Letter: Not all lives matter to the Republican Party | INFORUM – INFORUM

How can the Republican Party be the self-proclaimed protector of the unborn while at the same time be advocating for a return-to-work policy during the COVID-19 pandemic that risks lives already being lived?

Gross hypocrisy? Not really. What then?

For almost my entire life, the Republican Party has perpetrated a scheme as old as civilization itself: divide and conquer, or, divide and rule if you prefer the Latin version (divide et impera).

The Republican Partys Southern strategy, utilized by both the Goldwater and Nixon presidential campaigns, was based on appealing to aggrieved white Southerners. In 1980, Ronald Reagan delivered a states rights speech at a fairgrounds only a few miles from Philadelphia, Miss., a town associated with the gruesome murders of three civil rights activists in 1964.

With respect to George H.W. Bushs presidential campaign in 1988, recall the infamous Willie Horton ads, a low point for dog-whistle politics. In 2004, political observers accused George W. Bush of using coded language to imply that Supreme Court decisionsi.e., Roe v. Wadecould be reversed.

Of course, W also mired us in the Iraq War, with estimates for Iraqi deaths ranging from 110,000 to more than a million. Does anyone feel safer today?

And now, our current divider-in-chief is cheering on us-against-them armed protestswhere the them are often health care workers pleading for common sense for the common good.

President Trump stands before us like a crop of wheat ready for harvest. To Republican strategists, past and present, representing an immoral minority, I say, Reap what youve sown.

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Letter: Not all lives matter to the Republican Party | INFORUM - INFORUM