Oh, the things we get outraged about. From The Washington Times:
Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison refused to condemn President Biden for likening Republicans to “semi-fascism,” defending his fellow Democrat against GOP backlash that the extreme rhetoric was inappropriate and hypocritical.
“The one thing that President Joe Biden has been is he’s always been consistent, and he has always been somebody who does what my grandfather used to do, which is say it plainly to the American people,” Mr. Harrison said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday morning. “What we see right now is a full-frontal attack by these extreme MAGA Republicans in this country.”
Mr. Biden made the remarks Thursday at a DNC fundraiser where he denounced Republicans and former President Donald Trump as “the ultra-MAGA party” that follows a political philosophy of “semi-fascism.”
This is outrage from the same party that routinely throws accusations of Socialism, Marxism and anything else they can towards President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party. The all-time classic world-salad insult comes from Wisconsin’s own Sen. Ron Johnson:
“And don’t ask me to get inside the mind of a liberal, progressive, socialist, Marxist like President Biden,” Johnson said in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News.
“From my point of view it represents the blending together of these terms without much care or concern for the actual substantial differences in meaning in those four words,” political scientist and polling expert Charles Franklin of Marquette University told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
“But from Senator Johnson’s point of view they’re kind of indistinguishable from one another and therefore stringing them together in one label is not that stunning,” Franklin said.
Johnson, of course, is running to “save our country” and “keep America free.”
Subscribe to “Life, Under Construction,” in your email inbox every Monday and Thursday.“This election is about Freedom vs. Socialism. This is a fight we cannot afford to lose,” Johnson posted recently on Twitter. “Will you join me in the Fight for Freedom?”
No overheated rhetoric there, right?
I’m not sure why Republicans are supposedly upset about being called “semi-fascists.” Do they think it’s insulting to truck drivers?
Republicans have already embraced the epithet “ultra-MAGA” from a previous Biden speech. Maybe they object to the modifier “semi” since it doesn’t allow “fascist” to fit neatly on a hat.
No, it’s probably not helpful to the public discourse for the President of the United States to imply his political opponents are embracing fascism. We should all work harder to temper our language, and the president did promise to improve our political discourse.
But it’s hilarious to hear Republicans behave like wilting précieuses after the Trumpian outbursts of the last six years. Since the game on the Right is now to see how offensive and outrageous politicians can be, without penalty, perhaps they should look in a mirror before complaining about the heat of the president’s rhetoric.
And if Republicans don’t want to be called fascists, perhaps they shouldn’t be running candidates that behave like fascists, like congressional candidate Derrick Van Orden, or excuse fascist behavior, like gubernatorial candidate Tim Michels.
