OPINION:
Missouri Rep. Cori Bush, an Israel-bashing member of the “Squad,” lost her primary to St. Louis County prosecutor Wesley Bell — and she’s the second far, far, lunatic far-leftist Democrat to lose a primary to a more moderate candidate. Rep. Jamaal Bowman of New York, another Israel basher, was ousted just this June. The common denominator of the Dems who won against this pair is they’re much more friendly to Israel.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day. The modern Democrat Party may be a walking, talking mirror of Marxists and a shelter for the communists who walk among us. But this anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, terrorist-sympathizing tone that the Dems have adopted has got to go. And going it is — at least for Bush and Bowman.
“Congresswoman Cori Bush becomes the second squad member to lose a primary this election cycle,” OutKick founder Clay Travis wrote, Fox News reported. “She and Jamaal Bowman are free to join Hamas together.”
That’s a bad look for the Democrat Party.
But it’s one they’ve been tolerating for far too long.
As pro-Hamas, anti-Jew rallies waged forth on America’s college campuses, Bush, as well as another Squad member, Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, drew comparisons to the Kent State uprisings that led to the shooting deaths of four college students. They were trying to draw a parallel between the 1970 National Guard’s opening of fire upon anti-Vietnam War protesters and the spoiled ignorant brats who took over many of America’s Ivy Leagues and demanded their college administrators divest from Israel and make all kinds of ridiculous concessions based on the innocence of the Palestinians in Gaza — that’s “innocence” in quotation marks because it was the Palestinian people in Gaza who elected Hamas, who cheered the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and who, to this day, continue to paint the Jewish people as the evil occupiers who ought to be eradicated from the face of the earth.
When police were finally called to tear down the tents, the college kids and their activist enablers went nuts and clashed with law enforcement. That’s like Kent State, Bush said.
Apples to apples, said Bush.
“On the 54th anniversary of the Kent State Massacre, students across our country are being brutalized for standing up to endless war,” Bush wrote on social media. “Our country must learn to actually uphold the rights of free speech & assembly upon which it was founded. Solidarity with our students.”
Yikes.
First off, the First Amendment uses the word “peaceably” — it speaks to the “right of the people peaceably to assemble.” When students take over college campuses, chase Jews down hallways and away from class, all the while threatening to kill them; when students destroy college campus property and make it impossible for other students to attend class or travel freely; when students make a general nuisance of themselves and set up tents on the common areas of campus, forcing all others to stay away; when students demand administrators listen to them and bow down to their demands and make policy decisions based on their screams and wails and displays of bad behavior and violence — when all that happens, the “peaceably” portion of the First Amendment goes out the window.
That’s not peaceful.
That’s thuggish.
And given these college activists were calling for something that would lead to the destruction of an entire people — the Jews — that’s open, blatant, ugly antisemitism, as well.
Perhaps college students could be excused for their ignorance. After all, they can’t be expected to know what “river to the sea” refers to if their Democrat-controlled public schools never taught them geography, right?
But Bush knows better.
So, too, Bowman, who “accused Israel of genocide” and who also said this after losing his primary, The Times of Israel wrote: “We will continue to fight for a free Palestine now, and God help us build a better world where everyone understands when we say ‘Free Palestine,’ it is not antisemitic.”
Antisemitic to the end.
But thankfully, some voters said enough.
The Democrat Party, roiled as it is these days by far-left influences, may be one step shy of tossing out its donkey for a hammer and sickle. But at least some Dem voters still have a line they draw, a boundary they don’t want crossed.
There are two fewer antisemites in the Democrat Party living off the taxpayer dole. Baby steps — sure. But at least they’re steps. The political culling of Bush and Bowman is a step toward a course correction the Democrat Party has been needing for a very long time.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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