Message for Republicans Starting to Worry: This Will Be the Winning Issue This Fall

Washington, D.C. — Longtime conservative leader Richard Viguerie has advice for anyone who wants to defeat a Democrat running for office in 2022: Tie them to the movement to defund America's police.

In an email sent Friday Viguerie, widely regarded as the founder of the method of fundraising known as “direct mail”, explains “There are many issues that frighten Democrat candidates, but for the average Democrat the No. 1 issue they fear is being labeled as anti-police, defund the police, soft on crime. This issue more than any other, if it sticks to the Democrats, can cause them to become so toxic that they can never win the Congress or the White House again.”

The point is a good one. In many elections, from the post-war midterms under Harry Truman to the 1994 Contract with America landslide, the GOP's ability to credibly portray the Democrats as soft on crime, especially as it pertains to the safety and security of the American family has often made the difference between winning and losing.

In the most notable case, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush recovered considerable ground he'd lost to then-Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis during the 1988 presidential race by making an issue of Dukakis's liberalism as it related to law-and-order issues. Eventually, voters began to wonder if Dukakis could be trusted to maintain the public's safety. Sowing the seeds of doubt was his refusal to renounce a prison furlough program he praised and defended while governor that allowed convicted felons — including those incarcerated for life with no possibility for parole — to, as critics of the program put it at the time, “take weekend vacations.”

One of those felons, a convicted murderer named William Horton, was furloughed many times. During his last, he fled to Maryland where he raped a woman and attempted to murder her fiancé. Dukakis' refusal to even meet with the couple he victimized, featured prominently in the Pulitzer Prize-winning reportage by the Lawrence, Mass., Eagle Tribune, was effective fodder for Republicans seeking to portray the governor, who started his campaign run presenting himself to the voters as a non-ideological technocrat, as an emotionless automaton, out of touch with the American people.

Likewise, the Democrats' portrayal of “midnight basketball” as an effective deterrent to urban youth street crime in the first Clinton crime bill was used by the Republicans in 1994 to force voters to make a choice regarding which party would keep them safer and look out for them and their children.

“Most Democrat candidates are concerned that they and the Democrat Party will be seen as supporting the Defund the Police movement and be blamed for the massive increase in crime in Democrat-controlled cities,” Viguerie wrote, taking people back to the riots that saw cities burn in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd while in the custody of the Minneapolis police.

In the memo, the veteran activist urges conservative candidates running for office to make liberals choose to own or disavow the anti-police sentiments given voice by those like U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democrat from Minnesota who narrowly escaped defeat in a recent party primary.

During the period in which the greatest upheaval occurred Omar, who represents part of Minneapolis in Congress, called for the dismantling of the city's police department. Or what had been said by Michigan Democrat Rashida Tlaib, who tweeted anti-police sentiments like “Policing in our country is inherently (and) intentionally racist.”

For the strategy to work, it needs to be backed by data showing the crime problem in America is at least as bad as it was during COVID if not worse. According to a recent Time piece, “Homicides and some other violent crimes dropped slightly in the first half of this year compared—but violence in major American cities still remains dramatically higher than it was before the pandemic.”

The numbers come from a survey of crime data collected from 29 major U.S. cities by the Council of Criminal Justice. “It is heartening to see the homicide numbers fall, even slightly, but American cities continue to lose too many of their residents to bloodshed,” Richard Rosenfeld, a University of Missouri–St. Louis criminologist who co-authored the study said. “Heartening” perhaps, but hardly significant progress in beating back the scourge of lawlessness.

According to CCJ's mid-year 2022 crime report, homicides were down from 2021 by 2 percent between January and June 2022. Property crimes, violent crimes and drug offenses were up, with aggravated assaults and robberies increasing by 4 and 19 percent, respectively. Property crimes increased by 6 percent, larceny rose by 20 percent, residential burglaries by 6 percent and motor vehicle thefts by 15 percent.

For many voters, that may be enough. Crime is back in ways that have not been seen since the early 1990s. Some blame it on the economic downturn while others point to such progressive reforms as the abolition of bail, which is putting criminal suspects back on the streets within hours of an arrest so they can commit even more crimes, and the election of district attorneys and other local prosecutors who are simply refusing to do the job the people who voted them into office elected them to do.

Democrats, Viguerie wrote, know this all puts them in a difficult spot as they seek reelection. Underscoring this, he continues, are comments he cites made by U.S. Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D-Va., who many Republicans believe is at or near the top of the list of her party's most vulnerable members come Election Day.

“From a congressional standpoint, it was a failure,” he quotes her saying. “We have to commit to not saying the words ‘Defund the Police' ever again…. If we don't mean we should defund the police, we shouldn't say that.

”Yet, to her probable fury and those of other more moderate-leaning members of her party, the radical fringe oversees the agenda and dominates the discussion. They are in the cart, whipping the horse to make it go forward even at the expense of the more responsible elements of the party in Congress as well as at the activist level. Crime is an issue that will not be solved by defunding the police. Even in many places where it happened after the riots are moving back the other way. No matter how popular a slogan it might have been amidst the Trump vs. Biden contest, it will not be a winning issue this fall. And those who are trying to change their positions will find their previous comments to be an anchor around their necks, dragging them down towards defeat.

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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