Why Republicans Are Smearing Everyone as Pedophiles Now
Not long ago, the notion that American politics was oriented around a dispute over the merits of child sexual exploitation was viewed as so loopy that not even Donald Trump could take it seriously. It is now becoming the Republican Party’s most energetic idea. The two most prominent theaters of partisan combat of the moment, the
Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmation and
Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, have
both seen a growing swath of conservatives embrace charges of pedophilia as their central theme.
Two years ago, the pedophilia charge was confined almost entirely to
QAnon, a sprawling web of far-right conspiracy theories that operated around the fringes of conservative politics. And while some of the details produced by its theories would find their way into the minds of Trump and his inner circle (especially with conspiracy theories centering on the “stolen election”), the broader narrative that American politics was a fight over pedophilia remained marginal.
What
is true about the Republican Party is that some of its members are still willing to support fellow Republicans even after learning of their sexual exploitation of minors. After Moore was revealed to have preyed upon teenagers as an adult, the likes of Trump and the Federalist still urged Alabamans to vote for him for Senate. One pro-Moore
column in the Federalist, headlined “Why Alabamians Should Vote for Roy Moore,” included the uncomfortable rationale “To have a large family, the wife must start having kids when she is young.”
If you go to the Federalist today, you will find headlines
like “Disney’s Obsession With Grooming Children Is Nothing New, But Their Openness About It Is,”
and “Joe Biden’s Reversal on Sexual Exposure for Kids Shows Just How Extreme the Democratic Party Has Become.”
The spread of this “issue” says nothing about the parties’ comparative permissiveness about sexual assault. It only reveals the existence within one of them of an openness to conspiracy theories and a network of operatives unprincipled enough to exploit it.
Much more at the link below...
Yes, Republicans are really sick perverts.