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**MAY 18, 2022**
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Biden and Republican Fomenting of Hate
Public opinion does not support racist killings. Joe Biden needs to hold
Republicans accountable, by name.
In his speech in Buffalo, President Biden called out "the haters." In
other recent speeches, condemning the fringe views of MAGA Republicans,
Biden has belatedly discovered his inner partisan. Now it's time for
him to connect the dots.
Think of the rhetoric of replacement theory and white supremacy; the
doctrine that women's health must be subordinated to far-right dogma
on conception; the Wild West policies of gun toting by mass killers; the
belief that elections can be overthrown by a coup.
These insane conceits have two things in common: Most Americans do not
support them. And they are being spread and condoned by Republican
leaders.
But the fact that lunatic views lack majority support does not keep them
from attaining power. If the fringe is on the march and Democratic
leaders fail to respond with sufficient emotional and political force,
fascism wins. That's why it keeps feeling like Berlin, circa 1931.
In his Buffalo speech, Biden declared, "Hate will not prevail." He
described "a hate that through the media and politics, the internet, has
radicalized angry, alienated, lost, and isolated individuals into
falsely believing that they will be replaced." And he warned, "The
American experiment in democracy is in a danger like it hasn't been in
my lifetime ... Hate and fear are being given too much oxygen by those
who pretend to love America but who don't understand America."
Too much of this was in the passive voice. Those who pretend? Why
didn't Biden name names?
Karine Jean-Pierre, the new White House press secretary, told reporters
traveling with the president that Biden did not want to elevate those
people by identifying them. "The people who spread this filth know who
they are," she said.
Sorry, but that is wimping out. This is no time for cowardly lions.
There is still a fundamental decency to most Americans that needs to be
reawakened. In that respect, moral leadership is also good politics.
Biden should be naming not just those like Matt Gaetz or Elise Stefanik
who explicitly espouse these hatreds, but those in the Republican
leadership from Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Kevin McCarthy on down who
refuse to break with the explicit haters.
After the Buffalo killings, Liz Cheney tweeted
: "The House
GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and
anti-semitism. History has taught us that what begins with words ends in
far worse. @GOP leaders must renounce and reject these views and those
who hold them."
Biden is the president. He should display at least the gumption and
moral clarity of Liz Cheney.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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