Fake GOP rage over Biden's 'unity' speech is a sucker's game

[Zorro]

Opinion by Greg Sargent

President Biden declared in his inaugural address that our prospects for much-needed “unity” are threatened by various political forces. Among them, he said, are racism, nativism, political extremism, white supremacy and domestic terrorism.

Republicans promptly decided that in condemning those things, Biden was actually talking about them.

Republican officials and their media allies are now widely condemning these words as an attack on themselves and their voters. The obvious trick is to game the media into saying Biden is already reneging on his unity promise by being divisive.

But there’s a deeper ploy here. With this new fake outrage fest, Republicans are working to reframe the national debate over how to repair the damage done during Donald Trump’s presidency on terms favorable to them.

This reframing is designed to bury their own culpability for the injuries they inflicted by actively enabling Trump and by deliberately harnessing the destructive forces he unleashed toward their own instrumental ends.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/21/gop-response-biden-speech-unity/

[GeorgeGist]

1. GOP rage is SO yesterday.

Let them wallow in it ALONE.

[canuckledragger]

2. Biden WAS talking about them.

Given their uncountable examples over the past few years of everything he stated.

It's false outrage alright. They don't like their actions exposed to daylight for all to see.

[HariSeldon]

3. I think Biden set a clever trap

Republicans could have repudiated racism, white supremacy, sexism, etc. and said, "While we won't agree with President Biden or Congressional Democrats on every aspect of what our nation needs, we will work to find common ground and represent the voice of the conservative viewpoint in American politics." Instead, they chose to hang these identifiers around their own necks, trying to claim it was Biden who had done it.

My question is whether Democrats can get people to see through this dissembling.

[angstlessk]

5. I agree 100%, Biden made a general statement, and they

put themselves into being one or more of what Biden mentioned.

When they accuse his speech as being divisive, thy should be asked to select which one(s) they see as themselves ( racist, nativist, political extremist, white supremacist and/or domestic terrorist)

[Marcuse]

4. The Republicans believe they resemble those remarks.

As when Lauren Boebert assumed Sean Maloney implied she was complicit in terrorism, the lady doth protest too much.

[UTUSN]

6. K&R