Republican outrage at Roe v. Wade SCOTUS Leak is a cunning ploy to apologize to the Capitol Riots of January 6

Republicans have spent decades building out the right-wing judiciary that has allowed the Supreme Court to draft a devastating decision this week that, when made officially, will overturn nearly 50 years of abortion rights in the United States. America. But you’ll be hard-pressed to find a Republican legislator eager to celebrate what by any measure is a generational victory for anti-abortion conservatives.

Instead, Washington’s political media is abuzz with the race to find out who leaked the court’s draft plan. And none were more outraged than Senate Republicans, who lined up on Tuesday to condemn the leak as a dangerous attack on democracy itself.

“By all signs, this is yet another escalation in the far-left’s ongoing campaign to bully and intimidate federal judges and substitute the rule of the masses for the rule of law,” said Leader. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement—Without providing even a shred of evidence to support his fiduciary claims.

“It is a sad day for the Supreme Court and a dangerous day for the Rule of Law,” Sen. Lindsey Graham said in a statement. adds, “The extreme left is trying to reshape the institutions that stand in the way of the results they want. “

In a Fox business appeared on Tuesday, Senator Ted Cruz mused about a “leftist law clerk” responsible for the leak — a character Cruz made up because we don’t know who leaked the draft. — will be “indicted and [serve] actual jail time. ”

This is the same Cruz, who publicly apologized for calling the January 6 uprising a “terrorist attack” after standard-bearer Trumpist deputies Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz accused him. disloyalty to the MAGA movement. And that’s the problem.

A mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on January 6 after the Republican president maintained the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen and demanded they “fight like hell.” prison.” And then 147 Republican congressmen still voted against the certification of the election results that night. A few weeks later, 43 Republican senators voted to acquit Trump of his second impeachment — including McConnell, who said Trump was “facts and morally responsible.” in inciting the events of [Jan. 6]”Which he also called “terrorist”.

Republican efforts to muddize around the January 6 violent attack began even as the uprising was brewing, with text message evidence showing prominent Fox figures News – including Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham – sent increasingly panicked text messages to the White House Chief of Staff. Mark Meadows, while publicly downplaying an active effort by the far right to overthrow a peaceful transfer of power. But unlike the chaos of January 6, the Republican pager was well prepared to use this week’s Supreme Court leak to whitewash well-documented history. their own clarity about fostering the collapse of American institutions.

But all that is ancient history, even if the 6th of January Commission barely finished its work. Republicans don’t want to talk about it anymore. They need a distraction.

And so voilà, GOP Outrage Theater has a new big villain: “the Leaker.”

But the GOP’s moral outrage over the Supreme Court leak is not just cynical, but factually incorrect — because there are no known facts to resolve!

As it stands, Republicans are effectively rewriting history, while blaming the Supreme Court leak on an unnamed and possibly nonexistent agent of the “radical left.” . Unfortunately for the news-loving public, Beltway media outlets like Axios and Politico largely allow McConnell to raise tough questions about the true meaning of the Supreme Court’s decision. Instead of a serious barbecue, Republicans were free to weave their stories unbroken by facts and facts.

McConnell’s attempt to equate the draft leak with an attack on democracy did not stem from the office of the Minority Leader. McConnell and other GOP lawmakers are drawing their language directly from the far right, who have made a career out of mitigating the damage of Republican extremism.

The day before McConnell spoke, Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh was conservative tweeted that the Supreme Court leak was “An attack on our systems is 100,000,000 times more serious than the Capitol riots,” urged his audience to “never listen” to Democrats concerned about “save democracy”. Daily Wire’s resident celebrity expert Ben Shapiro has gone furtherspeculated that the leak was “designed to create a threat to the lives and limbs of any justice signing to the majority opinion”.

By comparison, Shapiro was almost unconcerned about the actual violence that took place on January 6, describing Democrats’ outrage over the attack as a “game,” while waving his hands about the extent of the attack. the severity of that day by the sparkling remark, “Politics is always politics. Always. ”

In the “law and order” GOP, the leak of the SCOTUS draft decision was an attack on the fabric of the United States, but a real attack on the federal government approved by the Republican National Committee. summed up as a “legitimate political discourse” of the rightly angry conservative voter.

It’s no mistake that Republicans are demanding jail time for a leaker they imagine is a Democrat. With the House of Representatives January 6 Committee gearing up for blockbuster public hearings this June, the GOP urgently needs to convince Americans that what happened on January 6 isn’t all that bad — and if so, because the Democrats also attack democracy. Since there was no real evidence to back their delusions, McConnell and the Republicans were happy to create a libertarian villain in the hopes of confusing Americans. and conceal the terrible legacy of anti-democratic behavior.

Republicans will flex their substantial media apparatus to keep the “Speaker” story in the headlines — both as a dodge to avoid discussion of the Supreme Court’s apparent intent to overturning the ruling, which 54% of Americans support, is both a way to undermine any attempt to hold the GOP accountable for its actions (and inaction) on January 6.

For the sake of our democracy, both the media and Democrats must proactively push back against these cynical lies before they become another super-effective weapon in our arsenal of misinformation. Republican Party. They could start by breaking the leadership taboo on using the word abortion, something President Joe Biden tried to avoid saying during a debate with the press on Tuesday morning.

Unless Democrats can find their voices and break the Republican-promoted myth that talking about abortion is political suicide, the GOP will once again enjoy control of messaging. unchallenged during a critical time for women’s rights.