Emotionally Immature Stunts Disrupt Republican Primary – Do Voters Care?

More signs that it’s the summer before the official start of the presidential primary season: the appearance of stories about bad behavior, even schoolyard-level violence, among various candidates’ supporters.

Case in point: a Politico story out of Iowa on how things are getting a bit testy at the state fair:

DeSantis supporters scoffed as a plane flew a banner overhead reading: “Be likable, Ron!” Looking up at the sky, Matt Wells, the Washington County chair for DeSantis’ Iowa operation, muttered that “Trump people are degenerates.”

The tension, at times, had a sharks and jets vibe underscored by the respective uniforms adopted by each side. DeSantis backers were dressed in navy blue T-shirts embroidered with the Never Back Down name of the governor’s allied Super PAC. Trump fans wore white “Team Trump” shirts and carried green, white and yellow signs that read: “President Donald J. Trump. Back to Back Iowa Champ.”

Setting aside the fact that Sen. Ted Cruz defeated Trump in the 2016 Iowa caucuses (while Trump won Iowa in the 2016 and 2020 general elections), what are we to make of the supposedly “vitriolic primary season” so far?

Only that it follows in a long line of sharp-elbowed, hyperbolic, and occasionally violent presidential campaigns. Consider the disastrous 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, where anti-war protestors and radicals of various stripes collided with Chicago police:

…Police did not discriminate in busting heads. They clobbered men and women, protesters and innocent bystanders, reporters and photographers. They confiscated film from cameras. They pushed one woman over a railing onto a garage ramp — a photographer snapped an image of her landing upside down. Another woman who was enduring a beating looked up into the faces of the officers and noted that they’d removed their badges.

The TV networks — which reached an astonishing audience of 89 million Americans on this historic night — cut away from the convention speakers to show tape-delayed images of the violence. The footage was shadowy, with police surging to and fro, dragging protesters, shoving them into a paddy wagon, clubbing them. A chant could be heard in the background: “The whole world is watching!”

Things were out of control inside the convention as well. Security personnel kept roughing up reporters. Dan Rather was punched in the stomach. Mike Wallace was wrestled to the floor.

That was the last time such wide-scale violence was on display at a party political event where a presidential nominee was chosen (the deadly Jan.6, 2021 mob assault at the U.S. Capitol was an uglier, far more sinister, episode in the annals of political violence).

While political campaigns have long used schoolyard tactics to rattle opponents and elevate their own, violence is still the exception. And those who veer into using their fists should be reminded that violence isn’t protected speech. It’s a crime.

Now get out there and advocate for your candidate – peacefully. And remember: politics is a game of addition. Job one is convincing and encouraging people to come to your side.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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