given moment is to look at what they’re accusing you of. The more outlandish and specific the claim is – the higher the odds that they’ve either already done it, they’re doing it, or they’re planning it. Some consider this to be the ingenious strategy of master propagandists, but it’s really just a basic psychological defense mechanism that makes it much harder for a legitimate accusation against the real offender to stick.

Last year, Republicans clung to many of their House and Senate seats despite the party’s unpopularity because they accused Democrats of wanting to “defund the police” – amplifying activist rhetoric that they knew voters would associate with vandalism and social unrest. A few tried to defend the rhetoric and explain what the slogan really meant – but as is all too often the case in politics, if you’re explaining, you’re losing.

After the elections were over, however, it was pretty obvious that Republicans were the party that had no regard for law enforcement – something that was apparent even before the Jan 6 insurrection. The problem is, they’re acting like it too. First, it was the House Republicans who voted against awarding the congressional gold medal to the officers who responded to the attack on the Capitol and now, they’re actually voting to defund the Capitol Police.

While the Senate is in recess, funding for Capitol Police training will run out by August unless Senate Republicans vote with the Appropriations Committee to restore their funding. They’ve held out for over 32 days so far – and this is just voting on the bare minimum that the institution needs to function. They left their main line of defense scraping for resources at a time when the risk of a domestic terrorist attack is at its peak – and this is something we need to remind voters of if we want to deny them power in 2022.