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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29604 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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Wasn't the guy who shot Trump in the ear a registered Republican?

He had donated to ActBlue and attempted to kill the Republican incumbent. A Republican would not do this, but a Democrat would have a motive to vote in a Republican mid-term.

There are Republicans who hate Trump (see Rick Wilson for a start), so I don't think we can say a Republican never would.

Indeed quotes from his school mates also paint him as conservative:

According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, former classmates remember 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks as a mild-mannered right-winger. “He was definitely a conservative,” said Max R. Smith, one of his ex-classmates.

When remembering Crooks, a classmate described a debate in American history class. “The majority of the class were on the liberal side, but Tom, no matter what, always stood his ground on the conservative side,” Smith said. “That’s still the picture I have of him. Just standing alone on one side while the rest of the class was on the other.”

So he registered as a Republican, his classmates say he was conservative, and he donated to a Blue PAC and presumably watched GunTube. At the very least he clearly wasn't a standard Democrat.

He also gave money to a leftist political group. In any case, both would-be assassins pattern match for mental illness more than they do any coherent political viewpoint. Why should we care about what particular flavor of crazy they were?

The bigger issue for the second attempt is the media downplaying and even justifying it.

In states with closed primaries (like Pennsylvania), there are plenty of reasons to register as a member of a party you don't really agree with completely to vote in the primary. As a voter in an open primary state, I tend to choose which primary to vote in to maximize the volume from my vote, not because I consider myself a member of a partisan group.

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