The far-left call to defund the police following the death of George Floyd has energized the Make America Great Again movement and given it a rallying cry of its own to defend the police, Politico reported on Wednesday.
“The ‘defund the police’ movement, if it’s enacted, will be the deadliest public policy disaster in modern American history,” conservative commentator Dan Bongino wrote over the weekend on Twitter. “ANY politician who refuses to speak out against this abomination should be forced to attend the thousands of funerals of innocents that will result.”
Jonathan Blanks, a visiting fellow at the free market-oriented Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity, explained that Republicans “have always taken pride in themselves about being the law and order party ... Because that goes hand in hand, the idea that you would attack one of the most trusted and respected institutions in the country, is anathema to that way of thinking.”
This philosophy comes even as many conservatives begin to accept the contention that African Americans are being disproportionately targeted by police, with a recent Washington Post-Schar School poll finding that 47% of Republicans believed police killings of black men are illustrative of broader problems, compared to just 19% who thought that way only six years ago.
But Trump’s die-hard conservative base has been rattled by the violence and looting among some of the demonstrators, and the far-left solutions being proposed have created a backlash.
Although the main concept of defunding the police, as explained by supporters, is to redirect police budgets toward programs addressing broader community needs, President Donald Trump is emphasizing the more radical ideas of abolishing the police entirely and casting himself as one who will not let that happen.
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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