With eight days to go until Virginia Republicans nominate their candidates for governor, Lt. Governor and Attorney General, the leading contenders certainly aren’t moderating their messages. To the contrary, as you can see from the following Pete Snyder email, the leading candidates are channeling their inner racists, xenophobes, homophobes, etc. On a closely related note, they’re also becoming even more Trumpian in their language, if that’s even humanly possible. For instance, check out the language (all wildly over the top and wildly false) Pete Snyder uses in this email, such as the following (note: my comments are in parentheses and in blue):
- “No More Woke Garbage” (note: if you listen to the rhetoric in the 2021 VA GOP gubernatorial contest, you’d think that the most important issues facing America aren’t COVID-19, the economy, the environment, healthcare, education, etc, etc., but….”cancel culture,” being “woke,” yada yada.)
- “The Democratic Party is now an extremist socialist party. As President Reagan said, socialism is a disease, and it’s spreading.” (In fact, as this “Illiberalism Index” shows, the Democratic Party barely budged ideologically between 1982 and 2018, remaining a moderate/center-left party, while the Republican Party lurched into the same territory as European far-right, ultranationalist parties such as “Vox” in Spain, “AfD” in Germany and the “National Front” in France. And the scary thing is, THAT is what’s spreading, not “socialism.”)
- “College campuses funded with our tax dollars have long preached Marxism, and now they openly advocate for discrimination based on skin color. It’s like they want Americans of different races to hate each other.” (Wuuuuut? Is anyone aware of any college campuses preaching “Marxism,” or “openly advocat[ing] for discrimination based on skin color?” Uhhhh…)
- “The news media is the most corrupt institution in America. It’s little more than Democratic operatives posing as reporters—typing up talking points from the DNC.” (Classic Trumpian language, demonizing and delegitimizing any media other that right-wing-echo-chamber media, such as OANN, Fox, etc. This rhetoric is very dangerous, and is used frequently by far-right “populists” and other authoritarians around the world.)
- “Our government is full of liberal career bureaucrats who view their job as resisting the will of the American people.” (This is also very dangerous, inflammatory and false rhetoric. Also, gotta wonder how many “career bureaucrats” in Northern Virginia are going to take kindly to claiming they are “resisting the will of the American people.”)
- “Woke CEOs pander to the radical left, and claim to care about social justice causes just to make a buck.” (What Snyder’s email is referring to, of course, is CEOs standing up for a core element of our democracy, namely the right to vote. In Snyder’s view, apparently, voting rights are equivalent to the “radical left.” Which basically tells you all you need to know about Snyder and the party he hopes to lead.)
- “Faith. Family. Our history. It’s all under attack by the radical left and their billionaire Big Tech allies.” (On one level, this is a meaningless “word salad,” but on another level, it’s dangerous and inflammatory – and false, of course.)
By the way, for anyone who thinks the VA GOP gubernatorial field consists of one extremist (Amanda Chase) and a bunch of relatively “moderate” Republicans, that’s just…uh, completely not true. In fact, there’s almost no difference in substance, and increasingly no difference in rhetoric, between these candidates, all of whom are after all appealing to the same, Trump-worshipping “base” voters.
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