As police reform laws take effect, Republicans dust off their old fearmongering playbook

Wash­ing­ton State’s Repub­li­can law­mak­ers say they are com­ing to the aid of total­ly belea­guered cops. They’re bang­ing the drums, call­ing for a spe­cial ses­sion of the Leg­is­la­ture to “fix” recent­ly adopt­ed police reform laws.

They won’t get far with Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, but what they are real­ly doing is look­ing for a cam­paign issue. Law-and-order is an oldie that the Repub­li­cans would like to deploy in seek­ing a come­back in next year’s midterm elections.

The mes­sage will be heavy on anec­dotes, such as this state­ment from three Repub­li­can leg­is­la­tors from the 25th Dis­trict: “Here in Puyallup yes­ter­day, police deputies were forced to aban­don their search for a mur­der sus­pect out of con­cern that a pur­suit result­ing in the use of force would be con­sid­ered unlawful.”

The mes­sage in this Wash­ing­ton tracks with House Repub­li­cans in the “oth­er” Wash­ing­ton. House Repub­li­can Leader Kevin McCarthy effused over Nation­al Police Week in May and argued that police in the Unit­ed States are “under attack like nev­er before,” adding: “Law enforce­ment is our essen­tial line of defense in pro­tect­ing civ­il soci­ety and they deserve Con­gress’ support.”

The sup­port is, how­ev­er, selec­tive. A dis­tinc­tion need be made.

Repub­li­cans say they are out to restore pow­ers to police in this Wash­ing­ton. But nei­ther McCarthy nor Repub­li­can lead­ers in either Wash­ing­ton show any sym­pa­thy for the U.S. Capi­tol Police or D.C.‘s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police.

Four offi­cers tes­ti­fied to the House last week on mob vio­lence in Trump sup­port­ers’ Jan­u­ary 6th insur­rec­tion. The same week, Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Matt Gaetz, Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene and Louie Gohmert showed up at a D.C. deten­tion cen­ter to vis­it riot­ers being held – unjust­ly they claim. They were not admitted.

Out here, Q13 Fox has been out front with the Puyallup sto­ry and lib­er­al with its blame of the Leg­is­la­ture. On FNC, how­ev­er, Lau­ra Ingra­ham was liken­ing tes­ti­mo­ny of D.C. police offi­cer Michael Fanone to a “polit­i­cal performance.”

Mol­lie Hem­ing­way was call­ing the offi­cers’ tes­ti­mo­ny “the­atri­cal.”

Tuck­er Carl­son gig­gled and sneered at Aquili­no Gonell for stat­ing he “was more afraid” at U.S. Capi­tol insur­rec­tion­ists than dur­ing his tour of duty in Iraq.

The Repub­li­can polit­i­cal strat­e­gy in this Wash­ing­ton is straight­for­ward. Try to neg­a­tive­ly define the Democ­rats’ leg­isla­tive agen­da and deploy fear to turn vot­ers against the Ever­green State’s cur­rent gov­ern­ing polit­i­cal party.

As put by the 25th Dis­trict leg­is­la­tors: “Law abid­ing cit­i­zens now have to won­der if they’re going to be the next vic­tims of a per­pe­tra­tor who got away.”

Such tac­tics should not be greet­ed with scoffing.

Repub­li­cans have been run­ning on law-and-order since a notably law­less politi­cian, Richard Nixon, won the pres­i­den­cy in 1968.

Repub­li­can can­di­dates for Con­gress ran against calls for police reform and abo­li­tion in down­bal­lot races last year. Whether that made a dif­fer­ence in House races is dis­put­ed, but at least some Demo­c­ra­t­ic strate­gists argue that it did.

The law-and-order theme can be as pow­er­ful as it is dis­hon­est. Recall last year when Tuck­er Carl­son, aid­ed by his Seat­tle tick bird Jason Rantz, thun­dered about “the descent of our nation into chaos and crazi­ness” with the Emer­ald City as Exhib­it A. Fox ran a shot of a man dash­ing through the street with a car ablaze behind him. The shot was tak­en in Min­neapo­lis a month earlier.

And this from the new Trump down­fall book, “I Alone Can Fix It”: “On June 12, Fox’s home page fea­tured an image of a man car­ry­ing an assault rifle in front of a Seat­tle store­front with shat­tered glass. But the pic­ture had been dig­i­tal­ly altered by split­ting togeth­er mul­ti­ple pho­to­graph­ic images and putting the man with the rifle – a vol­un­teer work­ing secu­ri­ty in fact – in front of the loot­ed store.”

