Republicans are working overtime to find a theme for rallying the base in 2018. Their tax cuts won't do it, because even Republican voters aren't stupid enough to believe they're the ones benefiting from that. They can't scream "Obamacare" because that script has flipped completely and they can't remind people that they're the ones endangering people's health care. But there's always the tried and true culture wars to come back to, and that's what the think they've got in the aftermath of the Kavanaugh debacle.
When they cry "angry mob," this is what they mean: "leftists, elitists and feminists, […] academics and celebrities, of Trump nemesis Michael Avenatti, philanthropist George Soros and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), who has called for the president's impeachment." They don't have to go full-on racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic, because Trump is making that explicit. But when they say "angry mob," the dog bullhorn sounds in every deplorable's ear. "I'm sure there is some little old lady in Iowa who now keeps her doors locked because she thinks there's going to be some anarchist mob coming through Davenport," scoffs John Weaver, longtime Republican strategist and Trump critic, but he means it.
They won't see the actual people protesting—their suburban soccer mom daughter or their grandchild who's terrified of being shot in school or their neighbors who are people of color who are afraid of being shot and/or seized by ICE. Republicans and the interest groups bankrolling them want the rubes to believe that these real forces behind the protests are actually "crisis actors" and part of some big "globalist" (you know what that means) conspiracy. Oh, and abortion on demand, too.
Elected Republicans and their funders can read polls, too and they know how tenuous the enthusiasm surge they got from Kavanaugh's confirmation will be. They know their only hope is to try to keep the shrinking base scared out of their wits. As usual.
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