As communications director for the Republican National Committee in the 2010 election cycle, I was part of the “Fire Pelosi” campaign, launched on the day the House of Representatives passed the Affordable Care Act. Obamacare squeaked through thanks to the efforts of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
We set up a fundraising website with a picture of Pelosi engulfed in flames (fire, get it?) to unseat her as speaker with a GOP takeover of the House. After we pulled in $1 million more than our initial goal of $400,000, we launched a Fire Pelosi bus tour that visited each of the Lower 48 states. Our success felt like a political gift.
When I left the RNC, I made sure the Fire Pelosi banner we had hung on the building came with me. (It remained in my possession for several years.) This was shortly after I had to rush to the office one Saturday morning in 2011, after Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.) was shot while meeting with voters. On a conference call with colleagues in Capitol Hill Republican leadership and at the party committees, we discussed the need to roundly condemn the shooting and to do what we could to make sure none of our more caustic members said the wrong thing.
That was a difficult enough task in early 2011. Eleven years later, I don’t know that it’s possible. Ugly tweets and jokes from some Republicans about the attack on Pelosi’s husband, Paul, suggest it is not.
More and more in our politics, the loudest, angriest, most divisive voices get the most attention (and money). Real solutions, and the politicians who put their heads down to do hard work, get short shrift. Collectively, we have to lower the temperature. People keep getting hurt. We’re very lucky no one has been killed — and I worry I need to emphasize “yet.”
As a Republican, I know the original sin begins with us. Republicans — not all, to be sure, but enough — vilified Barack Obama’s most personal attributes. His religion was questioned. Racist cartoons were common. So were jokes about Obama’s African heritage (“Kenya hear me,” Texas Rep. Louis Gohmert said at a House Republican Conference meeting). Rebukes came, but they weren’t loud or frequent enough. The old “not one of us” racist trope remained.
Then along came Donald Trump, whose campaign message was essentially yelling “fire” in a crowded political theater. When Trump urged his supporters to “knock the crap” out of protesters, they obliged, just as extremists have when Trump told them in 2020 to “stand back and stand by.” Trump’s rhetoric — years of picking at our every division — made the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection inevitable.
It should remain an indelible stain on the soul of a party that continues to support Trump, whether out of opportunity or fear
BUT IF THE Republican embrace of Trump represents our sin, Democrats should not be collecting stones to throw.
Toxic rhetoric led to a supporter of Bernie Sanders opening fire at a 2017 baseball practice among congressional Republicans, critically injuring Rep. Steve Scalise (La.) and wounding three others. This summer, a man with a gun was arrested near the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. Recall that before the Supreme Court heard arguments in an abortion case in 2020, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), said of Kavanaugh and another Trump-appointed justice, “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.” The Republican nominee for governor of New York, Rep. Lee Zeldin, was attacked at a July event by a man with a knife.
Add to that the increases in racism and antisemitism, and the erosion of confidence in our institutions, that have followed two-plus years of anxiety and isolation that affected us all. We are changed, and not for the better.
Now, was Schumer calling for supporters to attack Kavanaugh? Of course not. No more so than an old political banner led to last week’s assault of Paul Pelosi. But what we say is often not what people hear, and everyone in political life has a duty to do better. This includes journalists and outlets looking to point fingers and gin up outrage.
Just as warming waters create the conditions for more frequent and destructive hurricanes, toxic rhetoric can manifest into actions. Our political emotions are running hotter than ever. We’ve been relatively lucky so far. Consider the attacks on Giffords and Scalise, the threats against Kavanaugh, the plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), and the Jan. 6 chants of “Hang Mike Pence” and threats against Nancy Pelosi — had any of them gone further, our country would be even closer to unraveling.
Politics is a business of tough talk on tough issues. Some challenges, such as inflation, are at their worst state in generations. Some, such as the rapid speed of disinformation and hate, are newer.
If we can’t tame the latter, our other problems will become small in comparison.
