Republicans like to talk tough on crime � but they're the ones with a real
crime problem
Crime is much worse in "red states" � and that's been true for years. Why
don't Democrats ever just say it?

Republicans like to talk tough about crime. But they have a crime problem
of their own that they want to keep under wraps.

A new study of homicide by the nonpartisan advocacy group Third Way reveals
a fact that Republicans don't want to acknowledge: Rates of violent crime,
especially murder rates, are higher in red states than in blue states.

That has been true for years, yet Democrats have said almost nothing about
this startling fact or about Republicans' evident incompetence in actually
doing something about crime.

Crime is an American problem, touching the lives of people in cities,
suburbs and rural areas. Yet for all its talk about crime, the Republican
Party has not delivered an effective strategy to fight it.

Of course, you would never know that from listening to Republican
politicians or the public officials who represent red states. They take
every opportunity to try to convince voters that crime is a problem made
worse by "liberal" policies, and that it runs rampant in cities and states
where Democrats are in charge.

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Consider the charges in an op-ed written by House Republican Whip Steve
Scalise, R-La., and Rep. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Wis.. for the Fox News site in
the run-up to the 2022 election.

"Over the last few years," they wrote, "we have seen the consequences of
leftist Democrats' embrace of the radical 'Defund the Police' and 'No Cash
Bail' movements. By slashing police budgets, ending cash bail, and allowing
violent offenders back onto our streets, radical Democrats nationwide have
made our communities less safe."

Violent crime, they said, was out of control in "every Democrat-run city
and state across the country."

Echoing Scalise and Fitzgerald, Kevin McCarthy, the recently installed
Republican speaker of the House, bluntly claimed that "Democrat politicians
defunded police, raised money for rioters, and pushed policies that are
soft on crime. They own this crime wave."

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Looking back at the 2022 midterm elections, CNN reported that "Over the
first three weeks of October (2022), GOP candidates and committees spent
$64.5 million on ads focused on crime � nearly one-quarter of all the money
they spent on ads over that period�.. Many of those ads accused Democrats
of supporting the ending of cash bail or efforts to defund the police."

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson's re-election campaign provides one example of
this attempt to pin the soft-on-crime label on Democrats. Johnson ran a
series of ads attacking his Democratic opponent, Mandela Barnes, for
advocating an end to cash bail.

The ads ended with the tagline, "Mandela Barnes, not just a Democrat, but a
dangerous Democrat" and a racially charged image of Barnes superimposed
over a picture of several Democratic women of color who serve in the House
of Representatives and are known as the "Squad." Johnson wound up winning
that race by an exceedingly narrow margin, just 26,000 votes out of more
than 2.6 million cast.

Not surprisingly, a 2022 Gallup Poll found that "partisanship plays a
significant role in shaping Americans' assessments of crime."

Gallup reports that "since 2000, supporters of the president's party have
typically been less likely than those who identify with the opposition
party to say that crime has increased. Before that, during both George H.W.
Bush's and Bill Clinton's presidencies, partisans held similar perceptions
of the crime problem."

Gallup also found that "Last October, with Joe Biden in the White House and
after the FBI released its 2020 crime statistics showing a sharp increase
in murders in the U.S., the percentage of Republicans who said there was
more local crime increased from 38% to 67%. Independents' perception that
local crime was worse also edged up, while Democrats' view was essentially
unchanged."

But Republicans' hypocritical exploitation of the crime issue isn't just an
election-year phenomenon.

Last month they went on the attack when Washington, D.C.'s Democratic City
Council overrode Mayor Muriel Bowser's veto of the Revised Criminal Code
Act of 2022. The city ordinance modernized the District's criminal laws,
which had not been overhauled for more than 100 years.

It was designed to "expand eligibility for the Second Look Act from
youthful, convicted violent offenders to people of all ages;� expand the
right to a jury trial for those charged with misdemeanors but facing jail
time; and� reduce maximum criminal penalties for violent crimes like
carjacking and robberies."

Republicans quickly pounced, using the accusation that Democrats are soft
on crime in a successful effort to get the House of Representatives to
exercise its constitutional authority to override the D.C. law.

Americans' perception of crime is now a partisan issue, driven by which
party holds power. But Republicans' hypocritical exploitation of crime is
no longer just an election-year phenomenon.

One local news story quotes Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., chair of the House
Oversight and Accountability Committee, as saying that, "There's a crime
crisis in America's capital city. According to the D.C. Metropolitan Police
Department, carjackings in the District have increased by 90% compared to
this time last year. Total property crime is up 31%, and homicides are up
29%."

But, following the usual Republican playbook, Comer wasn't content to
recite those facts.

"The radical D.C. Council," he continued "has chosen to prioritize
legislation that will turn this crime crisis into a catastrophe. The D.C.
Council's progressive soft-on-crime legislation eliminates almost all the
mandatory minimum sentencing requirements for violent crimes, and it
drastically reduces the maximum penalties allowable to the courts."

While Republicans talk about the crime rate in Democratic run cities like
Washington, they won't own up to their own problems in dealing with crime.
These problems were highlighted in a 2022 Los Angeles Magazine article
which pointed out that murder rates in "mid-sized cities with Republican
mayors have actually fared far worse than big cities with Democratic
mayors."

For example, the homicide rate in Bakersfield, California � the principal
city in Kevin McCarthy's district � was more than twice as high as that of
San Francisco, represented in the house by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

This brings us back to the Third Way report, which points out that what is
true in California is true across the nation. The report meticulously
documents the Republicans' hidden crime problem.

"The murder rate in Trump-voting states," the Third Way report says, "has
exceeded the murder rate in Biden-voting states every year this century.
Cumulatively, overall murder rates since 2000 were on average 23% higher in
Trump-voting states." It continues:

For the past 21 years, the top 10 murder rate states have been
dominated by reliably red states, namely Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama,
and Missouri. And when we removed the county with the largest city in
Trump-voting states (and kept them in for Biden-voting states), murder
rates were still significantly higher in these red states.

While media reports give the impression that murder rates are
skyrocketing in blue areas, murder rates have actually increased at far
higher rates in Trump-voting states over the past two decades, widening the
Red State murder gap from a low of 9% in 2003 and 2004 to a high of 44% in
2019, before falling to 43% in 2020. Since 2000, murder rates have
increased 39.4% in red states and just 13.4% in blue states.

It's time for Democrats to make these facts known, and stop giving
Republicans a free pass on the crime issue. They need to expose Republican
cynicism, hypocrisy and incompetence in dealing with crime � and remind
voters of these failings at every opportunity.

As Jim Kessler, Third Way's executive VP for policy puts it, "Republicans
seem to do a much better job of talking about stopping crime than actually
stopping crime."

https://www.salon.com/2023/02/15/like-to-talk-tough-on--but-theyre-the-
ones-with-a-real-problem/