No Time For Passivity

"When they go low, we go high," Michelle Obama pompously declared at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. As diagnosis, it still applies. As prescription, it is awful. This is how you do it:

"Kevin McCarthy is a liar and a traitor," Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren maintained on Sunday's State of the Union on CNN. Three things:

1) Bad grammar- she meant "Kevin McCarthy is a liar and traitor." ("Liar and a traitor" implies two individuals.);

2) The subject is not a traitor because treason is defined in the US Constitution as "aid and comfort" to the nation's enemies to the enemy" and the USA is not officially at war with anyone;

3) The subject is an obvious liar.

The first two points are irrelevant. Kevin McCarthy is a liar, and protesting that he's not a traitor draws attention to the fact that he is a liar and to provoke further discussion about whether or not he is a traitor.

It would not be a good look. The Republican Party knows that and as of this moment, is mum about the accusations leveled by Warren.

This is a rare play run by Democrats, who are rarely on the offensive and are content with their status as punching bags as long as they're lauded for occasionally fighting back.

Syndicated columnist Jennifer Rubin, who no longer considers herself a conservative and supports Joe Biden, lavishly praises Michigan Democratic State Senator Mallory McMorrow and Missouri state Representative Ian Mackey. The latter

went viral by denouncing the persecution of LGBTQ Americans. Addressing his Republican colleague Rep. Chuck Basye, who sponsored an amendment to a bill to prohibit transgender girls from participating in sports, Mackey noted that Basye’s gay brother had delayed coming out for fear of Basye’s reaction. Basye began his response with “If I were your brother, I would have been afraid to tell you, too."

When McMorrow was attacked in a fundraising email by a Republican colleague as one who would "groom and sexualize kindergartners," she responded  with a statement which included 

I know that hate will only win if people like me stand by and let it happen. So I want to be very clear right now: Call me whatever you want. I hope you brought in a few dollars. I hope it made you sleep good last night. I know who I am.

My, "I hope it made you sleep good last night" is going to strike fear into the hearts of Republicans.  This passive-aggressive response is more typical of Democrats, as we can glean by reaction to US Representative Madison Cawthorn, a right-wing Republican from North Carolina. 

Upon standing in 2020 as a 25-year-old for election to the House, former classmates of the dropout from Patrick Henry College circulated a letter noting

Cawthorn’s time at PHC was marked by gross misconduct towards our female peers, public misrepresentation of his past, disorderly conduct that was against the school’s student honor code, and self-admitted academic failings. During his brief time at the college, Cawthorn established a reputation for predatory behavior. … We urge the voters of North Carolina to seriously reevaluate Madison Cawthorn’s candidacy in light of who he really is.

Last month, Cawthorn charged

The sexual perversion that goes on in Washington, I mean—being kind of a young guy in Washington, where the average age is probably 60 or 70 and I look at all of these people, a lot of them I’ve looked up to through my life … then all of a sudden you get invited to, ‘Oh, hey, we’re going to have kind of a sexual get-together at one of our homes, you should come!’ And I’m like, ‘What did you just ask me to come to?’ And then you realize they’re asking you to come to an orgy.

Or the fact that, you know, there’s some of the people that are leading on the movement to try and remove addiction in our country, and then you watch them do a key bump of cocaine in front of you.

And now, this:

              

            

This, too:

            

Dude has been a sexual predator, apparently drives with a revoked license, allegedly runs an office with more liquor bottles than water bottles and illegally fires a female staffer, and now

New photos show Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn dressed in women's lingerie, chugging wine and surrounded by women - just weeks after he accused his GOP colleagues of inviting him to cocaine-fueled orgies.

The photos obtained by Politico how the 26-year-old Republican with a vacant look in his eyes, wearing women's hoop earrings and a woman's necklace along with a bra and lingerie set.

Screenshots of the photos were provided to the outlet by someone who used to be close to Cawthorn and his campaign. A second former confidante of Cawthorn verified the photos. It's unclear when they were taken, but he appears to be sitting in his wheelchair, indicating they were taken after the car accident that left him paralyzed in 2014.

If this were a Democrat, Republicans already would make sure Americans believed the Democratic Party were infested with liars, rapists, drug addicts, and perverts.  The GOP wants Americans to think of Democrats as "groomers.". Christina Pushaw, press secretary to Florida governor Ron DeSantis, has responded to Democratic opposition to the state legislature's "Don't Say Gay" bill by charging "If you’re against the Anti-Grooming Bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4-8 year old children. Silence is complicity. This is how it works, Democrats, and I didn’t make the rules..."

But this is what leading Democrats have had to say about Madison Cawthorn:

Crickets. Their mouths are shut. Notwithstanding Senator Warren, relatively few Democrats have denounced Kevin McCarthy. Even fewer have even mentioned Madison Cawthorn.

In the latter's case, that may be in part because the LGBTQIA+-friendly Party probably is loathe to criticize a man who enjoys wearing sexy woman's clothing, But this isn't a case of sexual preference, generally determined at birth and beyond personal choice. It's personal choice, and one the vast majority of voters would find odd, were Democrats even to mention it. Additionally, it's Madison Cawthorn, and his behavior has been atrocious at every turn. He is- or should be- a poster boy for hideousness. News flash: he's a bad seed, or at least as much as is imaginable.

This is a case for political behaviorists or even social psychologists. Democrats rag on President Trump or his enablers, Steve Bannon, Steve Miller, Mark Meadows, Rudy Giuliani, and the whole roster of rogues. But they are unable or unwilling even to question their colleagues in the House of Representatives or the Senate. It shouldn't be up to Elizabeth Warren to save the country from the likes of Kevin McCarthy and Michael Bloomberg. Her colleagues need to step up, go low, and save this nation's democratic institutions.

 

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