From the right: Beware the Shootings Blame Game

Democrats were quick to blame President Trump for the weekend’s massacres in El Paso and Dayton, with Beto O’Rourke skewering “a president who’s called Mexicans rapists and criminals.” But, points out John Merline at Issues & Insights, the facts don’t shake down so neatly. Yes, the El Paso shooter ranted about a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” But his manifesto also showed him to be an “anti-corporatist environmentalist and backer of universal health care.” In other words, he “happens to share many policy positions with Democrats,” yet mainstream reporters aren’t seizing those similarities to blame leading liberals for his actions. And the Dayton shooter is even more problematic: He reportedly tweeted out his support for Sen. Liz Warren, writing, “I want socialism, and I’ll not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding.” So, asks Merline: If Trump is to blame for El Paso, “is Warren to blame for [Dayton]?”

Culture critic: The Malaise Behind the Massacres

At The American Spectator, Melissa Mackenzie dreams of a “better world,” where mass killers get no “notoriety” to inspire copycats and ­online chat rooms don’t glorify “invective against women” or “a certain race.” In reality, people, including politicians, use the “deaths of innocent people for political gain.” Fact is, the “common thread” among the mass shooters isn’t “politics,” but that “we’ve brought up a generation of people who have everything and feel empty at the same time.” Alas, solutions to such cultural crises don’t come easy. “Maybe that’s why people blame politics. It’s easier.”

From the left: Dems Are Pruning the Field Too Soon

The Democratic National Committee’s rules for who will make it into the debates aren’t serving the party well, argues Walter Shapiro at The New Republic. With a major culling to come this month, most candidates at last week’s debate were “petrified” that the night “would be their swan song as legitimate candidates.” That brought “a ferocity more common on the eve of the Iowa caucuses than during early encounters, when candidates normally would be introducing themselves and ballyhooing their accomplishments,” and made the whole party seem “fractured by deep ideological fissures over health care, immigration and criminal justice.” Worst, it appears DNC chief Tom Perez pushed the winnowing “to provide the TV networks with the dramatically smaller debate stages they crave for ratings.”

Foreign desk: Putin’s Home-Front Headache

Protesters poured into the streets of Moscow over the weekend to ­demand free and fair elections, and Vladimir Putin responded with brutality and mass arrests. Yet the Russian strongman “isn’t flexing his strength so much as betraying weakness,” argues The Wall Street Journal editorial board. Discontent is growing as the Kremlin squeezes the opposition, most notably the antigraft campaigner Alexei Navalny, and the economy deteriorates. “The risk now,” says the Journal, “is that he picks a foreign fight — a new front in the Baltics or perhaps an escalation in the Sea of Azov — to distract from domestic troubles.” That’s all the more reason for the West to “make clear that any escalation abroad would be resisted and lead to more biting economic sanctions.”

Free-speech watch: Don’t Ban Killers’ Manifestos

The Drudge Report and other outlets have come under fire for publishing the El Paso killer’s 2,300-word manifesto. But John Fund in National Review warns that we shouldn’t “make free speech another casualty of these murders.” The document is full of paranoid talk of “race-mixing.” Hideous stuff, yet there are important reasons not to suppress such material. For starters, it helps us learn about “the twisted motivations of mass killers.” Plus, citizens should be able to have ­access, since “the media can’t always be counted on to provide a full interpretation or context of their motivations.” Indeed, “even German authorities recently legalized the publication of ‘Mein Kampf,’ saying that people needed to understand the nature of evil and how it expressed itself.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board