"We have to kill and confront that movement" - Tim Ryan shows his true colours.
If JD Vance wants to sit in the Senate, he ought to remind Ohioans at every stage what his opponent said about the majority of Buckeye voters.
This Tuesday Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) took to MSNBC’s Morning Joe and had a message for host Joe Scarborough. For much of his career Ryan has styled himself as a blue collar Democrat that stands up for the rights of union workers in the manufacturing sector. He has eschewed the image of the progressive groups that seek to use gender, race, sexuality or religion in branding their platforms. But that morning he waded straight into the same choppy waters of incitement that his more radical colleagues like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) have made their careers sailing through.
After the usual statements about how hard he is working to move from the House to the Senate compared to his opponent JD Vance, Ryan made a statement in response to a question regarding the difficult political climate of today. In doing so he started by saying, “The Democrats aren’t right on everything. And I’m willing to sit down and have conversations about how we can move out of this age of stupidity and into an age of reconciliation and reform. How do we fix all of these broken systems? Some of those answers will come from Republicans. . . not - not the extremists that we’re dealing with every single day. We’ve gotta kill and confront that movement. But, you know working with mainstream Republicans. . .”
A generous interpretation of this quote would hold that Ryan wasn’t talking about literally killing or maiming anyone, but rather destroying the movement itself as a political entity. But that’s a strange way to put it, especially given President Biden’s recent rhetoric denouncing “MAGA Republicans” in his speech called the “Battle for the Soul of the Nation”. It’s not as if the MAGA movement hasn’t been “confronted”. In fact almost from the beginning there was the willingness by its opponents to disrupt or even violently attack rallies for Donald Trump. In March 2016 protesters arrived at one of the then candidate’s rallies in Chicago and assaulted attendees. Then in June 2016 Trump appeared at a convention center in San Jose, CA. ABC reporter Tom Llamas documented the violence that ensued including footage of bloodied rally goers including middle aged women with their signs ripped away or egged.
Those saying “it could be worse” should know that it did get worse. A year after the San Jose rally GOP members of Congress were shot at by left-wing extremist James Hodgkinson. Four people were injured, including two Capitol Police officers, a congressional staffer and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) who clung to his life but eventually survived. Then on Sept. 1, 2020 Patriot Prayer activist and Trump supporter Jay Danielson was murdered in cold blood in Portland, Oregon by a Black Lives Matter and Antifa activist.
Ohioans voted for Pres. Trump by eight point margins in 2016 and 2020. In fact in 2020 he became the first candidate in the state’s history to earn more than three million votes. Areas of the state that had long been safely Democratic turned red for the first time, including Trumbull County where Ryan lives. If he had not decided to throw his hat in the Senate race, he very well could have been facing defeat in the 13th district where he now serves where a Republican had not been elected since 1982. What Democrats have lately taken to saying is that the MAGA or “semi-fascist” wing is a minority of Republican voters, but that simply hasn’t been true. If it was, the result of the 2016 election would not have been a narrow win for Trump but a blowout victory for Hillary Clinton in mold of Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide that carried every state but Arizona. The #NeverTrump Republicans have come and gone preaching that this is not “their” party only to be quickly replaced by former Obama Democrats or previous non-voters.
On Saturday Sept. 17 President Trump is set to appear in Youngstown with JD Vance. They could use this leg of the race to deal a severe blow to Tim Ryan’s campaign. What the media is understanding is that Ryan has two glaring vulnerabilities: (a) his message is unpopular even in his home district that he needs to win and (b) he has to distance himself from Biden in order to remain a viable candidate, but in doing so will have to explain his record of consistently supporting White House legislative initiatives in Congress. Indeed Vance has allowed much of this race to pass him by, but he could easily gain valuable ground this weekend by focusing on Ryan’s home turf in the Mahoning Valley around Youngstown and Warren. This is usually the stretch of an election season where candidates can make or break their campaigns, and Tim Ryan’s “kill the movement” comment may have just knocked over a hornet’s nest.