OPINION:
Democrats and their media allies have been falsely calling Republicans racists for a long time.
It used to be that they would pick their spots and use the charge sparingly for maximum political effect. Today, leftists issue blanket accusations against all their adversaries at once, hoping that some of the mud sticks and helps Democrats come election time.
By now, maybe you’ve heard that sociologist and genius Joy Behar, co-host of ABC’s “The View,” recently identified two prominent citizens as being insufficiently aware of what it’s like to be Black in America. Ms. Behar targeted South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, who is Black, and likened him to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who is also Black.
Ms. Behar said that Mr. Scott is “one of these guys, you know, he’s like Clarence Thomas, Black Republican, who believes in pull yourself by your bootstraps, rather than, to me, understanding the systemic racism that African Americans face in this country and other minorities. He doesn’t get it. Neither does Clarence.”
Ms. Behar, as you may or may not know, is not Black, though she has been known to occasionally wear blackface. She provides proof daily that liberal White women — and perhaps especially rich, liberal White women — are the most obnoxious, self-proclaimed racism detectors on Earth. Her racism radar is so finely tuned that she wasn’t thrown off by the fact that both men are Black and grew up poor in difficult circumstances. It didn’t even faze her that Justice Thomas managed to succeed as a product of the Jim Crow-era South.
To Mr. Scott’s credit, he soon appeared on the show to respond, but if you thought that Ms. Behar was looking forward to a robust discussion, you’d be wrong. She had the day off and didn’t appear on the show.
But co-host Whoopi Goldberg took up the cause and demanded that Mr. Scott explain why all Republicans are racists.
“How can you get your party to stop trying to stop the progression that people are making?” Ms. Goldberg asked. “Because that’s what I complained about when I spoke about — I want you to come out and say, ‘Listen, the Republicans have these issues.’”
To be clear about this, it is the stated view of “The View” that White Republicans are racists, and Black Republicans don’t even know what racism is. And they are serious about this.
Not to be outdone, the Democrats in Washington have literally put their money where their mouths are and mobilized the federal government to categorize perfectly mainstream conservative organizations as being on the White supremacist family tree.
As uncovered by the Media Research Center, President Biden’s Department of Homeland Security has spent almost $40 million on programs that supposedly fight terrorism but seem to spend a lot of time and money smearing regular conservatives. The University of Dayton used one $350,000 grant to produce a four-level pyramid graphic that purports to show the gradual radicalization of right-wingers until they become Nazis.
At the top of the pyramid are a number of truly reprehensible White supremacist groups, but the chart also includes ordinary conservative entities, including Fox News, The Heritage Foundation, the National Rifle Association, the Christian Broadcasting Network, Breitbart News, Turning Point USA and the entire Republican Party.
Yes, Mr. Biden’s DHS paid over a third of a million dollars for a White supremacy chart that includes the logo of the Republican National Committee. And they want you to believe this.
By now, it must be clear that the only thing Democrats care about is winning the next election, and they don’t care what they have to do to accomplish that. They are spending tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and using the federal government to brand tens of millions of normal Americans as domestic terrorists. And their allies help by talking about it endlessly on television.
Their goal is to render conservatism socially unacceptable so they can wipe it out. And they’re trying to do it by assassinating the character of half of the American population.
The media and Democrats are working hand in hand on this because they know that their guy, Mr. Biden, is a feeble candidate who will need to be dragged across the finish line no matter who his opponent is in November 2024.
The obvious irony is that Mr. Biden promised as a candidate to be an uniter for a country that had become disastrously fractured. But it is increasingly clear that the left needs that division — in fact, they need it to get worse — and they’ll need to exploit it if Mr. Biden has any chance of winning in 2024.
And the sad thing for America is that it’s the only coherent plan they’ve got.
• Tim Murtaugh is a Washington Times columnist and vice president for communication strategy at National Public Affairs, a political consulting firm.
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