Con­cern about pub­lic safe­ty are legit­i­mate, as NPI’s recent Top Two sur­vey of Seat­tle vot­ers demon­strat­ed. The Seat­tle area recent­ly expe­ri­enced a five-mur­der week­end. Our Supe­ri­or Court judges have issued an urgent warn­ing about the need for greater secu­ri­ty around the King Coun­ty Courthouse.

Yet, while the rash of shoot­ings are clear­ly linked to a known cause – the pro­lif­er­a­tion of guns in our streets – Repub­li­cans dwell on such top­ics as pro­vi­sions ban­ning offi­cers’ use of choke­holds and restraints on police chas­es. Chas­es are, after all, a sta­ple of law enforce­ment in the movies, and an essen­tial of sweep months in any city, espe­cial­ly LA, where all the TV sta­tions own helicopters.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic vot­ers in New York have just nom­i­nat­ed a may­oral can­di­date with a law enforce­ment back­ground. Eric Adams is a for­mer police cap­tain who once raised hell about exces­sive use of force in com­mu­ni­ties of color.

Recent­ly, in an appear­ance on the “The View,” he argued:

“We have to deal with this very real vio­lence and not allow these con­ver­sa­tions to become con­vo­lut­ed. Deal­ing with police mis­con­duct is a sep­a­rate con­ver­sa­tion from deal­ing with vio­lence in our streets. We can have both. We’re going to have a police depart­ment that’s respect­ing the public.”

The lev­el-head­ed atti­tude of Adams con­trasts with the behav­ior of Seat­tle City Coun­cil mem­bers last sum­mer. The Coun­cil vot­ed to cut the Seat­tle Police Depart­ment bud­get while under­min­ing Chief Car­men Best, prompt­ing her to ten­der her res­ig­na­tion. The Council’s actions are ripe for exploita­tion as Repub­li­cans talk law and order across much of the rest of Washington.

The Repub­li­cans have lit­tle else to run on.

Seat­tle bash­ing has bombed, repeat­ed­ly. Wit­ness the inef­fec­tive TV spot fea­tur­ing the Lenin stat­ue in Fre­mont, which did­n’t help Repub­li­cans four years ago in the 45th Dis­trict. Gov­er­nor Inslee has won wide back­ing for his response to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, secur­ing reelec­tion by a big­ger mar­gin than in 2016.

Such crit­ics as Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jim Walsh, who offen­sive­ly wore a yel­low star of David to protest pan­dem­ic restric­tions, have behaved like pub­lic fools.

Wash­ing­ton remains an engine of eco­nom­ic growth despite warn­ings that pro­tect­ing its work­ers will hurt the busi­ness cli­mate. The Asso­ci­a­tion of Wash­ing­ton Busi­ness has been warn­ing that will hap­pen for the past thir­ty years.

Still, learn a bit from his­to­ry. George H.W. Bush and cam­paign man­ag­er Lee Atwa­ter suc­cess­ful­ly attached the soft-on-crime label to Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Michael Dukakis. (It was actu­al­ly Dukakis whose fam­i­ly had twice been the vic­tims of vio­lent crime.) The Repub­li­cans lat­er used crime as a key issue in the 1994 elec­tion cycle. 1994 was the last time they won big leg­isla­tive majori­ties here and a super­ma­jor­i­ty of seats in Wash­ing­ton’s con­gres­sion­al delegation.

The wise course: Lis­ten to the we-need-both advice of Eric Adams. Prac­tice intel­li­gent advo­ca­cy. Back need­ed restraints on law enforce­ment and police use of force, but sup­port com­mu­ni­ty polic­ing. Areas with high crime need solu­tions. Let­ting such prob­lems fes­ter is not a solu­tion. Peo­ple under­stand­ably want crimes like homi­cides, rapes, or bur­glar­ies inves­ti­gat­ed and pros­e­cut­ed. At the same time, they want racism and cor­rup­tion in our police depart­ments addressed.

Oh yeah, one more vital point. Elect­ed Democ­rats in Con­gress and in oth­er states need to get off their duffs and get mov­ing on gun safe­ty legislation.

As Park­land, Flori­da mas­sacre sur­vivor David Hogg – the guy Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene harassed at the U.S. Capi­tol – recent­ly not­ed: “It’s been over six months and not one fed­er­al gun law has passed with a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­ate, House and White House. Amer­i­cans are being killed every sin­gle day.”