The Left's Very Dangerous Game

The left is simply perverse lunacy pampered and protected by cynical cadres who use it as a source of power, wealth, and prestige. This sick madness leads leftists to do profoundly stupid and evil things. This sick madness also leads the left to political suicide and revulsion by the majority of Americans. Consider Shakespeare in the Park portraying the assassination of President Trump, and, more importantly, consider the gaggle of New York leftists applauding that theatrically produced murder. Consider the attempted assassination at a charity baseball game of the House majority whip, Steve Scalise, an early supporter within the Republican Party of Donald Trump, by James T. Hodgkinson, a Bernie Sanders supporter, who asked before he began his attack on Scalise and other congressmen if the people on the field were Democrats or Republicans – and when told "Republican," he began his carnage.

What if one of the crazy leftists takes a shot at President Trump or tries again to kill important Republican congressional leaders? What if he seriously wounds the president? What if – God forbid! – some demented leftist actually kills our president? The response of the vast majority of America would be strong, clear, and devastating. When Kennedy was assassinated, even though no Republican had called for harm to him, Democrats went from having an incumbent president likely to lose re-election to a party that won the 1964 election by a landslide. No one dared even criticize Kennedy for a generation. When President Reagan was shot early in his first term, his approval ratings jumped through the roof, Congress gave him a long standing ovation when he addressed that body a few weeks later, and Reagan's domestic agenda sailed through a Congress in which few Democrats dared attack President Reagan as the left had been doing for a long, long time. Or even consider when Republicans impeached an obviously culpable and thoroughly unsavory Bill Clinton. Americans began to view this creep as some sort of victim, and in the 1998 midterm election, they punished the Republican Party for being "mean" to Clinton. Because the only arrow in the leftist quiver is demonizing and destroying individuals it sees as enemies, leftists doubtless do not see silly calls for impeaching Trump as politically dangerous and even lack the vision to grasp what would happen to them if Trump or Pence or some other Republican leader were shot or killed. The left lacks any real rhetorical attack on the policies of Trump, so only the person of Trump is the target, intending to frighten or intimidate a mature billionaire president who has doubtless been threatened by bad guys before and clearly is unimpressed with threats. While injuring or killing Trump would privately delight perhaps the 14% of Americans who describe themselves as "very liberal," the 63% who call themselves "moderate" or "somewhat conservative" or "very conservative" would be appalled, and probably half of the 24% who call themselves "somewhat liberal" would be ashamed and disgusted. Americans would react in a similar manner if men like Majority Whip Scalise, who has the second highest conservative rating in conservative Louisiana, are killed. The unhinged violence and totalitarian fantasyland of the left would repel Americans not just politically, but in every other aspect of public and civil life. Unlike Republicans after Kennedy's assassination, who had never called for harm to President Kennedy or produced plays depicting his murder, and unlike Republicans after Clinton's impeachment, who were using their peaceful, proper, and constitutional power against a president who had blatantly lied to the American people and to Congress and to federal courts, leftists, before any tragic crime is committed against conservative leaders, have slobbered and sputtered incoherent violence against the left's perceived enemies. Leftists will have no place to hide, no excuse of any worth, no alibi of any sort if a conservative leader is killed for his beliefs and his political intentions. Americans – at least all the conservatives and moderates, who are the overwhelming majority – will see leftism as a mental disorder of the criminally insane and will demand that the left be denied power not only in government, but in those institutions of society which are leftism's secret source of power. The left's very dangerous game, this awful game of physical intimidation and attempted murder of conservatives, is something all of us ought to hope leftists quit – for the sake of the nation and for the sake of their souls.